Malloy Protégé Luke Bronin Caught Sending Fundraising Solicitations To Hartford City Employees 

Less than two weeks into his bid for governor of Connecticut, Dan Malloy Protégé Luke Bronin is already attracting controversy after his campaign was caught sending fundraising emails to municipal employees. The Hartford Mayor was forced to hastily apologize for sending solicitations asking for campaign cash to about 50 city school employees last week. The Hartford Courant reports that it is a “violation of state election law” for any municipal employee, such as Bronin, to seek political donations from a subordinate.

But Bronin isn’t the first Democrat candidate in Connecticut to get caught soliciting city employees for campaign cash. Middletown Mayor Dan Drew ignited a firestorm of controversy in September when he tried to shake down municipal employees, including firefighters and police officers, for campaign cash. Like Bronin, Drew was eventually forced to apologize, but his actions are still under investigation by state election authorities and remain a serious drag on his candidacy.

Bronin already demonstrated an alarming disregard for his constituents when he abandoned his promise to serve out his full term as Hartford Mayor to pursue his ambition to run for governor, but his shameless attempt to shake down his city’s employees to fund his political future further shows what little respect he has for the people he was elected to serve. Connecticut deserves better.

The Hartford Courant reports:

“A campaign official for Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin is apologizing for emails that contained a fundraising link and were inadvertently sent to about 50 city school employees on their work accounts.

The mix-up happened when an email blast was sent last week to a mailing list obtained during Bronin’s 2015 mayoral campaign. The mass email was sent Thursday afternoon to announce that Bronin had formed an exploratory committee for statewide office with an eye toward the governor’s race.

Less than two hours after the initial email went out, Conor Hurley, Bronin’s campaign manager, wrote to the city school employees and apologized. The campaign removed ‘.gov’ email addresses from the list, but Hartford public school employee email addresses end in ‘.org.’

In September, Middletown Mayor Dan Drew, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate, drew fire and later apologized when he made a specific fundraising overture to city employees.

After criticism from union leaders and others, Drew said he had made an ‘error in judgment’ when he personally requested a list of home addresses of city employees from the city human resources department and had his campaign use the list to send out letters asking for $100 donations.

The addresses used by Drew’s campaign included those of police officers and firefighters, who are granted protection under state law from having their home addresses disclosed. Drew said his campaign would return any contributions received in response to the letters.

Drew’s misstep led to a complaint with the State Elections Enforcement Commission.

Bronin, in the midst of formally exploring a campaign for governor and reaching out to supporters, was quick to back off from his fundraising appeal, which was not sent to the home residential address of the school employees.

‘While we ensured that no .gov e-mails were included in that list, the system failed [to] identify approximately 50 e-mails with .org addresses as belonging to official accounts,’ Hurley wrote. ‘Please disregard this prior message, and please accept my apology.’

‘Your email address and all related e-mail addresses have been removed from our system and this is the last e-mail you will receive from our account,’ he continued.

It is a violation of state election law for any municipal employee to solicit a campaign contribution from a subordinate…

A link at the bottom of the email, which went out to a list of more than 20,000 people, redirected users to a page where they could make donations of up to $375 to ‘Luke For CT.’ Bronin’s exploratory committee allows him to begin raising money without formally declaring himself a gubernatorial candidate.”