Lt. govenor position has sordid history

I suppose we must have a lieutenant governor standing by in the event the real governor leaves office prematurely, although they could probably find someone else to fill the office’s other constitutional duty, presiding over the Senate and voting to break the rare tie. But the office’s $500,000 budget, with its staff of five, including a driver, chief of staff and press agent, does seem a bit excessive.

It’s an office as important or unimportant as the governor wants to make it, and there is little evidence of any recent governor allowing the chief deputy to be more than a cutter of ribbons the governor would rather not cut on her own. Three lieutenant governors advanced to the top job in the past half-century; most of the 10 others were never heard from again.

Yet, there are four Democrats and a Republican actively seeking the office. We have Democrat Mary Glassman, who is gubernatorial candidate Ned Lamont’s running mate, and comptroller Nancy Wyman running with Dan Malloy, plus Democrats Mike Jarjura and Kevin Lembo and Republican Lisa Wilson-Foley, who are presumably willing to run with anyone.

Glassman seems to be inordinately fond of running for the office as Lamont will be her third prospective running mate. Four years ago, she ran in the Democratic primary with Dan Malloy and when he lost, but she won, she ran and lost in the general election with John DeStefano. Now, if she wins but Lamont loses, she could end up running with Malloy again.

The most interesting approach to the office comes from the five-term Waterbury mayor Jarjura, whose announcement made it sound as if he were running for anything but lieutenant governor. He told his hometown newspaper that of all the candidates, he is “uniquely qualified to lead the state out of its dire economic troubles†and pledged “to restore financial stability and economic prosperity to the people.†He didn’t say how a lieutenant governor would manage any of that.

Jarjura wouldn’t be the first Waterbury mayor to be elected lieutenant governor. For that historic figure, we must go back to the Depression years when a colorful rogue named T. Frank Hayes had the job and used both the offices of mayor and lieutenant governor to restore economic prosperity, mainly his own.

Hayes served simultaneously as mayor and lieutenant governor, devoting his mayoral energies to looting the city treasury of millions with the assistance of his comptroller and a banker who provided money laundering services.

Having invested some of his Waterbury kickbacks in a company called the Electric Steam Sterilizer Co., Hayes, as the presiding officer of the Senate, got a legislator to introduce a bill requiring that electric steam sterilizers be installed in all of Connecticut’s public toilets. The legislation was promoted “as a laudable means of preventing the spread of venereal disease,†the governor at the time, Wilbur Cross, would write in his autobiography.

Coincidentally, the only manufacturer of electric steam sterilizers was the lieutenant governor’s company. The sterilizer was a rather complex piece of toilet technology, described in a 1938 issue of Time magazine as “a fixture which, when a user rises, snaps its seat back into a recess, scours it with live steam and a scrubbing brush, cools it with a jet of water, snaps it out again for the next patron.â€

Cross wrote he “took alarm†over the bill’s possible passage and asked the state health commissioner to test the machine. The commissioner reported back that the sterilizer didn’t sterilize.

“This news was passed on to the House,†wrote Cross. “Beyond that, I informed the leaders that the proponents of the bill seemed to be altogether too innocent of the ways venereal diseases are contracted.†The embarrassed Legislature eventually passed a face-saving bill requiring only that public restrooms be kept clean and sterile.

Hayes was indicted for his Waterbury thievery in 1938 but refused to resign while awaiting trial. Cross was concerned because having “passed the age of 76, an age at which most men are dead,†he feared his indicted lieutenant governor would succeed him. But Cross remained healthy and Hayes eventually went to jail after leaving office.

Two legislators, who had been bribed by Hayes to help pass his bathroom sterilizer bill, were convicted and spent several months in the New Haven County Jail, whose restrooms, wrote Gov. Cross, had been “put into better sanitary condition than usual,†thanks to their legislative efforts.

Dick Ahles is a retired journalist from Simsbury. E-mail him at dahles@hotmail.com.