Bass, Ricks Photos
Elicker (left): People deserve to know. Harp campaign chair Bartlett: Elicker’s talking “nonsense” and “hot air.”
City contractors, longtime political allies, and charter-school machers are hosting a $250-$1,000-a-ticket fundraiser for Mayor Toni Harp’s reelection quest in Avon Thursday evening, a day after a state agency voted to launch an investigation into her campaign’s paperwork lapses.
The fundraiser is scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m. at the home of former University of Connecticut medical school dean Cato Laurencin and his wife Cynthia Laurencin.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the State Elections Enforcement Commission (SEEC) voted 4 – 0 to launch an investigation into a complaint filed against the Harp campaign by the campaign of Justin Elicker, who’s challenging Harp in this year’s Democratic mayoral primary. The SEEC assigned it case number 2019 – 030.
The two developments reflect the role that campaign financing is playing so far in the campaign. Elicker has chosen to run under New Haven’s public-financing Democracy Fund program. That limits him to $370 contributions from individuals and bars him from accepting political action committee donations in return for public dollars; he argues the program helps limit the influence of the wealthy and special interests on government. Harp is not participating in the program, meaning she can accept donations up to $1,000. She argues that the program doesn’t work as intended.
Elicker’s complaint noted seven “distinct types of violations of elections law” that he said prevented the public from knowing “the details of nearly $100,000 in undisclosed payments to her last reelection bid,” in 2017.
Those alleged violations included not identifying names of $93,502 of donors, submitting late quarterly and “deficit filing” reports, failing to file a dozen “individual deficit filings,” closing out the 2017 campaign committee before submitting all required reports, and appointing Jonathan Wilson as her 2019 campaign manager while he was still serving as the 2017 committee treasurer. Elicker discovered these violations by following up on this Feb. 20 article by the New Haven Register’s Mary O’Leary on other SEEC violations that Harp’s campaign subsequently fixed.
Click here to read the complaint.
“We still don’t know who donated nearly $100,000 in contributions to her last campaign,” Elicker stated in a press release issued after the SEEC vote. “In addition to flagrantly violating campaign finance laws, the mayor is betraying the public’s trust by refusing to share this six-figure mystery. The residents of New Haven deserve better. When elected as our 51st mayor, I will bring leadership, honesty, and transparency to City Hall.” Elicker, who has run an aggressive online fundraising campaign so far, also sent out an email blast to supporters about the SEEC vote.
Mayor Harp’s reelection campaign chairman, Jason Bartlett, called Elicker’s remarks “nonsense.”
“I think Justin should take a breath. Sounds like he’s got a lot of hot air,” Bartlett said in an interview.
“There were human errors. Nobody is trying to not be transparent. Nobody’s trying to hide anything. There will be amendments filed. We’ll give them to the SEEC. We’ll file them with the city clerk within a week. We have people going through to fix the human errors. We know who all the donors are. We have all the forms. We want to make sure they’re applied to the right quarters.”
Bartlett said Harp originally “paid a professional bookkeeper” who “unfortunately” did not prepare the filings “in a way where there was zero problem. We’re going to correct them. It won’t happen going forward. All this other stuff is nonsense. [Elicker] should concentrate on actually providing a vision for this city. I haven’t heard him say boo yet.”
“I think that clean campaigns, transparency, being open about who your donors are, dotting your i’s and crossing your t’s when it comes to important campaign work is not nonsense. It is deeply unfortunate is that Harp campaign is not taking this issue seriously. People deserve to know this information; it’s been a month since Mayor Harp has been called out that a third of the donors from her last campaign have not been shared with the public.”
It is unclear whether the SEEC will wrap up its investigation before the election.
The agency’s investigations have no typical length, said spokesman Joshua Foley. It is “completely dependent on the facts and the allegations.” He said “simple” investigations, like ones into late filings, can “get resolved pretty quickly. When there’s a lot of investigation involved, it can go on for a long period of time.” He did not comment about this particular complaint.
Charter Crowd
Lucy Gellman Photo
Fundraiser host John Motley at Harp’s inaugural ball in 2014 (with Family Urban Schools’s Heidi Hamilton).
A 14-member committee is hosting Thursday night’s Avon fundraiser. Following is a look at the roster.
Sen. Doug McCrory, a Democrat, represents Bloomfield, Hartford and Windsor as the State Senate’s deputy president pro tempore. He works as a school administrator for the Capital Region Education Council, and he serves on the board of the advocacy group My Child, My Choice. In 2014, McCrory joined thousands from the charter movement to protest against “failing schools” on the New Haven Green. In 2018, Build CT, a political action committee bankrolled by Alice Walton, the heiress to the Walmart fortune who’s directed her family’s wealth toward propping up charter schools, supported McCrory’s reelection by sending mailers and buying online ads, even though he was running unopposed.
Andrew Crumbie, a former state trooper who busted white-collar crimiminals before opening his own law firm in Hartford, has been brought on to handle several New Haven investigations. Last fall, Harp hired him to find out if Darnell Goldson, the Board of Education’s president, acted inappropriately toward Carol Birks, the New Haven Public Schools superintendent, and Crumbie is also helping the Housing Authority of New Haven go after bad tenants, trying to recover pocketed rental subsidies and evict slovenly public-housing residents. He’d previously worked with the charter school Booker T. Washington Academy at its founding.
