Paul Bass Photo
GOP attorney general candidate Jessica Kordas Sunday on Wooster Street.
As she waited for a pie to come out of the oven, Jessica Kordas reflected on how she saw the law help set a 16-year-old free to pursue her dreams.
Kordas was that 16-year-old. She needed to leave her family home in Norwalk. She headed to a law library. She read up on her options. She found out how to pursue legal emancipation. And she won it.
Twenty-three years later, Kordas is the Republican Party’s candidate for attorney general, a post her party last won in 1955 (with candidate John J. Bracken). She faces incumbent Democrat William Tong and Green Party candidate Ken Krayeske in the Nov. 8 general election.
Kordas spoke about that campaign and about her experiences as she joined a group of fellow Republicans Sunday at Sally’s Apizza on Wooster Street. Their plan was to visit Pepe’s, Modern, and Bar after Sally’s to determine the favorite — and meet voters and soak up some New Haven flavor along the way.
Seated in the booth at Sally’s, Kordas answered rote reporter questions about her candidacy. She spoke about her work as a criminal defense and civil plaintiff’s lawyer.
She spoke of how fighting back as a single mom (of an 8‑year-old son and 10-year-old daughter) against Norwalk schools’ pandemic mask mandate propelled her to political activism and now this first run for public office. She spoke of using her trial experience to represent the state well as attorney general. She spoke of seeking “solutions” rather than politicizing issues in the job. She spoke of pushing the state education department as attorney general to give parents more of a voice in their children’s public-school curriculum on topics such as sex education in younger grades and more access to information about finances.
“We are looking at schools that are pushing parents’ voices out,” she said.
In response to a Facebook Live viewer’s question, she affirmed that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election. She said she supports a women’s right to make the choice about whether to have an abortion; “I would defend” the pro-choice laws in place in Connecticut, she said.
Click on the video above to watch that conversation and hear her answers in full. (The video begins with a misstatement about in which pizza parlor the conversation took place.)
Kordas’ crew ordered a plain cheese pie as well as a potato-rosemary specialty pie. “That smells good!” Kordas remarked when the latter pie was set in front of her place.
With the video camera off, Kordas told a more personal story — of how she came to become an attorney — that dovetailed with how she views the elected office she’s now seeking.
The law enabling teens to escape a troubled home and serve as their own guardians gave her the opportunity to work hard toward self-sufficiency, she said. She at first moved into a friend’s family’s basement and paid rent. Then she got her own apartment. She landed a job at an advertising agency. She continued working her way through Norwalk Community College and then the University of Connecticut. An internship at a law firm inspired her to seek a legal career. She worked her way through Pace Law School in White Plains, N.Y. She handles both personal injury suits and criminal defense trials as an attorney with the New Canaan-based Maddox Law Firm.
Beginning with her teen emancipation, through her trial work, Kordas said, she has come to appreciate the need to find “real solutions” through the law rather than “temporary ones” or “politically expedient ones.”
One of those problems involves helping people overcome drug addiction.
Attorney General Tong in March announced that he and fellow attorneys general had reached a settlement with “Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family to pay $6 billion to victims, survivors, and states for their role in the opioid epidemic.”
Kordas said she agreed that Purdue and Sackler needed to “be held accountable.” Her question now: “Where is the money going?”
She said she fears that, as with the proceeds of a previous multi-state lawsuit against tobacco companies, the money could end up sitting in government coffers and being used for purposes other than health care. As someone who escaped a household harmed by drug abuse, she said said wants to make sure the Purdue money goes toward drug treatment and substance abuse prevention.
“Everybody has been touched by addiction in some way,” Kordas noted. “We have a mental health and substance abuse pandemic. We don’t do enough to make sure people get treatment.”
Connecticut hasn’t received any of the Purdue settlement money yet because it is currently before the U.S. Court of Appeals, according to office spokesperson Elizabeth Benton. Benton said Tong has “helped secure more than $40 billion to states nationwide” from the “addiction industry.”
Benton cited a separate case involving Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical distributors Cardinal, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen, in which Tong and other attorneys general succeeded in pushing a $19 billion proposed settlement to $26 billion; Connecticut is slated to get $300 million of that settlement money over 18 years. The first $11 million payment has arrived to Connecticut and has been paid to the state and cities and towns across Connecticut. For their part, it is up to those municipalities to determine how best to use the funds to abate the opioid epidemic. With regards to the state’s portion, Attorney General Tong negotiated provisions directly in the settlement agreement to ensure those funds are used to save lives and fight the opioid epidemic. Terms are outlined in the settlement in an extensive list of strategies including but not limited to funding Naloxone, medication-assisted treatment, prevention programs, education, training, and research,” Benton stated.
Kordas left Sally’s on Sunday less passionate about the pizza than she was about the need to address substance abuse.
“I liked the crust,” she offered. The toppings? “I wanted more of something,” she said. So it was on to Pepe’s, Modern, and Bar to compare. (Her entourage, which included the New Haven Republican Town Committee Treasurer Lisa Milone, 97th state General Assembly District representative candidate Anthony Acri, state House Republican Legal Counsel Brian Werstler, and Kordas Deputy Camapaign Manager Hannah Lemek, ended up selecting Bar’s pie as the day’s winner.)
Kordas did bring home the uneaten Sally’s slices — for her active kids.
Most of the teacher I know that have been in the biz for decades say that todays parents are more clueless than ever and carry an overblown sense of entitlement. In NHV especially, there's way too many rules preventing teachers from doing their jobs because they can't get rid of students whose parents have NOT done their jobs.