Andrew Maynard: The puppet senator?
I wish I could buy into the glossy confidence of a mailer sent last week to constituents of state Sen. Andrew Maynard, who has been recovering from a traumatic brain injury suffered during a fall at his home in July 2014.
"While I am still working on my speech — my heart, will and drive have allowed me to accomplish great things this last year," Maynard says in a letter to voters, an introduction to two pages listing legislative accomplishments and constituent services.
I've known the senator many years, and I don't think he would ever so publicly and casually boast of accomplishing "great things" in Hartford, especially when he must know he didn't.
Let's face it, lawmakers accomplished nothing great in their last session, mostly a failed budget that subsequently has leaked like a sieve. The pre-accident Sen. Maynard, who won the loyalty of constituents for his budget honesty, would have been the first to tell you that.
Who is writing this stuff?
Indeed, who is pulling the senator's strings?
I've yet to talk to anyone — and I have sought many people out, including his Senate colleagues — who can report having any sort of meaningful conversation or intellectual engagement with him.
The senator's staff has refused all interviews on his behalf, not just from me and The Day's reporting staff, but evidently from all other news outlets. A Senate staffer often accompanies the senator at public events, shielding him from reporters.
I should say at the outset that I would be glad to be proved wrong. Nothing would make me happier than to hear from the senator himself contesting anything suggested in this column or to see an interview with him published somewhere else.
We, his constituents, have been given no formal reporting from doctors about his condition.
But, given his obvious and admitted continuing trouble with his speech, it is clear that an interview would require some understanding and cooperation on the part of the interviewer. What reporter wouldn't agree to that?
If the senator is indeed on top of issues in Hartford, working, as the mailer says, with "Democrats and Republicans on making college more affordable, protecting consumers from price gouging, and bringing transparency to electricity bills," then clearly he could communicate in some way with a reporter in a short interview.
What exactly is everyone afraid of?
Sen. Maynard attended few committee meetings last session but did turn up regularly at sessions of the Senate to vote.
His voting record is almost identical, except for a few stray votes, to the voting record last session of state Sen. Catherine Osten of Sprague, a stalwart party loyalist. In an ideal world, with Sen. Maynard at his best, he would at least have strayed more than a few votes away from the liberal Democratic mainstream in Hartford.
Senate Republicans have tread lightly publicly on this issue. No one wants to be insensitive about someone's handicaps, especially if it might seem politically expedient.
But it is the Senate Democrats who seem to be taking advantage of the situation here.
Republicans say privately that they offered at the outset of the last session to accommodate Sen. Maynard and his recovery, protecting his benefits if he were to step aside, resign from the Senate or take another state job that would keep him on the payroll.
Democrats, perhaps fearing the rumored interest in the office by former Groton Mayor Heather Somers, a popular Republican, rejected any offer that would have resulted in a new race to replace Maynard.
Instead, the district got a senator who voted loyally down the party line and never made himself available in any way to answer questions from voters.
It's the kind of puppet politician party leaders crave.
I hope that what seems to be happening here, an enormous violation of the public trust, is not.
Prove me wrong, please. It should be easy.
And remember, a glossy mailer with pretty pictures, like the one we all got last week, is not proof.
This is the opinion of David Collins.
d.collins@theday.com
Twitter: @DavidCollinsct
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