By Jordan Fenster, Staff Reporter

A crowd of largely union members and supporters chanted “we want Chris” at a rally for congressional candidate Chris Donovan in Hartford Wednesday, amid the spectre of controversy that currently surrounds his campaign for the 5th District.

Chris Donovan (Register Citizen photo/Rick Thomason)

“I have my head held high,” Donovan told supporters. “No one bought my involvement or my influence on any legislation, period.”

Donovan has said several times he will not act as speaker for the upcoming special session, but will remain in that position.

Donovan campaign’s finance director, Robert Braddock Jr., was recently arrested in an FBI sting and charged with attempting to hide the sources of $20,000 in campaign contributions.

Braddock was let go by the campaign, as was campaign manager Josh Nassi and another employee, neither of whom have been arrested.

That, and the light rain that fell in front of the Connecticut Education Association headquarters, did not deter the crowd of about 100 Donovan supporters, who chanted and held up signs in solidarity with the candidate.

Jim Hopkins, from Bristol, who said he met Donovan on a bus trip 30 years ago when the now state House speaker and congressional candidate was a union organizer and Hopkins was president of the local machinists’ union, said the controversy was “sad.”

“I always found him to be an honest guy, an average Joe,” Hopkins said. “Any way you look at it, he’s implicated. Even if he didn’t do something wrong, people will perceive that he’s implicated.”

Speakers at the event, who included representatives from several large unions, cast Donovan not as the subject of a federal investigation but as a “friend to working families.”

Congressional candidate Chris Donovan (center) speaks to the press in front of his campaign headquarters in Meriden on June 3, 2012. (New Haven Register Photo/Arnold Gold)

“Chris Donovan has been our friend and now its our turn to stand for Chris,” Lori Pelletier, secretary-treasurer of the Connecticut AFL-CIO, said. “I look forward to the fact of calling you ‘congressman.’”

“Do you believe in Chris Donovan?” Sharon Murphy Palmer, American Federation of Teachers local vice president asked the crowd.

“Do you know that Chris Donovan is a man of his word and a man of integrity?” she asked.

Donovan, too, chose to address the controversy only in passing. Instead, he said he wanted to talk about “fairness, dignity, respect.”

“You take the first letter of each of them and what you get?” Donovan asked the crowd. “FDR.”

Donovan also presented himself as the candidate of whom Republicans are most afraid.

“The NRCC has set their sights on me,” Donovan said. “When times are tough, you know who your friends are.”

National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Nat Sillin sent a press release out prior to the event calling the rally a “manufactured show of support” and calling attention to the controversy surrounding the campaign and FBI investigation.

“National Democrats are deafeningly silent on Chris Donovan’s growing scandal because they know their candidate’s chances are going up in smoke faster than a hand-rolled cigarette,” Sillin said in the release. “Either Donovan was complicit in the alleged activities — or he was so disconnected from his own campaign that he’s an incompetent manager unfit for federal office.”

Donovan spokesman Gabe Rosenberg said after the rally that the intention was not to move beyond the controversy but to “rally Chris’ supporters.”

“It’s pretty clear who the NRCC is scared of,” he said. Donovan will face Elizabeth Esty and Dan Roberti in an Aug. 14 Democratic primary.

Email Jordan Fenster at jfenster@nhregister.com. Follow him on Twitter @jordanfenster.

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