Latest news with #MashantucketPequot
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Deb Haaland stakes out early financial lead in NM's governor race
Apr. 14—SANTA FE — New Mexico's 2026 primary election is still more than a year out, but the race to amass a hefty campaign war chest is already underway. Democrat Deb Haaland reported Monday having raked in nearly $2.9 million in contributions since announcing her campaign for governor in February. The fundraising haul includes a $215,000 transfer from her former congressional account and gives Haaland a formidable early advantage over other candidates, including fellow Democrat Sam Bregman who entered the race last week. Bregman reported Monday having about $76,000 in his campaign account, after transferring nearly $90,000 in campaign cash from his successful bid last year to remain Bernalillo County district attorney. But Bregman did not report any new campaign contributions, since the date of his official campaign launch on the Las Vegas plaza — last Thursday — fell just after the end of the mandatory reporting period. "We weren't legally allowed to start fundraising until the campaign committee was established, which happened last week," Bregman's campaign press secretary Joanie Griffin said Monday. "Since the announcement on Thursday, the support has been overwhelming," Griffin added. "We look forward to sharing our results soon and to a very competitive race for governor." With more than a year to go until the 2026 primary election, Haaland and Bregman are the only two candidates for governor who have officially announced campaigns. No Republicans have entered the race yet, though Rio Rancho Mayor Greg Hull has acknowledged he's considering running. Haaland, who launched her campaign after stepping down in January as U.S. interior secretary, recently thanked supporters for their donations. "Every New Mexican deserves the opportunity to thrive, but for decades the system has held us back and slowed us down," Haaland said in a statement. "I've never been afraid of hard work, and I'm ready to bring the change we need and tackle our challenges head-on as governor." The Haaland campaign said it raised more than $686,000 in the first 24 hours after she announced her candidacy, but also said the average online contribution it had received was for less than $40. Among the contributors to Haaland's campaign were former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who made a $5,500 contribution, and U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids of Kansas, who gave $1,000. She also received donations from some Native American tribes and tribal leaders from around the nation, including $11,000 from both the Cherokee Nation and the Mashantucket Pequot tribal nation in Connecticut. While the Haaland campaign took in nearly $2.9 million contributions, it also reported spending nearly $1.2 million on advertising and other expenses. That left the campaign account of the former interior secretary, who is seeking to become the first Native American woman elected governor in U.S. history, with an account balance of slightly more than $1.7 million. New Mexico will have a new governor in 2027, since Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is constitutionally barred from seeking a third consecutive term in office. Based on recent trends, the race is expected to be an expensive one. The 2022 race between Lujan Grisham and Republican Mark Ronchetti was one of the most expensive in state history — with Lujan Grisham spending roughly $13 million and Ronchetti spending more than $9 million on his campaign. Those figures do not include hefty spending on the race by outside groups. The reports filed Monday with Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver's office mark the first mandatory disclosures for the 2026 election cycle and cover money raised and spent from Jan. 1 through April 7. The next reporting deadline is in mid-October. Candidates for other statewide races also filed campaign reports Monday, including Attorney General Raúl Torrez who reported getting nearly $293,000 for his reelection campaign. Among those contribution to Torrez's reelection campaign were former House Speaker Brian Egolf of Santa Fe, numerous attorneys and law firms and the New York-based gambling company FanDuel.