John Motley, a charter-school advocate, helps nonprofits build capacity at his consulting firm MotleyBeup, where he draws on his experience as president of the Travelers Foundation. Outside work, Motley currently serves on Achievement First Network Support’s board, and he regularly donates to Common Ground High School. Motley is one of only two donors on the hosting committee who has backed Harp since her time in the statehouse, contributing $500 to her 2012 campaign.
The Bartlett Back-Scratch
Another upcoming Harp fundraiser
Sen. Dennis Bradley, also a Democrat, represents Bridgeport and Stratford in the State Senate after being elected to his first term this year. Like Harp, he has experience in running for office without public financing, but unlike her, that’s not because he chose that path. The SEEC unanimously denied Bradley $95,710 in matching funds, after they found credible evidence that he’d skirted campaign-finance laws by paying for campaign events through his law firm, Bradley, Denkovich & Karayiannis Law Group, which paid about $7,100 for his campaign kickoff event. In both the primary and the general election cycle, Bradley also received support from Build CT, including on-the-ground canvassers, even though in 2015, he’d asked legislators to put a moratorium on charter schools. Who was Bradley’s campaign advisor? Harp reelection campaign chair Jason Bartlett, who received $25,779.77 through his consultancy, JWB & Grace Strategies. Bartlett, who currently serves as city youth services director, also managed Harp’s successful first run for the mayoralty in 2013.
Bart Halloran, the founder and senior partner at at the Hartford law firm Halloran & Halloran, is currently representing Sen. Bradley in Connecticut Superior Court as he appeals the SEEC’s denial. In the complaint, Halloran claims the event at Dolphin’s Cove was a “thank you party” that Bradley’s law firm put on for “former clients, current clients and potential clients.” He argued that it wasn’t a political event because there was no “campaign literature, buttons or memorabilia.” But attendees posted all over Bradley’s Facebook timeline about the great time they’d had at “his fundraising event” when he “made his announcement to run for Senate in a brilliant, charismatic speech.” (Bartlett, in a press release at the time, said the SEEC exhibited “racial bias” in its denial.) Halloran serves on the board of governors for the Connecticut Trial Lawyers Association.
Kaitlin Halloran, an attorney-at-law at her dad’s firm, is also married to Kelvin Roldan, Harp’s policy assistant who’s been pushing for New Haven’s school system to discuss a move toward the “portfolio model,” a controversial reform strategy that gives principals more say over whom they hire and what they teach, but also puts them at risk of being redesigned, taken over by third-party managers or even closed if they don’t perform. Roldan, a former state representative, is being paid an $81,600 salary by the city, while he conducts field research for his doctorate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He donated $250 to Harp’s primary against challenger Marcus Paca in May 2017.
Other Hosts
Cato Laurencin testifies before the state legislature in April 2018.
Cato Laurencin, the former dean of the School of Medicine at the University of Connecticut Health Center who continues to teach orthopedic surgery and oversee engineering research, and his wife Cynthia Laurencin, will host Thursday’s event at their Avon home. As a state senator, Harp honored Laurencin in 2012 for being a role model to kids growing up in poor cities.
Glendowlyn Thames, the executive director of CTNext, the quasi-public economic development agency that supports entrepreneurs across the state, has designated New Haven an “innovation place” that’s incubating new technology and biomedical businesses with $2 million in grant funding.
Sherry Haller, the longtime executive director of the Justice Education Center, builds positive youth development with her nonprofit’s programming in New Haven, Bridgeport and Stamford. The Justice Education Center has pulled in hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts from New Haven’s school system over the years for its vocational programs. So far just this school year, the nonprofit received $70,000 to teach Hillhouse students construction skills and $63,648 to run a five-week career-focused summer camp.
Airport chief Tim Larson pitches expansion at a packed April 2018 hearing.
Tim Larson, the executive director of Tweed New Haven Airport for a decade, has taken a new role in Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration as director of the Office of Higher Education, which administers state financial-aid programs, the accreditation of independent colleges and universities and regulates vocational academies. Before he got the job offer, Larson had just won reelection to his third term as a state senator representing East Hartford, East Windsor, Ellington and South Windsor.
Ken Przybysz, a well-known lobbyist, usually focuses on legislation about social services and medical care at his firm Przybysz & Associates Government Affairs. This legislative session, Przybysz registered to lobby on behalf for 20 different organizations. His biggest clients is Hartford Healthcare, a chain of six hospitals and physician network. In addition to Motley, Przybysz is the one of the only other donor on the hosting committee who’s backed Harp since her time in the statehouse, contributing $100 each to her 2010 and 2012 campaigns.
George Jepsen, the state’s former attorney general, now tries to protect corporations who are facing enforcement action from state attorneys general as a partner at the law firm Shipman & Goodwin. After serving with Jepsen in the State Senate, Harp has been a longtime supporter, backing him as the state’s top lawyer over Susan Bysiewicz in 2010.
Matthew Hennessy, the managing director of Tremont Public Advisors, a lobbying and media consultancy that’s split between Washington, D.C. and Hartford, has helped state candidates conduct internal polling and vetting. A former aide to Joe Lieberman, Hennessy has advocated for the City of New Haven’s interests with the federal government since 2012. His recent city contracts have been for $70,000 annually. His wife, Barbara, a lawyer at Aetna, Inc., the Hartford insurance company, donated $600 to Harp’s treasury in a December 2016 check.
$100,000.00 might come from a dead kin?
I bet same this year and in 2 years there will be more questions.