Politics

It wasn’t exactly the campy skullduggery of Mad magazine’s Spy vs. Spy. In the final frame, nobody went Kaboom! But another chapter was written Wednesday in a quietly epic lobbying battle. Call it Speaker vs. Speaker.

Richard J. Balducci and James A. Amann are Democrats who served in the Connecticut General Assembly, reaching the top rung of leadership by winning multiple terms as speaker of the House. Both are now lobbyists.

New Haven -- The defense rested Monday without offering testimony in the conspiracy trial of Robert Braddock Jr., the campaign aide whose arrest a year ago opened a scandal that mortally wounded the congressional candidacy of Christopher G. Donovan.

The jury in U.S. District Court will get the case Tuesday after closing arguments in a trial that focused on what the government says was an attempt by the owners of roll-your-own cigarette stores to bribe Donovan, a Democrat who was then the speaker of the state House of Representatives.

New Haven – The two biggest fundraisers for then-House Speaker Christopher G. Donovan’s 2012 congressional campaign were Harry Raymond Soucy and Mark Masselli, men with significant financial interests before the General Assembly, a campaign official testified Friday.

Soucy, according to previous witnesses, was responsible for delivering checks totaling $27,500 from donors trying to ensure that their roll-your-own cigarette business remained free of Connecticut’s steep tax on manufactured cigarettes.