John and the Giant Peach

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John and the Giant Peach

New Haven Advocate, Andy Bromage November 02, 2006

New Haven Mayor John DeStefano is hacking away at Republican Governor M. Jodi Rell, desperately hoping for a death blow before Election Day. But so far the Democratic candidate for governor is striking mere flesh wounds.

The latest attack came last week when DeStefano accused Rell of green-lighting a predatory insurance program for an Aetna affiliate, then collecting $25,000 in campaign donations from company executives. Rell's campaign predictably denied the story line, then fumbled in trying to cover up a meeting between Rell, Aetna's CEO and his chief of staff.

Any other politician might be sunk. But Rell, the likeable grandmother and breast cancer survivor who floated above the scandals that dogged her first two years in office, looks like she'll survive this one too.

With time running out and Rell still holding a double-digit lead in the polls, DeStefano is breaking out the big guns in the hope of tarnishing Rell's virtually spotless public image. His latest campaign commercial targets the Interstate 84 debacle-$52 million worth of highway construction that must be torn up and redone because the storm drains won't drain properly-to paint Rell as an incompetent leader, detached from the day-to-day running of state government.

He has attacked Rell for keeping her chief of staff, Lisa Moody, on the payroll even after Moody was busted for using the governor's office to solicit Rell campaign contributions from state employees. Rell softly explained, during a debate with DeStefano, that Moody merely broke the governor's own policy, not the law.

DeStefano slammed Rell for collecting $175,000 in campaign cash from state contractors and lobbyists after pledging not to do so. He attacked her for "breaking the law" by missing a state-mandated deadline to release new electricity rates-expected to increase by 50 percent in 2007-to avoid political fallout.

And on Friday, DeStefano alleged that Rell essentially ushered through a "fraudulent" insurance plan for Aetna affiliate SRC, then collected $25,000 from Aetna executives for her election campaign. The DeStefano campaign sought Rell's schedules going back to 2005 to prove the meeting had occurred, but the governor's office refused to release the records.

The Rell campaign, hoping for a quick end to the controversy, then released the dates of every meeting between Rell and Rowe, Aetna's CEO, but in doing so stumbled into an embarrassing cover-up.

The Rell campaign said each meeting with Rowe, who is also chairman of UConn's board of trustees, dealt with the university and not Aetna. DeStefano's campaign flagged a July 26, 2005 meeting with Rell, Rowe and someone named Patricia Hastert, a meeting the Rell campaign said dealt with "UConn Oversight."

When asked to identify Hastert, Rell campaign spokesman Rich Harris acknowledged the name should have read Patricia Hassett.

Who is Patricia Hassett?

"She is Rowe's personal assistant," Harris said.

Really? Because someone named Patricia Hassett is listed as Aetna's chief of staff and vice president for enterprise initiatives.

"She follows him around wherever he goes," Harris said.

And they talked about UConn?

"Yeah, that's my understanding," Harris said.

Funny, then, that Hassett did not accompany Rowe to any other meeting with the governor, nor did any UConn staff join Rell and Rowe on July 26, 2005.

The DeStefano campaign wasted no time pouncing on the misstep.

"It's now apparent that Gov. Rell lied about the identity of the person she was meeting with just weeks before her administration approved a fraudulent health care plan," said DeStefano spokesman Derek Slap. "Why would she not tell the press and the public the truth?"

But will any of it sway the electorate? Rell, lieutenant governor for 10 years under Gov. John Rowland, soared to record popularity when she became governor after Rowland was thrown in jail for corruption. She plays up her "ethical" attributes without talking much about the larger problems facing Connecticut. She remains happily oblivious to the worst going on around her. She bottle-feeds her infant grandchild in campaign commercials. And she smiles all the time.

But behind the scenes, Rell's operatives were preparing to fight dirty, in case the race tightened and they had to go negative. The Connecticut Republican Party, through a Freedom of Information request, sought two years' worth of municipal records on contractors who profited from New Haven's $1.5 billion school construction program, presumably, to paint DeStefano as yet another pay-to-play, corrupt city mayor unfit to run the state.

But the race never got that close, and Rell never had to go negative. She kept her nice gal image intact.

For his part, DeStefano has tried every which way to chip away at Rell's popularity since entering the governor's race in 2004-tying Rell to Rowland, harping on the state's broken health care system, highway gridlock, anemic job growth and Rell's bungled management of a sprawling state bureaucracy-only to watch his poll numbers fall short.

He has closed a 40-point polling gap to 26. But with just days remaining, it's looking like DeStefano may fall to Rell as many have predicted.

DeStefano has run a solid campaign, raised and spent a record $5 million, built an unprecedented field operation and survived a Democratic primary that was the closest in recent memory. He arguably won both head-to-head debates with Rell and has aligned the backing of labor unions representing 200,000 working men and women.

DeStefano charges that Rell has "isolated herself from the public" and avoids situations where she could be asked unscripted questions.

So has DeStefano's apparent lack of traction and the governor's aloofness frustrated him? Not in the least.

"It's not been frustrating for me because I've been able to go out and talk to voters in the vacuum of her failure to participate in the campaign," DeStefano said during a recent campaign stop in New Haven.

Rell has done just about everything humanly possible to stay out of the limelight this election season, holding her breath and hoping her honeymoon with Connecticut lasts through Election Day. She has campaigned through her official office, visiting far flung towns in carefully scripted appearances while handing out grants, extending DMV hours and cutting ribbons on new rail cars.

Yet Harris, Rell's campaign spokesman, said the governor has done "nothing but" talk about the issues.

"She has talked about jobs and the economy," Harris said. "She has talked about education, talked about open space and sprawl. Talked about her vision for the future, talked about campaign finance reform. All she talks about are the issues that are important to the people of Connecticut."

And with that, the race goes on.