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Two people are dead. Start there, because somewhere between a group text and a press release, the people running this state lost track of it.
July 13. About 2:45 in the morning on Sugar Hollow Road in Danbury, a Jeep Compass and a Harley-Davidson meet head-on, and off-duty Bridgeport Police Officer Cooper Whiteside, 38, and Brittany Islami, 34, a mother of three, are killed. The Jeep’s driver, Melissa Esperanza Ramirez of Stamford, goes to Danbury Hospital.
I’ve been through every page of a stack of Freedom of Information records, texts and emails involving the Governor’s communications director. The word that kept coming back to me was management.
First, what did Danbury police do? At the hospital, per the warrant, an officer gets a name and a date of birth. Melissa Ramirez. That gets run through NCIC/COLLECT -- the law-enforcement databases -- and Chief Patrick Ridenhour later told Hearst’s Dan Haar the driver “did not produce a driver’s license at the hospital,” and when her name and birthdate were run, “the name and date of birth of the person in New Britain came up.”
Wrong woman. Same name, same birthday.
July 24, the day of Coop Whiteside’s funeral, Danbury Officer Aaron Wolen swears out the arrest warrant, sworn before a sergeant, signed by prosecutor Stacey Miranda and a Superior Court judge. Read paragraph 7: “A check of Melissa drivers license, through NCIC/COLLECT showed that Melissa had a valid driver’s license, with an address of [redacted] New Britain, Connecticut.”
Front page of the same warrant. Residence? Stamford. Paragraph 28? Stamford again. One sworn document, two towns, plus a Connecticut license DMV says she never held.
Officer. Sergeant. Prosecutor. Judge. Four sets of hands on that thing and the New Britain line sailed through every one of them, and that is how a Stamford defendant got stapled to a New Britain citizen -- with a sworn police document, not a meme.
The night of July 29, Danbury PD goes on Facebook and urges the public “to verify information before sharing it.” You can’t make this up. As Haar noted, the post “did not mention a likely source of the confusion: Their own arrest warrant.”
The bad claim was already loose. July 28, Blue Lives Matter on X: “It appears the illegal alien charged with k*lling a Connecticut cop and his girlfriend IS REGISTERED TO VOTE in the state.” It credited the Connecticut Centinal, though Haar reported the Centinal’s own story never mentioned voting. (Full disclosure: I’ve written for the Centinal. My Aug. 1 column, “Don’t Blame Us,” ran there too.) July 29, state Rep. Cara Pavalock-D’Amato on Facebook: “THE ILLEGAL ALIEN THAT KILLED 2 PEOPLE IN DANBURY IN A DUI CRASH WAS REGISTERED TO VOTE IN CT.”
They were flat wrong. The Stamford defendant was never registered to vote in Connecticut; that record belongs to the New Britain woman.
But that New Britain connection? It was on police paper four days before it hit anybody’s feed.
What did the Governor’s people know, and when?
Wednesday, July 29, 6:59 p.m. Cathryn Vaulman, Lamont’s communications director, texts that she’s told Danbury PD and the state’s attorney “someone from those offices needs to clarify the record ASAP, that we have 2 different individuals here and the registered voter is a citizen who is home in New Britain and not in jail for a DUI.” Hang onto that time stamp.
Thursday, July 30, 6:21 p.m. On a group text with Vaulman and campaign chair Matt Brokman, the phone’s owner -- the person Vaulman addresses as “Governor” -- writes: “Social media keeps repeating the undocumented was a chronic voter. Totally false.”
Totally false is right. That evening out comes the Governor’s statement: “I am grateful that Danbury Police investigated thoroughly.” Then it blames “misinformation pushed in a rush to advance a political agenda.” It tells “especially members of the media and elected officials” to “slow down and verify.” Calls the whole thing “a case of mistaken identity.”
Mistaken by who, exactly? Never says. Not a word about the warrant.
Aug. 5. A Substack writer asks the Governor’s office about prosecutor Miranda telling the court “databases throughout the system” had “merged.” Vaulman kicks it to the state police spokesman: “the records were separate at DMV and only 1 had a SOTS record, so the confusion basically stems from Danbury PD.” Two hours later the Governor’s general counsel, Sarah Karwan: “I assume Stacy Miranda misspoke somewhat here- my understanding is that there was some amount of human error here, too.”
