Let all run for Atty. General; and renaming is groveling

Prompting suspicion that he seeks to follow in his father’s footsteps, state Rep. Matt Blumenthal, D-Stamford — son of U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, formerly Connecticut’s attorney general — proposes amending the state law that purports to require the attorney general to have 10 years of experience in the “active practice” of law.

Presumably Matt Blumenthal will have only 9 years of “active practice” in 2026, when the next election for attorney general will be held and the current occupant of the office, William Tong, is expected to run for governor instead. So Blumenthal’s legislation would reduce the “active practice” requirement to six years.

He shouldn’t have to make such an unseemly show of his ambition. For the restrictive legislation he seeks to amend is plainly invalid.

Connecticut’s Constitution says: “Every elector who has attained the age of 21 years shall be eligible to any office in the state, but no person who has not attained the age of 21 shall be eligible therefor, except in cases provided for in this constitution.”

The Constitution imposes no other requirements for holding the attorney general’s office. There is nothing about being a lawyer or having particular experience as one.

But in 2010 the state Supreme Court upheld the restrictive statute, much to the disadvantage of Susan Bysiewicz. Back then Bysiewicz, now lieutenant governor, was running for attorney general.

Her candidacy was challenged and the court ruled surprisingly that while she had been a lawyer for more than 10 years, the “active practice” cited in the statute included experience as a trial lawyer, which she lacked.

So Bysiewicz was rudely knocked out of the 2010 election. (Like Tong, she also may pursue the governorship in 2026.)

The court’s arrogant misreading of the state Constitution in the Bysiewicz case may have been surpassed only by its decision five years later that the Constitution forbids capital punishment even as the Constitution always had explicitly provided for it. The court held that public opinion on the issue had changed so much in recent years that the provision for capital punishment should be void. In fact the most recent legislation enacted by the General Assembly and the governor had confirmed capital punishment.

Blumenthal would be more public-spirited and less self-serving if he revised his bill to reaffirm the democratic and egalitarian intent of the Constitution. Instead of tinkering with the “active practice” rule, the bill could simply appropriate the Constitution’s own language, with perhaps a little elaboration to chide the court for its arrogance:

“Except as provided otherwise in this Constitution, every elector who has attained the age of 21 years shall be eligible to any office in the state, ‘any’ including attorney general.”

Of course such language might not protect against the court’s determination someday that public opinion had turned so much against democracy and egalitarianism that the Constitution must be read to reinstate the repealed statutory restriction on the attorney general. But at some point democracy will always require the legislature to defeat judicial overreach. —

GROVELING BY THE RIVER: A more immediate challenge to Connecticut’s sovereignty comes from the campaign by legislators in the southeastern part of the state to rename the Thames River as the Pequot River, after the ancient Indian tribe that so terrorized the region 400 years ago that the English settlers and other Indian tribes united to destroy the aggressor.

Of course today the remote descendants of the Pequots are rich and influential because of the casino duopoly state government has awarded them. But the duopoly is shared with the remote descendants of another tribe — the Mohegans — who aided the extermination of the Pequots. The modern Mohegans have other ideas for renaming the river, which flows between the casinos, the Pequots on the east, the Mohegans on the west.

So the legislation has been framed to invite the tribes to compromise on a recommendation for renaming the river.

This is all just more groveling to a special interest and should be scrapped. But if “Thames” must go, call it something that will remind the world of how Connecticut has been sold out by its elected officials: the Casino River.

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