{"id":418144,"date":"2010-03-11T11:19:49","date_gmt":"2010-03-11T16:19:49","guid":{"rendered":"tag:blogs.courant.com,2010:\/capitol_watch\/\/9.73600"},"modified":"2010-03-11T15:31:16","modified_gmt":"2010-03-11T20:31:16","slug":"the-lives-of-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/418144","title":{"rendered":"The Lives of Others"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everyone’s<\/a> talking about Hearst Connecticut’s upcoming peek into the living rooms and tax returns of the men and women seeking elective office in the state.<\/p>\n

The newspaper chain<\/a> submitted a list of 16 questions <\/a>— ranging from what kind of watch do you wear to what schools do your children attend to what restaurants do you most frequently patronize — to those running for governor and U.S. Senate.<\/p>\n

Several candidates — notably mega-millionaire Linda McMahon and Greenwich businessman Ned Lamont — opted not to participate. “Linda submitted a very thorough and detailed personal financial disclosure form,” her spokesman, Ed Patru said, Such forms are required of all candidates running for U.S. Senate.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: Lamont’s campaign manager, Joe Abbey, said the campaign also chose not to participate in the exercise. “The biggest thing we want to focus on is Ned’s plan to get jobs back in Connecticut and get Connecticut back on track,” he said.<\/p>\n

Gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley answered some of Hearst’s questions. “Tom answered the ones he thought were appropriate,” spokesman Adam Schmidt said.<\/p>\n

Peter Schiff and Richard Blumenthal, both Fairfield County millionaires, played along. Photos of Blumenthal in the elegant living room<\/a> of his Greenwich home are already up on the newspaper chain’s websites; Schiff is scheduled to have his picture taken in his Weston home this afternoon, his spokeswoman Jen Millikin said.<\/p>\n

Republican Rob Simmons, who — according to his personal financial disclosure form — is a New London County millionaire, also participated. “We were fully transparent,” campaign manager Jim Barnett said. “We provided all answers to all questions to best of our knowledge.”<\/p>\n

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Critics<\/a> say the piece carries the whiff of a political agenda. Does knowing where the Simmons family vacations or how many rooms the McMahon mansion has tell voters anything about their stance on the health care overhaul or U.S. policy in Afghanistan? The questions are intrusive and contribute to an overall blurring of the line between what’s public and what ought to remain private, they say. They appeal to voter’s petty resentments and voyeuristic tendancies but don’t shed any light on the great public policy issues of our time. Moreover, none of the questions ask how much of a candidate’s wealth was inherited and whether they receive a government-funded pension or other perk.  <\/p>\n

But we live in an age when a candidate for U.S. Senate <\/a>can make the fact he drives a pick-up truck a campaign issue. Money does matter and knowing what they drive and where they live does tell us something about the folks seeking elective office.<\/p>\n

Love it or loathe it, I think Lockhart<\/a> is right: Everyone will read it. I have to admit I am a teeny bit jealous of the buzz the piece is generating. <\/p>\n

I wrote a story<\/a> last month about the rise of millionaire pols and, despite the presence of a few spicy details (Linda McMahon has more than $1 million in a checking<\/em> account? Dan Malloy thinks rich folks run for office because they’re bored with the polo ponies?) the piece was a fairly conventional old-style piece of journalism. Kudos to Hearst for pushing the boundaries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everyone’s talking about Hearst Connecticut’s upcoming peek into the living rooms and tax returns of the men and women seeking elective office in the state. The newspaper chain submitted a list of 16 questions — ranging from what kind of watch do you wear to what schools do your children attend to what restaurants do you most frequently […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4000,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-418144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4000"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418144\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}