Good morning and welcome back to the Tip Sheet, a weekly newsletter from Tom Dudchik’s Capitol Report written by Mike Cerulli.

This week, we’re taking another look at the latest developments in the GOP gubernatorial contest. It’s growing more contentious by the day.

Let’s dive in…

Fazio turns up the heat; Healey calls it “desperate noise”

With the legislative session nearing its close and the state party conventions right around the corner, State Sen. Ryan Fazio is dialing up the intensity of his gubernatorial campaign – taking square aim at Erin Stewart as the two barrel toward a showdown in Uncasville.

In the last week, Fazio has capitalized on the pair of thorny news cycles that have befallen the Stewart campaign. The first of those came courtesy of the investigative report released by Stewart’s successor in New Britain, Mayor Bobby Sanchez, which detailed alleged favoritism and misconduct by the city’s former tax collector. The second came as a result of Stewart’s own statements in an interview defending herself from ties to the tax collector scandal. On the tail end of the interview, she said that she had regularly received and rejected bribe offers while in office. She later walked back those comments.

Stewart’s walk-back dragged the story from the weekend into last Monday, and Fazio hasn’t let go. As the House of Representatives prepared to debate changes to the state’s cannabis laws, Fazio’s campaign blasted out a summation of various statements made in the local media. The email’s subject line was “Erin Stewart’s Culture of Corruption.”

Keen-eyed Connecticut politicos will recognize that “culture of corruption” descriptor from the meme-able graphic cooked up by the press staff of the House Republican Office to describe various scandals that have taken place in Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration.

Among the highlighted quotations in the Fazio email was analysis delivered by veteran Republican strategist Liz Kurantowicz on last week’s edition of “Capitol Report.”

“This is not a joke,” Kurantowicz said of the report on New Britain’s former tax collector. “This is not a witch hunt. This is now going to be a much bigger issue.”

Another selected quote from the Sacred Heart University political science professor Gary Rose in a piece by Chris Keating drove that point further.

“It has to fall on Erin, honestly, because it did happen on her watch,” Rose argued.

Behind the scenes, Fazio allies have been making similar points in conversations with convention delegates, simultaneously arguing that the tax collector scandal is a mark against Stewart’s management bona fides and that it will likely be a political liability if Republicans put the former mayor at the top of their ticket.

On social media, Fazio has grown more feisty, too.

In response to a Hartford Courant article in which Stewart casually referred to Faizo as “kid,” the 36-year-old senator clapped back with a stinging tweet.

“Even this ‘kid’ is old enough to know that if *you* say you received bribe offers ‘all the time’ it’s a crime to fail to report them,” Fazio wrote.

Stewart is two years older than Fazio.

Fazio and his supporters have also gone on the offensive on matters beyond the tax collector scandal, circulating audio clips meant to damage the mayor’s credibility with the GOP’s conservative base.

One clip recently sent around by the Fazio team includes an excerpt of remarks Stewart recently delivered in front of the Newtown Republican Town Committee. In the clip, the mayor is discussing the relationship between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the police department she used to oversee in New Britain.

“I actually had a dedicated unit through the New Britain Police Department that worked very closely with them,” Stewart says in the clip. “Why? Because we didn’t want what’s happening now in our neighborhoods. We didn’t want ICE acting like bounty hunters.”

In a press release trumpeting the “bounty hunters” quote, the Fazio campaign also noted remarks in which Stewart appeared open to discussing “pathways to citizenship.” 

Asked for comment on the remarks and the Fazio campaign’s promotion of them, Stewart’s senior advisor, John Healey, framed the attack as a “backfire.”

“Thank you for reminding everyone that Ned Lamont’s Trust Act forces ICE to apprehend criminals in our neighborhoods instead of courthouses and that Republicans encourage and celebrate attaining citizenship legally,” Healey said.

He went further, characterizing the Fazio attacks as “desperate noise.”

“Desperation is a stinky cologne,” Healey said.

Healey’s comments reflect one of two dueling approaches to answering a question that has gripped the Republican grassroots as the convention draws nearer: Is Fazio’s recent behavior that of a candidate who smells blood in the water or an admission that he knows he’s running in second place?

Stewart’s camp clearly believes it’s the latter. There is evidence that it may be a little of both. Take, for example, the continued speculation about who currently leads among convention delegates and how that connects to the dust up over whether or not the Republican gubernatorial hopefuls should convene for public debates before the convention.

Fazio has been calling for a series of pre-convention debates. Five of them, to be exact. He’s kept up those calls despite the obvious analysis that such a move is a telltale sign of a lagging candidate. The prevailing sentiment of GOP insiders reinforces this reading of Fazio’s eagerness to debate. Even after delegates had a chance to digest the tax collector story, Stewart is still considered by many to hold a lead among those select few who will head to Mohegan Sun this month. There are some indications that her existing support has actually solidified in the wake of the report’s release.

“I certainly am way more supportive of her now,” State Rep. Joe Hoxha, an outspoken Stewart ally, said in an interview last week.

Hoxha does not appear to be alone. In the last week, the Tip Sheet has queried a number of known Stewart delegates and offered them anonymity to candidly discuss how they felt about the tax collector story. All of them provided some version of the answer Hoxha gave, saying that the scrutiny Stewart is facing proves her thesis that she represents the most direct threat to Lamont. Some qualified those statements with weariness about any future stories that could come out, while stressing that they still support the former mayor. The rumor mill is replete with premonitions of forthcoming headlines.

Stewart’s skeptics variously believe the tax collector saga has dented her support, that her lead was not that commanding to begin with, or some combination of both. They smell blood in the water, so to speak.

As for the issue of pre-convention debates, Stewart has outright said that she won't commit to one. She reasons that the roster of some 1,200 delegates can hear from her directly – on the phone and in person – if they’re still deliberating. It’s not exactly difficult to hear what either Stewart or Fazio think about the issues if you’re a convention delegate. Just show up at your local town committee meeting or rubber chicken dinner, and you’re liable to see at least one of them beelining toward you for a handshake.

Fazio’s circle has framed Stewart’s stance against pre-convention debates as a sign of weakness on her part. Their logic essentially goes: If a TV interview can trigger multiple days of less-than-ideal headlines for Stewart, what could a debate reveal?

Point, counterpoint…on and on it goes. All of it building to a convention fight and a battle at the ballot box.

That’s all for this week. We’ll be back next week with another edition of the Tip Sheet!