American Politics Journal

Phil D. (Republican) Grave
...but just where is the outrage?
by Alan Bisbort

August 19, 2001 (APJP) -- Bad boy mayors of Waterbury, Connecticut are nothing new.

The last three mayors of the state's fifth largest city have ended up in a courtroom, and two of the three (both Republicans) have ended up in jail.

But the latest batch of nastiness facing current bad boy mayor Philip A. Giordano, a 38-year-old rising Republican star, stands out in a way that can only be done justice by the Marquis de Sade.

Besides the obligatory federal and state corruption and kickbacks involving city contracts, possible ties to the Mob and dubious sources of campaign cash funnelled to his ill-fated bid to unseat Joe Lieberman last year, Mayor Giordano is facing charges that he used an interstate facility (the Internet) to entice a child, or children, under age 16 to engage in sex. The children in question are girl cousins, aged 9 and 10. He is also said to have fathered a 7 year-old boy by the mother of one of these children, meaning he may have been having sex with his son's sister. Also, the teenaged daughter of the mother of these two young girls has said she was paid money by Giordano to watch him have sex with her mother -- in his City Hall office!

New York Daily News picks up the Giordano story... click here!
So vile are the charges against Giordano that U.S. District Judge Alan Nevas took the unprecedented step on August 7 of banning the press from the courtroom AND suggesting that Giordano's family be ushered out as well. The bail hearing was then held in secret, a kick in the head to our Constitutional right to know about a public legal proceeding. The judge (a Republican) also denied the mayor's bid for bail, saying he presented a danger to his community.

Other things make this case noteworthy, not the least of these being the fact that Waterbury is the hometown of two-term Republican governor John Rowland, a family friend of George W. Bush. Rowland has been exceptionally generous in awarding state money to his beleaguered hometown. Rowland's only blemish as a governor, in fact, was a scandal involving state money. Paul Sylvester, a close friend of Rowland's and the State Treasurer, was caught taking bribes while investing the state's pension funds last year. Sylvester and several Republican cronies are now warming prison cots. Rowland survived that scandal, but this Giordano mess threatens to blow up in his face, as some of the money being illegally kicked around Waterbury may have originated out of his office. Even if his hands are clean, this has the appearance of sleaze.

But it gets even more interesting.

Had the legitimate results of the last election been allowed to stand -- President Gore and Vice President Lieberman leading the nation into the forefront of world affairs, instead of turning us into a rogue nation -- the U.S. Senate vacancy engendered by Lieberman's absence would have been filled by a John Rowland apointee. There was, therefore, an outside chance that Philip A. Giordano, possible Mob ties and all, could have been appointed to the U.S. Senate.

All that aside, Giordano's popularity has long been inexplicable to those outside of Waterbury. His entire tenure in office has been one scandal after another: - found with a young female coworker in an out of town parking lot - personal car repossessed - failure to pay back his student loans - a public school system exposed for the patronage-laden trough it is - and, finally, his city so bankrupt and clueless the state had to take it over.

Yet, in the midst of all this chaos, the state Republican Party gave Giordano their green light to run against the widely loved junior senator, Joe Lieberman.

During his insane attempt to unseat Lieberman, Giordano resorted to a time-honored Republican tradition: toss garbage at the opponent, then take the high moral ground and hope the media, as usual, lets it slide. One of Giordano's charges, in hindsight, now seems to have come back to bite him in the ass: right out of the starting gate, Giordano went straight for the gutter, implying that Joe Lieberman supported legislation that made it easier for pedophiles to prey on the community. At the time, this charge was so outragious that it instantly made Giordano, and the state Republican Party, a laughingstock. But now, with Giordano facing charges that he is a sexual predator and possibly a child molester, his campaign sleaze suddenly looms like a classic case of "projection."

While this is a sad and sick episode for the state of Connecticut and the city of Waterbury, this story is potentially more explosive than the media gangbang of Rep. Gary Condit. This story involves a rising Republican star who may have had sex with 8 and a 10-year-old girls.

Why has this story, then, stopped at the Connecticut border and not made it into a national forum? Put it another way: to borrow a phrase from William Bennett, the Republican arbiter of our nation's family values, "Where is the outrage?"