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At the state’s request, the NLDC promptly announced it would honor the moratorium and refrain from commencing eviction actions until the legislature determined whether it would modify the state’s laws dealing with eminent domain.

Rell’s response was like night and day compared to the attitude of her predecessor, Governor John Rowland. Susette was so thrilled she began publicly praising Governor Rell and privately sending her e-mails expressing her gratitude. For eight years the state had aided and abetted the NLDC in its aggressive tactics toward the residents. Finally, a political leader in Connecticut had stood up and said it was wrong to force these people out.

But Tom Londregan didn’t appreciate the governor’s actions one bit. To him, she was pandering, not leading. After all, she had been the lieutenant governor when Governor John Rowland had set the redevelopment plan in motion with Claire Gaudiani and Pfizer in 1998. Rell had been part of the administration that had appropriated the $70 million to the NLDC. Either she had been in the loop when all these decisions had gone down, or she had been incredibly aloof while the state had been charting this course and calling the shots in New London on this project. The NLDC, after all, had taken its marching orders from the Rowland administration, not from the city.

To Londregan it was clear: by wringing her hands over the Kelo decision, Governor Rell was ignoring the fact that the state had been behind the whole mess. But Londregan wasn’t going to let her get away with it. He sent an open letter to the Hartford Courant pointing out her hypocrisy:

I read with interest Governor Rell’s statement that she is fighting five robed justices at the Supreme Court in Washington. The Governor would also be fighting the commissioners of the Department of Environmental Protection, the Office of Policy and Management and the Department of Economic and Community Development, all of whom approved this plan on her watch. She stated that the government took away the rights of property owners without giving them a voice. Governor Rell should remember that she was their voice as an elected official of the executive branch throughout this process. She agreed to invest $70,000,000 of the state taxpayers’ monies to acquire Fort Trumbull, clean and remediate its land, reshape, reconstruct and redesign it. She further claimed that in New London the case to take property was not defensible. If that is the case, then why did the executive branch and the legislative branch agree to implement the plan?

As the institute and the homeowners continued to gain political traction for keeping the homes, the NLDC became impatient. But it couldn’t go after the state as Londregan had—that would be akin to biting the hand that fed it. Instead, the agency wanted to do something to undermine the homeowners’ overwhelming public support, since that was what was fueling the political momentum.

Dave Goebel and the NLDC’s new president, Michael Joplin, decided to make Susette the focal point of their attack. She was the ringleader; her pink house had emerged as the national symbol for eminent-domain opposition. More than anything, the NLDC wanted to bulldoze that damn cottage into a pile of splinters. It gave the agency fits to see the house in so many prominent national publications and as a television-news backdrop to every story about the case. The picture of Susette’s quaint, attractive cottage on the water said more than all the legal briefs and oral testimony about what was wrong with the city’s justification for using eminent domain. Anyone who looked at that house could see that the argument for tearing it down wasn’t based on necessity or blight. It was based on vengeance. And the more the house withstood demolition, the more people started comparing its stature to that of Lincoln’s cabin.

To change public opinion, the NLDC went looking for dirt on Susette. When Joplin and Goebel learned she owned a second