An aide to Gov. Jodi Rell suggested sending “an obnoxous mascot named ‘car tax Charlie’” to hector and hound Democrats who oppose her plan to eliminate property taxes on cars. Another informal informant suggested that the governor “pull a Clinton” and “co-opt” gubernatorial challenger John DeStefano’s ideas for economic development. Those suggestions surface in a review by the Independent of the e‑mail files of Lisa Moody (pictured), Rell’s chief of staff. How much of the advice did Rell follow up on?
The “car tax Charlie” idea came from Philip Dukes, Rell’s counsel for policy. It was contained in a Feb. 10 e‑mail to Moody titled “Ideas for the Car tax.” Moody’s e‑mails were obtained under the state Freedom of Information Act.
Dukes recommended harnessing the energy of “College Republicans and Young Republicans to do events in high traffic areas to drum up support and attention” for Rell’s proposal to eliminate the car tax on July 1. Rell made the proposal in her Feb. 8 State of the State address.
“I know you are going to hate this,” Dukes wrote to Moody, “but it worked so well for the D’s on the national level. Once the legislators who oppose this line up, start sending some kind of embarrassing mascot to their events to embarrass them (get one of the College Republicans to do it). It’s childish, but it embarrasses the heck out of the legislators to have some obnoxious mascot named “car tax Charlie” or whatever in the back of the room and they usually blow their tops causing a ridiculous public scene where the legislator is arguing with a puppet about being against this tax cut.”
Dukes’ other ideas included “get[ting] the Brad Davis types to turn this into a cause.”
Click here to read the full text of Dukes’ e‑mail.
Moody did hate the idea, she said Wednesday.
“I thought it was silly and I said no,” she said. Instead, the Rell administration floated a compromise version of the car-tax plan this week in the hope of enlisting more Democratic support.
“A Clinton”?
A different e‑mailed suggestion did mirror one of the central proposals in Rell’s State of the State address and her proposed new budget.
The suggestion came in a Feb. 3 e‑mail from Doug Fisher, an executive at Northeast Utilities. Fisher sent Moody e‑mails before and after the speech giving advice on economic development issues and the car tax. He was also in discussions with Moody about possibly taking a job with the administration, perhaps heading a new central jobs-creation agency that Rell ended up proposing in the budget.
In the Feb. 3 e‑mail, Fisher reported on his “observations” at a Connecticut Technology Council board meeting he attended. Toward the end he makes reference to the state Department of Economic Development (DECD) and to DeStefano, one of two Democrats seeking to run against Rell in the fall.
“It’s clear,” Fisher wrote, “that part of John DeStefano’s stump speech involves leveling blistering attacks on the DECD, and he’s clearly making the need to reinvent the delivery of EconDev programs and services a cornerstone of his campaign, even more than I previously imagined. This represents a terrific opportunity for Jodi to ‘pull a Clinton’ — that is, completely co-opt a meritorious idea which is becoming a platform issue of the Democrats in the legislature and the governor’s two opponents — just like Bill Clinton regularly made creative ideas of the Republican Congress his.”
Click here to read more excerpts from that e‑mail. (In a separate e‑mail, on the car tax, Fisher wrote: “It’s an idea with classic populist appeal, a vote getter, no matter what some intellectual egg heads and media elites may say about it in the meantime.”)
Fisher chairs the Governor’s Commission on the Economic Diversification of Southeastern Connecticut. He’s currently manager of Economic Development and Community Relations at Northeast Utilities.
DeStefano had indeed been publicly pushing the idea of overhauling the bureaucracy and approach of state economic development agencies and launching a new public-private central job-creation effort. (Click here to read how his campaign described the new agency he would create if elected.) The other Democratic candidate, Dannel Malloy, had also proposed streamlining the economic developoment bureaucracy..
In her Feb. 8 address, which Lisa Moody wrote, Rell proposed the creation of a new central jobs-creating agency. “First, I am calling for a major reorganization of how state government aids in economic development,” she said. She called the top priority of her budget.
“Right now there exists a complicated maze of economic development procedures, programs and policies,” Rell continued. “Under my budget, the many alphabet soup agencies will be reshaped and re-energized with a new command focus. The Department of Economic and Community Development will become the new Department of Business and Employment and will be given new tools to make it more responsive and more customer-oriented… Also, the multiple financing authorities that businesses need to sift through will be streamlined into a new CT Finance Collaborative, providing a coordinated and user friendly approach to those seeking state assistance… I will also appoint a new Director of Economic Development who will be housed in my office and who will report directly to me.”
DeStefano spokesman Derek Slap said Wednesday that the e‑mail confirms his candidate’s complaint about Rell’s economic development policy.
“DeStefano obviously thinks it’s a good idea – it’s his,” Slap said. “This e‑mail reinforces what DeStefano has been saying and others are learning every day, that Gov. Rell has no plan and no vision for Connecticut. We need a governor who has bold and innovative ideas, not one who simply steal them from others.”
Lisa Moody dismissed the idea that Rell’s economic development restructuring came from either DeStefano or Fisher. The administration had been working on it for a year, she said.
The administration wasn’t “pulling a Clinton,” Moody said. “No, we were pulling a Rell.”
“We get advice from everybody,” a lot of it unsolicited, Moody said.
Indeed, Fisher’s memo came too late to have introduced a new idea into the Rell budget plan. The questions, rather, are whether, or how, the buzz in January and February stemming from DeStefano’s and Malloy’s focus on economic development — and the general feeling in the state about the government’s weaknesses — influenced the final package of proposals Rell presented, or the emphasis she placed on them.
Rell’s plan did still differ from DeStefano’s in a crucial way: DeStefano suggested changing the approach of state aid away from tax breaks to companies and toward strengthening the workforce through job training and health care. DeStefano said loans and tax breaks had often failed to produce jobs. Rell proposed new tax breaks linked to specific new jobs created by companies and a cut in the corporate income tax surcharge. DeStefano instead called for targeting tax cuts to manufacturers’ machinery.
The use of the FOH to obtain information on the political strategy of the current administration seems a bit unbalanced to me. Isn't an article like this effectively doing work for the DeStefano campaign? Can FOH be used in the same way to air other candidate's "dirt"?