Yahoo
16-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Five years later: Seeing COVID-19 in the rearview mirror
Ominous and unstoppable, the coronavirus disease reached the West Coast of the United States in January 2020, the first confirmed case of what became known as COVID-19 turning up near Seattle. Nearly two months passed before the disease arrived in southeastern Connecticut, long enough for those in health care and business in the region to prepare as best they could for a scourge they knew little about. 'We saw it coming up the I-95 corridor,' Shannon Christian, Lawrence + Memorial Hospital's chief nursing officer, recalled last week. 'We had time to plan. We set up a testing tent outside. ... There was so much we didn't know.' On Friday, March 13, 2020, the disease surfaced here for the first time, its presence detected in a Rhode Island child attending a Mystic child care facility. By then, the number of cases in the state had climbed into double digits. The following Monday, March 16, the hammer came down. Gov. Ned Lamont and Govs. Andrew Cuomo of New York and Phil Murphy of New Jersey came together to announce that the restaurants, bars, movie theaters and gyms in their states would have to close that night until further notice. Separately, Lamont told Connecticut's media outlets the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes had agreed to shut down their respective casinos, Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, the next day. So much for St. Patrick's Day. Five years later, many in the region have vivid memories of how COVID-19 disrupted their lives and forever changed the way they live. At L+M, which admitted its first COVID-19 patient that March 17, things happened fast. The tent meant to accommodate patients who would drive beneath it, step out of their vehicles and sit in a chair while a nurse took nasal and oral swabs was soon catering to drive-through traffic. Christian remembered the spread of the disease in Connecticut was initially concentrated in Fairfield and New Haven counties and that L+M nurses were able to assist their counterparts at hospitals in Greenwich and Bridgeport. Cases weren't expected to surge in southeastern Connecticut for months. Dr. Oliver Mayorga, L+M's chief medical officer, said both health care and the public have learned to be more vigilant about viruses and vaccines in general since COVID-19's peak. Medicine's embrace of telehealth — virtual communications among doctors, nurses and patients — is another obvious outcome of the pandemic, he said. An innovation L+M championed during COVID-19 was the placement of intravenous (IV) pumps or poles outside patient rooms rather than at bedsides. The relocation enabled doctors and nurses to monitor IVs from a distance, reducing their exposure to infections and the consumption of personal protective equipment. COVID-19 also exposed a need for greater behavioral health resources, Christian noted, with patient violence against nurses and other hospital staff increasing. 'New nurses want to know, 'What can you do to keep me safe?'' she said. Smoke clears at casinos With Jeff Hamilton, a new president and general manager, at the helm, Mohegan Sun seemed on its way to a banner year in 2020. The casino's January business had been outstanding and February had been strong, too. Beginner's luck? We'll never know. In March, COVID-19 struck, causing both of southeastern Connecticut's casinos to close for the first and only time since their debuts in the 1990s. They locked their doors March 17, 2020, and didn't reopen — and then only partially — until June 1. 'Seventy-four days,' Hamilton noted last week. 'It was the most difficult thing I've ever had to go through professionally. Casinos are not made to be closed.' During the shutdown, Hamilton stayed in touch with his employees through weekly updates he filmed in his home and posted on a casino website. He kept people abreast of COVID-19 and management's plans to reopen. He talked to them about unemployment benefits and assured them their health insurance still was intact. 'It showed I'm just a normal guy, going through what they were going through,' Hamilton said of the updates, which he's never stopped doing. Largely recovered from the pandemic, the casinos are nevertheless different than they were. Buffets are gone for the most part, as are the buses that ran back and forth to Asian enclaves in Boston and New York City. The biggest change, though, Hamilton believes, is the casinos' ban on indoor smoking. Prior to the pandemic, smoking was allowed on portions of the gaming floors at both casinos. 'Being nonsmoking helps us,' Hamilton said. 'We were worried at first because you've got to get up from the (slot) machine to go smoke outside and that takes time. ... We've never said 'never,' but I don't see us going back (to allowing smoking).' Another change casino-goers might have noticed is the arrangement of slot machines. Long banks of machines have been replaced by 'pods' of four machines, and there's more space between machines. Viral scenes, notions Suzanne Sypher of Mystic, one of several people who shared their memories of March 2020 with The Day, described a train ride she took home to New York's Pennsylvania Station after visiting relatives in Florida. The coronavirus hadn't made a big impression on her by the time she headed south, but the news about it had grown scarier during her three-week stay in the Sunshine State. When she boarded the train home in Sebring, Fla., it was nearly empty, Sypher said. And when she got off the train in Penn Station, there was nobody there. ... In Penn Station. 'Usually, people are racing everywhere there,' she said. 'It was just security guys with German shepherds. I said, 'What's going on?'' Riding an escalator, Sypher, a retiree who worked at L+M for 30 years, glimpsed the scene outside a train station window. 'No people walking on the street,' she said. 'No cars, maybe a cab or two.' On the continuation of her journey, she was the only passenger in the train car she occupied from New York to New London. She thinks it must have been April 1 when she got home. 