Controversies

Murphy Hedge Fund accusations

On July 19, 2012, Bysiewicz began airing an ad that took aim at her rival for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate, Christopher S. Murphy. Bysiewicz made an error and was actually attacking Murphy based on information about former Congressman Scott Murphy (D-NY).

The ad accused Christopher S. Murphy of taking “more hedge fund money than any Democrat in Congress.” In 2010, the top Democratic recipient of hedge fund contributions was Scott Murphy (D-NY), but not Christopher S. Murphy (D-CT) as the ad falsely claimed.

Dead registered voters

University of Connecticut journalism professor Marcel Dufresne led an eleven student class investigation into dead voters in the state of Connecticut. His group discovered 8,558 deceased individuals who were still registered on Connecticut voter rolls. More than three hundred of them appeared to have cast ballots after they died.

Susan Bysiewicz insisted that "there was no voter fraud at all in the state of Connecticut." She went on to say, "While we want to remove dead people from the rolls, we don’t want to be overzealous and disenfranchise people."

Qualifications

Almost immediately after Bysiewicz announced she would be campaigning to be the state's attorney general, questions concerning her legal qualifications to hold the position were raised by state political commentators. Critics specifically cited Title III, Chapter 35, Section 3-124 of the General Statutes of Connecticut, which states, "The Attorney General shall be an attorney of law of at least ten years’ active practice at the bar of this state," as to her disqualification from running for the statewide office. Although she received a law degree and became an attorney in the state of Connecticut in 1986, she only actively practiced for six years before becoming a state legislator and then secretary of state.

At the same time, however, others argued that the state constitution, which takes precedence over the general statutes, cites the minimum age of eighteen as the only requirement in order to be considered for any state office.

Upon seeking a legal opinion from the current State Attorney General to clear up the matter, Blumenthal responded that, although he believed the law to be valid, this was something that could only be rectified by either the courts or legislature.

Bysiewicz announced on February 18 that she would seek a ruling from a Hartford Superior Court judge to determine her eligibility.

A little over a month later, the Connecticut Secretary of State fielded questions for over five hours "during an all-day, pretrial deposition in her lawsuit seeking a judge's declaration that she is eligible to run for state attorney general." Her lawyer, Wesley W. Horton, then filed a "protective order" motion to prevent either the transcript or videotape of the deposition from being released, though no justification for the motion was given. The next day, however, Horton withdrew this request, acknowledging local newspapers had a right to these documents.

With just three weeks left until state Democrats met to endorse party candidates for the 2010 election cycle, Superior Court Judge Michael Sheldon ruled on Wednesday, May 6, 2010, "that Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz meets the qualifications to hold the office of attorney general." Nearly ten days after the ruling was issued, the State GOP filed an appeal challenging the ruling.

The State Supreme Court, which ordered attorneys on both sides to file briefs Friday, May 14, set Tuesday, May 18, as the date that it would hear oral arguments. Rather surprisingly, on the exact same day the justices convened to hear the grievance, they announced that they had unanimously reached a decision. The seven justices, "troubled by the minimal standards set by [ Superior Court Judge] Sheldon," reversed the decision and declared that Bysiewicz was ineligible to run for the statewide office of attorney general. The Connecticut Secretary of State, who was not present at the hearing, released a statement in which she expresses her disappointment "with the court's decision overturning Judge [Michael] Sheldon's ruling" and that while she strongly disagreed with the "decision both on the eligibility and the constitutionality issue," she does "respect the rule of law and will abide by it." In a statement released on Thursday, May 20, she announced that not only would she not seek the office of state attorney general, but she would also not seek re-election in her current state governmental position. One of the mitigating factors for this course of action was finances. After having transferred all her gubernatorial campaign contributions into her campaign for attorney general, Bysiewicz was forbidden by state law from doing so for another race. In other words, to raise the financial capital necessary to run a successful campaign, she would have needed to start from scratch, which, at such a late point, would be very difficult, if not impossible.

Use of database information

A state Republican political activist filed a complaint in October 2009 charging that Bysiewicz used "a database of citizens' names to send out unsoliticed emails seeking campaign contributions." Bysiewicz insisted that "what she did was legal because the database is a public document." Regardless, her challengers for the Democratic nomination in the state's attorney general contest criticized her actions, arguing that "this kind of gaming the system is what makes people cynical about government and politics."

A month later, however, the Hartford Courant published an article on March 10, 2010, describing the database as something more than just a list of names. The database of over thirty-six thousand individuals contained "thousands of what are labeled 'special notes' on people's political connections and personal characteristics, including some medical conditions [as well as] 'Ethnicity,' which identifies 2,431 people as either Jewish, Greek, Polish, African American, Hispanic or Native American."

Shortly after a State Superior Court Judge ruled that Bysiewicz met the qualifications to hold the office of state attorney general, Blumenthal released a statement that his office was "reviewing all of the whistle-blower allegations made against the Secretary of the State, including some received very recently" regarding the use of the database information. The State GOP put pressure on Blumenthal to reach a decision about the matter, arguing that "three months is more than enough time to find out whether Bysiewicz illegally used state resources for political purposes."