Investigative Report Overshadows Stewart-Ackert Ticket Unveiling

Erin Stewart’s rollout as a Republican candidate for governor hit a wall Wednesday before she’d finished introducing her running mate.

Stewart named state Rep. Tim Ackert of Coventry as her lieutenant governor pick at a midday press conference in what was supposed to be a clean, confident launch. It wasn’t. At 12:05 p.m., while Stewart was still on stage with Ackert, reporters received an email from Mayor Bobby Sanchez’s office containing an investigative report from the Crumbie Law Group. The report alleged serious financial mismanagement inside New Britain’s tax office during Stewart’s 12-year tenure as mayor.

The timing was not accidental. Sanchez, a Democrat who succeeded Stewart in November, commissioned the report.

What the Crumbie Law Group found

The findings target Cheryl Blogoslawski, the city’s tax collector, who allegedly backdated tax payments on a routine basis to avoid interest penalties for herself and others. Blogoslawski reportedly claimed she did this with knowledge from Stewart’s office and, in at least one case, acted on direct instruction from that office.

The report didn’t stop there. Investigators documented a cash-handling failure from January 2024 in which “over $246,000 was left unsecured on top of the safe,” a situation so alarming that janitorial workers refused to enter the office to clean it. The report didn’t conclude that Stewart’s office knew about the cash problems specifically.

One detail shapes how the accountability question gets framed. For nine of Stewart’s 12 years running New Britain, the tax collector was an elected post, not a position that answered to the mayor. A charter revision passed in 2022 converted it into a mayoral appointment, which is how Blogoslawski became an appointee. Whether that structural shift matters to investigators or voters will drive whatever comes next.

Three responses, not one

Stewart’s reaction played out in stages across the afternoon. At the press conference itself, she didn’t engage with specifics. A written statement around 2 p.m. also sidestepped the substance. Instead, she went after the timing.

“Obviously timing the release of this memo to coincide with today’s press conference shows this to be the political witch hunt we’ve known it to be,” Stewart said. “And it confirms what I’m the only Republican Ned Lamont and his minions are scared of.”

Sanchez’s office didn’t accept that framing. Alisha Rayner, director of operations and communications for Sanchez, said via email that the report was submitted to the city’s corporation counsel the day before and that Wednesday’s release was tied to Sanchez’s budget presentation to the city council that evening. “This topic will be relevant and addressed during his speech,” Rayner said.

After 5 p.m., Stewart put out a third statement that actually engaged with the report’s core claims. She denied ever directing anyone to backdate a payment. She did acknowledge negotiating tax delinquency payment plans for individuals and businesses during her time as mayor. “I did so in consultation with the Finance Department and the Corporation Counsel’s Office, who would have been the lead on those negotiations,” she said.

Why it matters for 2026

The gubernatorial election process in Connecticut means Stewart and Ackert still have a primary and a general election between them and the governor’s office. That’s a long runway, but Wednesday demonstrated how quickly a launch can get complicated.

The report’s release, covered by CT Mirror among others, framed the day’s story before Stewart could. She’s now responding to someone else’s narrative rather than building her own. The Blogoslawski backdating allegations will require a more complete answer than Stewart’s campaign has offered so far, especially if any formal investigation follows from the report.

Sanchez took office in November after the 2024 election. He commissioned independent counsel and released findings the same day his opponent launched her statewide campaign. That’s a sequencing that’s hard to read as anything other than deliberate, whatever the substantive merit of the underlying claims.

Stewart’s 12 years running New Britain are central to her pitch as a candidate who knows how to govern. That record is now in dispute, publicly and on a day she’d chosen carefully.