Blumenthal’s campaign contributions

Middletown Press
Don Pesci
April 24, 2010

. . . Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is accepting PAC donations for his senatorial campaign. A Federal Elections Commission disclosure report indicates that Blumenthal hauled in nearly a quarter of a million dollars in PAC contributions in the first quarter of 2010.

Blumenthal has accepted money from Democratic leadership PACs in the U.S. Senate controlled by senators Barbara Boxer, Patrick Leahy and Harry Reid, as well as corporation PACs including Aflac, Phoenix Companies Inc., and the ING American Insurance Holdings.

A report in CT News Junkie includes a clip showing Blumenthal holding forth against PAC contributions:

“I’ve never taken PAC money,” Blumenthal blusters, “and I have rejected all special interest money because I have stood strong and have taken legal action against many of those special interests.” . . .

The Stamford Advocate recently reported on Gold Coast political luminaries and concluded that a veil had been drawn over Blumenthal’s wealth:

“Blumenthal’s wealth is partly obscured because much of it comes from his wife’s family. Until he files his candidate disclosure statement for the U.S. Senate, much of his family’s assets and income are shielded. Even those reports, which limit what spousal income has to be disclosed, do not provide a full picture. Disclosure report filed as state attorney general indicates a number of trusts for family members.” . . .

Re-elected to office in July 1996, Blumenthal awarded, without legislative approval, an unprecedented contingency fee contract for his proposed litigation against tobacco companies. The attorney general committed Connecticut to pay 25 percent of any award made to it through the tobacco litigation — principally to his former law partner, David Golub and his wife, who was also a lawyer.

First calculated at $900 million, the contingency fee award owed by the state to Golub and his wife was later reduced to $65 million. The final distribution of public funds awarded to Blumenthal’s former law partner and his wife was settled behind closed doors, in private arbitration, without public scrutiny. The contract was not put out to bid, though there were at the time many law firms that would have been delighted to bank a cool $65 million . . .