Here is the Courant's Government Watch column for this week:
Republican gubernatorial front-runner Tom Foley says that ex-Gov. John G. Rowland has been informally helping him to gather political support around Rowland's hometown of Waterbury.
In the same locale, but on the other side of state politics, Democratic Waterbury Mayor Michael Jarjura last month received $100 each from Rowland, his wife and three children - for a total of $500 - to help finance Jarjura's candidacy for the Democrats' nomination for state comptroller in the Aug. 10 primary, public records show.
As the summer campaign season has heated up, Rowland's name increasingly has been popping up - raising his statewide profile a bit, six years after a 2004 corruption scandal chased him from office and put him in federal prison for 10 months.
Rowland never disappeared completely. The Republican lives in Middlebury and works in Waterbury in a $90,000 city-subsidized job as economic development coordinator at the local chamber of commerce -all with Jarjura's blessing. But generally he's noticed mostly in his home area.
Lately, though, he's been seen and heard more - for example, by filling in earlier this month for radio talk-show host Jim Vicevich on WTIC 1080 AM. And now his name has surfaced in connection with Foley and Jarjura.
It's led some political insiders to speculate that Rowland is "working his way back" or, in other words, trying to "re-emerge" - not necessarily to become an active participant in politics again, but at least to build up a respectable image after his public downfall.