Former congressional candidate admits to painting doors at state Capitol

New London ― Kevin Blacker, the 2022 Green Party candidate for the 2nd Congressional District, admitted Sunday to painting pink stripes across the front doors of the state Capitol.

Blacker, a Noank resident, told The Day he drove to the Capitol on Friday afternoon to paint the doors. He said he walked up the front walkway, wearing a reflective vest, and painted four pink stripes across the front door "for a number of reasons."

He said a police officer walked out of the building moments beforehand, saw Blacker, and continued walking to his cruiser. Blacker walked back to his truck and drove home, he said, without a word from the officer.

Blacker said it was his way to draw attention to the corruption and the law-breaking at the state's port authority, which he said has been "allowed to go unchecked for years." The reflective vest's purpose was "to make sure everyone knows what I’m doing," he said.

"The law doesn't apply to them, so the law doesn't matter, so the law doesn't apply to me," Blacker said by phone Sunday.

Blacker pointed to the significant cost overruns for the port authority's State Pier project, the federal investigations surrounding the port authority, State Pier, and Kosta Diamantis, Gov. Lamont's deputy budget chief and head of a school construction program under FBI scrutiny, as well as the hiring of Andrew Lavigne as manager of the state Department of Economic and Community Development's clean energy program.

Lavigne previously served as manager of business development and special projects for the port authority. He was fined for violating state ethics rules when he accepted tickets to a playoff hockey game and other gifts, totaling about $1,000, from Seabury Maritime, a company doing business with the port authority.

"I made myself a public presence in this fight," Blacker said.

WFSB reported early Sunday that authorities are investigating the door-painting incident but did not yet have the identity of the suspect, who had been caught on video.

State police at Troop H in Hartford said Sunday that the investigation was ongoing and they did not yet have a suspect.

Blacker said he received a call on Saturday that the Capitol police were in Noank looking for him, but he was not in town. He said he gave police his phone number and told them he did not have anything to talk about.

This is not the first time Blacker has used pink paint to draw attention to the State Pier project. In 2020, he was charged with first-degree criminal mischief for using pink paint to cover several roadside directional signs on State Pier Road in New London.

The pink was a reference to the famous pink home of Susette Kelo, whose attempt to fight the taking of her home by eminent domain at Fort Trumbull led to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Kelo v. City of New London.

Blacker was previously charged with second-degree breach of peace, a misdemeanor, after he stood up and disrupted a port authority meeting in Hartford in February 2020 on the eve of the approval of the redevelopment plan for State Pier. He refused to leave until he was arrested. At the time, Blacker argued the plans for State Pier had been negotiated in secret and the port Authority had broken the law.

"I’m not paying to fix the doors," Blacker said. "The governor and the bond commission can just tack it on to the next cost overrun."

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Editor's note: This corrects an earlier version of the story.