Gerratana For Senate: How Can The Public Trust Her?

FRANKSMITHSAYSNB EDITORIAL:

Gerratana For Senate: How Can The Public Trust Her?

To read the bio published by the local Democrats, one would have a picture of Ms. Gerratana being a champion of ethics, but let’s take a closer look:

Public records indicate that Ms. Gerratana served as a member of the State Elections Enforcement Commission from January 2007 until June 30, 2010. This is a commission that by its own description was created in the wake of the Watergate scandal to ensure the integrity of the state’s electoral process with the specific authority to investigate possible violations of election laws. Didn’t Commissioner Gerratana even swear an oath to uphold and to enforce the election laws of Connecticut?

In April 2009, it became public that Ms. Gerratana’s son Greg was serving as a New Britain Alderman while living in the Berlin pool house owned by her husband, and at the time the younger Gerratana was using the New Britain mailing address of Dr. & Mrs. Gerratana’s main house as his official address while he was living in the Berlin pool house. To believe that then Commissioner Gerratana was not complicit in this egregious conduct by her son, one would have to believe that Commissioner Gerratana did not know that her son was a New Britain Alderman at the time, or that she was completely ignorant to the fact that the pool house was actually located in the Town of Berlin—you decide. In either case, soon after this information became public, while declaring that he had done nothing wrong, the younger Gerratana suddenly moved to another address in New Britain, but what, if anything, did the State Elections Enforcement Commissioner residing in this household do about this apparent violation?

Fast forward to the fall 2009 election cycle. A series of vicious and slanderous attacks were posted against Mayor Tim Stewart on local blogs. After a New Britain Herald Investigative report, these attacks were determined to have originated from state computers in the Legislative Office Building. The investigation led to Greg Gerratana admitting responsibility to abusing state computers to launch these attacks. At the time, the younger Gerratana was working at the LOB as an aide to Representative Tim O’Brien, who was at the time challenging Mayor Tim Stewart in the November election. Greg Gerratana was also still serving as an Alderman while himself running for New Britain Tax Collector.

As a result of this scandal, Greg Gerratana was suspended from his job at the LOB, and withdrew from his campaign for Tax Collector. While all this scandalous activity was occurring during the election process, why was the Elections Enforcement Commission nowhere to be found? Could it have anything to do with the fact that the “Admitted Serial Poster” as he became known in local blogs, had a mother on the commission?

Now it is this former State Elections Enforcement Commissioner who apparently stood by and did nothing while all this was occurring in and around her own household during the last election who is challenging Mayor Stewart on his bid for State Senate.

In any event, hasn’t the public had enough of Gerratana style politics?