'Eerie,' she said. Like Sypher, Paul Berkel, a retired middle school principal living in Mystic, had a tale to tell about returning home from a trip to Florida. On their way back, he and his wife stopped in North Carolina to visit his brother's family. 'We spent the night with them,' Berkel said. 'I remember them supplying us with boxes of wipes and masks. It was just coming out that everything needed to be sterilized.' When they stopped at a hotel, they 'walked around wiping doorknobs and bathrooms,' Berkel said. 'Once we got home, the other thing I remember vividly is that our house became our castle,' he said. 'We joked with friends that our gardens never looked so good. We couldn't go anywhere, only to the store when absolutely necessary. We turned our attention to our house, the garden.' He said they're now more conscious of vaccines and public announcements about health. They're not fond of flying and probably never will be, given their post-pandemic aversion to crowds. No arenas for basketball games, no visits to The Kate in Old Saybrook or the Granite Theatre in Westerly for live entertainment. The pandemic provided writers with plenty of material. Phyllis Ross, of Lyme, devoted a chapter to it in 'Revolutions, Transformations and Tragedies Through My Eyes,' which she published in 2021. The chapter includes her journal of the events of March 2020. In her entry for March 15, she lamented how much her world had changed. 'Everything has been cancelled — not just social activities,' she wrote. 'The town of Lyme is essentially dormant. Town Hall is unoccupied. Check the website if you need information. People are not going to movies. Few are in restaurants. Sports activities are cancelled. People have been asked to wash their hands often and stay at home. It's hard to believe. This coronavirus has people scared to death.' Nearly two weeks later, her entry for March 30 betrayed some hope: 'We're fortunate here in Lyme to have lots of open space and clean fresh air. I wonder how people in small apartments in New York — now the epicenter of COVID-19 — who are expected to remain in quarantine, can bear the confinement. Walking along the street has been a source of great pleasure, especially since the spring flowers are beginning to bloom. People you pass move away at least six feet. Nearly everybody wants to chat — but at a safe distance. Another writer, Michael Steinberg, who grew up in Niantic, graduated from New London High School and now lives at Bride Brook, a Niantic nursing home, authored 'The Disaster Diaries: Mad Musings in Corona Nation' while living in San Francisco. He said he tried to capture what life was like in and around the city's Golden Gate Park, which he said still welcomed people during the pandemic. Cut off from his own family for a time, he witnessed others fall into poverty and lose their homes. 'You'd see clusters of tents all over the city,' Steinberg said. Despite such scenes, he tried to inject some humor into his storytelling, he said. One of his earlier efforts, 'Millstone and Me: Sex, Lies and Radiation in Southeastern Connecticut,' tackled the Millstone Nuclear Power Station's safety record. 'It's not really over yet,' Steinberg said of the pandemic.
Yahoo
14-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Killingly High School will choose new mascot to replace Redmen
Killingly — Killingly High School will unveil its next mascot by the end of the school year, district leaders said Thursday. Superintendent Susan Nash-Ditzel told school board members at a meeting for an ad hoc mascot committee Thursday that a committee composed of high school students, alumni, coaches and town leaders, has narrowed the list of potential mascots to replace Redmen to four finalists. The committee decided Thursday that five groups — high school students, staff members, coaches, parents and middle schoolers — will have a chance to weigh in on the final decision via an online survey that is tentatively slated to be released May 14 at the close of the town's budget season. After the survey, the mascot committee will forward a recommendation to the full Board of Education, which will have the final say on the mascot. Committee members emphasized that the survey is not a vote and that the results will be used to inform board members' decisions. Thursday's announcement moves the district one step closer to selecting a new mascot after the controversial Redmen name was officially retired at a ceremony in November. Tension over the Redmen mascot, which represented the high school for decades, began to fester in the early 2010s. In 2019, the Board of Education voted to ditch the mascot, citing criticism that its name and image were racist. For a time, the school mascot became the Red Hawks, until 2020 when a new slate of the Board of Education members — who ran on promises to reverse the vote — restored the Redmen logo. Representatives from the Mashantucket Pequot, Mohegan and Nipmuc tribes blasted the mascot as a degrading caricature that perpetuates negative stereotypes of Native Americans. In 2021, the Connecticut Office of Policy and Management determined that the town was ineligible for $94,000 from the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan Fund Grant due to the Redmen name. Last June, the Board of Education voted 5-4 to retire the Redmen mascot, presumably once and for all. The historical committee charged with exploring options for the Redmen's replacement has emphasized options with historical significance. 'I think it will give us, students and the community, a better awareness of our past,' said Town Historian Margaret Weaver, who helped provide historical guidance to the committee. Nash-Ditzel said the community should not be surprised if there is no imagery to accompany the mascot options in the survey. 'The (historical) committee felt pretty strongly ... that we don't include possible imagery,' Nash-Ditzel said. 'Adults and kids both thought that people, particularly students, might just choose the coolest-looking (option) without really looking at the historical significance behind them.'
