Hartford - Before University
of Connecticut professor Ken
Dautrich conducted a focus group

budget message and talking points
with potential voters last year, he
and Rell’s top aide had a different

“I don’t think opinion should
drive decisions, but at a minimum
should be taken into account and
the governor should take the lead
in shaping it,” Dautrich wrote to

The e-mail was one of Dautrich’s
regular briefings to Moody and
another Rell aide about the status
of his $223,000 project to examine
the streamlining of Connecticut
government. That project, Rell
and her administration conceded
this week, also included efforts to
gauge and analyze public opinion
about the policies she would
advocate in public.

relations effort Thursday as an
inappropriate political project
being performed on the public’s
dime, and demanded Rell release
more details about the costs and
scope of the effort.

She wrote back to Dautrich: “I
agree - got some money - Matt
(Fritz, a Rell aide) will fill you in.”

“money” to which Moody referred
was additional funds made
available in the budget of the
Office of Policy and Management,
which bankrolled the Dautrich

The poll Dautrich envisioned was
never conducted as part of his
project with OPM, Dautrich, Rell
and administration representatives
said in interviews this week. The
reasons they gave for not pursuing
the poll were varied.

In an e-mail exchange at the time,
Moody said she thought some of
Dautrich’s inquiries about head-to-
head political matchups might not
be appropriate, though neither side
now cites this as the reason to not
conduct the poll.

because UConn rules at the time
would have forced him to run
the poll through the Center for
Survey Research and Analysis, a
polling center he once directed
but with which he had a strained
relationship by last summer.

A spokesman for the governor’s
office, relaying answers
from Moody, said the poll
wasn’t conducted because the
administration and Dautrich felt
they could get better information
about voter sentiment from a focus
group - like the nine-member
panel Dautrich convened on Dec.
16 as Rell’s staff prepared her
biennial budget.

But while Rell’s staff said this
week that discussion of polling
on budget issues ended there, a
subsequent e-mail from Moody to
two colleagues shows that is not

budget messages, specific cuts,
etc.,” Moody wrote to the staffers,
Fritz and Adam Jeamel. “Let me

spokesman said Wednesday that
she meant to refer to the results
of Dautrich’s focus group on
budget policy - the terms were
used “interchangeably,” said the