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Industria Crecimus (by industry we thrive) – Bridgeport’s motto
Like pornography, we all think we would know political fraud when we see it. Ballot fraud is only a small sometimes insignificant subset of political fraud.
Following the arrests of four Democrat political operatives in Bridgeport, Connecticut’s largest city, we think we know what ballot fraud looks like, but election fraud is a different animal. It may plausibly be argued that election fraud occurs most often in one-party states and municipal offices in which rival parties have all but disappeared.
Unhidden and open political fraud is possible in such unitary political structures because no one is looking critically at Connecticut’s dominant Democrat Party. Those attending to political affairs are members of the dominant party, along with a sometimes indifferent media reliant for its news on the dominant party. This is a picture perfect postcard of Democrat politics in Bridgeport and other Connecticut large cities in which the Republican Party as such has effectively been eviscerated.
The present Mayor of Bridgeport, Joe Ganim, people will and have forgotten, is a privileged, white, Democrat felon who moved easily from a seven year sentence for political fraud and personal enrichment – the once and future mayor had accepted brides and kickbacks -- into the mayor’s office.
Political fraud therefore rests on two pillars: 1) unchallenged power sometimes exercised for decades by a dominant political party, and 2) a less than vigilant media that declines to criticize a power structure upon which it depends for its news. In both politics and neighborhoods, good fences, as Robert Frost tells us, make good neighbors. And just as good neighborhoods disappear with the disappearance of good fences, operative moral imperatives, so in politics, good government disappears with the disappearance of active and watchful alternative parties.
The last Republican mayor of Bridgeport was Mary Moran, the first and only woman to serve as mayor, who left office in 1991. Before and after Moran, Bridgeport has been run by a rusting urban Democrat political machine allied with the larger Democrat Party state machine, well-oiled in Connecticut by political contributions.
Ganim’s political curricula vita is mentioned in a “shocking” story – “Prison, fines and increased scrutiny: CT officials weigh stopping election fraud” -- written by Chris Keating of the Hartford Courant.
At his best, Keating is an accomplished reporter. One can always expect an interpretive background to make its appearance in any of his major stories. Ganim’s checkered past peeks out at us between the lines of the story, as does Governor Ned Lamont – who is shocked! ... shocked! …
Republicans have proposed stiffer penalties for election fraud.
“I have a different take on this,” Lamont said. “You can lock them up and throw away the key or raise the penalty to $100,000. I think the answer to the election fraud is: why did it take 3 1/2 years for SEEC [Connecticut’s State Elections Enforcement Commission] to refer this to the chief state’s attorney’s office? I thought that was shocking. We’ve got a bill in place that was passed that says 90 days. You figure out whether it’s worth investigating in 90 days and get it to the chief state’s attorney. … I really think it was that delay that was shocking. Whether you change the penalties, let’s start with no more justice delayed.”
Launched in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Connecticut’s General Assembly created a five member bi-partisan and independent State Elections Commission (Public Act 74-213) “to ensure the integrity of the state's electoral process.”
Perhaps stiff jail sentences should be imposed on the laggard members of the SEEC. But no, that would not work. Mayor Ganim spent seven years in the clinker for his political peculations and was punished at the end of his prison stretch with the mayoralty of Bridgeport. The Democrat General Assembly majority, as well as the Democrat appointed members of the state’s Supreme Court, has long resolved that stiff penalties are no deterrent to crime, as witness the state Supreme Court’s abolition of Connecticut’s death penalty for the commission of heinous murders.
Arrests and rapid release, we all know, has not put a dent in recidivism in the “state of [bad] steady habits.”
Mayor Ganim’s response to the arrests of the Ganim connected ballot stuffers in his city can best be described as “politically cute.”
“Whether it’s people accused from the Moore campaign [or] my campaign,” the mayor said, “any irregularity is unacceptable. We all agree that the integrity of the voting process is vital to our democracy.”
Ganim has yet to propose the elimination of stuffable street corner ballot boxes in Bridgeport or the harvesting of ballots by Democrat Party mayoralty boosters.
Maybe next time.