Stems from Danbury PD. Human error. That’s them, among themselves. In public it was “investigated thoroughly,” and a lecture for the rest of us.
Back up to that July 30 group text. At 6:21, Brokman, the campaign chair, floats it: “Could do as an email to the reporters that have been covering story, instead of press release.” At 6:23, Vaulman: “Personally would rather out it online for search and LLM but if you see risks, we can do targeted distro only.” (That “out” is her typo for “put.” LLM means large language model -- the AI chatbots.) Brokman again: “What if you do email to reporters, and just post on our news site.” And at 7:32, Vaulman: “should I send to targeted reporters and post online as discussed?”
Careful here, because this is where somebody tries to trip me up. “Targeted reporters” means a hand-picked list of reporters covering the story. Nobody in these texts is going after journalists and I won’t tell you they were. The official line was scolding everybody else about misinformation while the Governor’s comms shop and his campaign chair worked out who gets their version and how to park it where search engines and AI would serve it up. What finally went out, the texts don’t say. The plan, though, is right there, time-stamped.
In my book, that’s marketing.
And Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas? Her July 30 release lectured: “A matching name is not an investigation.” Somebody tell Danbury, because a matching name and birthday is exactly how the New Britain woman landed in that warrant, a warrant Thomas’s release never mentioned.
Aug. 9, a fundraising email from her campaign, subject line “Do You Consider This a Death Threat?”, says people thought the woman had voted “based on a mistake by the police linking the two women together.”
A mistake by the police. Funny how that made the donor pitch and never the official statement.
On the threats, I’ll own one thing. Lamont’s statement said “threats,” not “death threats.” I’ve used the stronger phrase myself, and his statement doesn’t. The New Britain police report, filed Aug. 4, says the woman told officers she “has not been receiving any death threats nor is being harassed,” that she feels safe, and that the harassment she described was journalists who kept calling. She also told Haar, “It’s scary that people have my address and my voting records out there.” Both on the record. Neither one is the warrant, which is where this started.
The conflict now, sticking to what’s on paper. Matt Brokman left the state payroll May 22 to chair Lamont’s reelection campaign. Off the payroll. Campaign chair. July 30, the Governor asks that thread, “What say you, Brokman?” The campaign chair weighs in on how the official response goes out, and the state’s communications director asks whether Thomas’s statement changes “either of your minds.”
Rob Blanchard left the communications director’s job April 13 for a paid senior adviser role on the campaign. He’s on a second July 30 thread. 4:52 p.m.: the phone’s owner -- by every indication, the Governor -- posts a screenshot of Ryan Fazio’s campaign post and asks, “Have we said anything?” Vaulman: “Will have a draft of a broader message for your review after running by Matt now.” Blanchard doesn’t write anything you can see. He’s just on the thread. And Fazio’s post went after Lamont on the Trust Act and made no voter claim.
The law? CGS 1-84(c) bars a public official or state employee from using the office “to obtain financial gain.” The Office of State Ethics has said state time and personnel can’t be used for non-state work -- fair’s fair, those opinions involved private businesses, not campaigns. CGS 9-610(d) bars an incumbent from using public funds to “mail or print flyers or other promotional materials” in the three months before an election. July 30 was outside that window for November. It was inside three months of Lamont’s Aug. 11 primary.
Am I telling you a law was broken? No. I don’t know that and neither do you. That’s for the Office of State Ethics and the State Elections Enforcement Commission to sort out. My questions:
To Ethics: When a state-paid communications director runs the Governor’s official response past the campaign chair, with a paid campaign adviser on the thread, is that state personnel doing campaign work under 1-84(c)? Were those texts on state phones, on state time?
To the SEEC: Does the three-month rule reach a primary, and does an email to reporters or a web post count as “mail or print”? Did the campaign get anything of value out of state-paid messaging?
So, the referendum. If the facts were on their side, and on the voter question they were, why spin at all? They had “2 different individuals” by 6:59 p.m. on July 29. They had it. And still Danbury got a public thank-you for investigating “thoroughly,” while the press and elected officials got the finger-wagging.
The truth doesn’t need a rollout plan. Never has.
Who’s in this story? Two families who lost people they loved. A woman in New Britain dragged into a case that was never hers. And the people holding the facts, on a Thursday night, working out how the search engines would read it.
I call that public relations run out of the Governor’s office, by a governor asking you for four more years. You folks can call it whatever you want in November. Stay in the fight.
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