Voices Muted By Political Corruption

When State Senator Ed Gomes asserted political forces blocked him from appearing on the August primary ballot, former federal prosecutor Christopher Mattei presented Gomes’ case in court. A judge ordered Gomes’ name on the ballot and he defeated Democratic-endorsed Dennis Bradley, chair of the Board of Education. Mattei, now an attorney with the Bridgeport-based law firm Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder, prosecuted former Governor John Rowland and others in public corruption cases. He’s composed a commentary that also appeared in the Hartford Courant about the plague of public corruption with cautionary words about Donald Trump. “His casual view of the rule of law, his racist rhetoric and generally erratic and offensive behavior made his candidacy abhorrent to me. As we now resist his impulse to subject minority communities to heightened surveillance, ban religious minorities or muzzle the press, we must remember that the broader issue of citizens feeling disconnected from their government remains.”

From Mattei:

I’ve stood in the hush of a federal courtroom, and urged citizen jurors to stand against corruption in our political system. I’ve looked into their resolute eyes and argued that corruption silences the one true thing we have in a democracy–our voice. And, I’ve seen them reclaim that voice when they announced their verdict to packed courtrooms.

As I watched this month’s election returns, I was thinking about those jurors. They were drawn from all walks of life. They were united in their reverence for our political system and their contempt for those who would corrupt it. It wasn’t just an illegal contribution or bribe payment that bothered them, though that was enough. It was the sense that our political system was being undermined more broadly and producing policy choices that deprived ordinary people of opportunities and protections they desperately need.

This angered them. And it angers me. That same sentiment was at work in this election on both the Republican and Democratic sides.

In Connecticut, we know this all too well. In the last few years, former Gov. John G. Rowland was convicted for receiving secret campaign payments in exchange for, among other things, using the public air waves to manipulate voters. George Gallo, the former chief of staff to the House Republican caucus, was convicted for siphoning money from our state’s campaign finance system. Eight people, including high level operatives for a Democratic congressional campaign, were convicted for a scheme to make secret campaign contributions in exchange for legislative action that, if successful, would have jeopardized hundreds of millions of dollars in public revenue.

This kind of behavior drives a wedge between citizens and their government, and unfairly tarnishes the many decent public officials who work hard every day.

Whether you were for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, the election had less to do with them or their policies, and more to do with the belief that the voices of ordinary Americans have been muted by a political system awash in money, besieged by concentrated corporate power and seemingly immune to the basic concerns of average citizens. This is systemic corruption, a state of affairs where the shared aspirations of average citizens–once a great unifying political force–are sacrificed to the narrow interests of the privileged few. Though our politics often divide us into micro-identities, our yearning for a responsive, functional and humane government unites many of us still.

For years as an assistant United States attorney, I stood apart from politics. The proper administration of justice required that. Of course, like anybody, I held strong personal views. Those views were shaped, in part, from my experiences living and working as a high school teacher on the Navajo reservation and, later, as a union organizer for low wage health care workers, many of whom were first generation Americans. These were people who went through life with very little protection and even less power. I became a federal prosecutor because I believed that the law could protect people who had been treated as if they didn’t matter.

I opposed Donald Trump for reasons too numerous to list fully here. His casual view of the rule of law, his racist rhetoric and generally erratic and offensive behavior made his candidacy abhorrent to me. As we now resist his impulse to subject minority communities to heightened surveillance, ban religious minorities or muzzle the press, we must remember that the broader issue of citizens feeling disconnected from their government remains.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, which has led to unthinkable sums of dark money in our political system, remains. Gerrymandering, which has led to legislative paralysis, remains. The trauma of more than a decade of public corruption scandals in our state remains, as do problems that affect all of us: a lack of broad-based economic opportunity, an achievement gap that stifles human potential and a vast and immoral disparity in wealth.

We have many differences in our country, but systemic corruption divides us between those who matter to our government and those who don’t. That is a division that we must not tolerate. In this uncertain time, faith in those with power is far less important than sustaining our faith in each other and advancing the belief that nobody is beyond our collective concern. And whether it be from a jury box or a ballot box, that is the verdict we must render.