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News 12 Staff

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I'm Mark Sudall. Welcome back to Power and Politics. Welcome back, and I'm joined by Chris Keating, Capital Bureau Chief with the Hartford Courant. Glad to have you on the show. Good to be here. Thank you. So now you were just on ABC's Nightline. It featured the Current, which is the oldest continuously published newspaper in the country. Talk about the importance of the paper at the time of the Declaration of Independence. Yes, well, uh, the country, as people know, is 250 years old, but the Hartford Courent actually started 12 years before that. So we go all the way back to 1764, which is a long time ago, and reporters at the Hartford Courent were writing about Thomas Jefferson and Uh, George Washington and all kinds of people, so, uh, and published, you know, things about the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, all of that. So the Hartford Courant goes way, way back, uh, and we take some pride in being the oldest continuously published newspaper. And I think you put recently um online at least in the current, probably in the paper itself, um, that little piece of, of information that was sent out, uh, back then about the the Declaration of Independence. Yes, the, uh, there was a lot of things that were done. In other words, we celebrated our own anniversary of 250 years back in 2014, so we kind of made a big deal about it then, or at least locally in Hartford we did that. But yes, there's an incredible amount of history. Um, it's, it's sometimes hard to find the actual pages, but there are some super old things in the Hartford Public Library, for example. Yes. Now you have been with the paper now for decades. Uh, the current has always been a source for news. What was the paper like when you first started working there? Uh, I got to the paper in 1990 after Lowell Weicker won as governor. So Weicker won in November of 1990. I had worked for six years at the Greenwich paper down your way, uh, six years at the Greenwich Times. And the Greenwich Time and the Hartford Courant had the same ownership at that time along with the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, a whole series of papers. But when I got to the Current, that was kind of in the heyday, the early 1990s, uh. We had 400 people in the newsroom. And by the newsroom, by the newsroom, I mean that includes the sports writers, the photographers, reporters like me, editors. So what we call the newsroom, we had 400 people to, uh, to make it work, and that's a lot of people. And what is it now? Well, believe it or not, we, we put the paper out now 7 days a week with about 25 people. Unbelievable. It's amazing. It's amazing that we do it, uh, and it's a fair amount of work and yours truly works kind of hard, um, but, uh, it's a lot of work, but we get it done. Now, is, I know sometimes now, uh, with some of the papers are, are also printing in other places. Does, does the current still print in Hartford? Uh, we used to print in Hartford. That is correct. We printed in Hartford for many, many years, but then they subcontracted it out, uh, for lack of a better term. It was printed briefly in Springfield, Massachusetts, uh, and then it went to Providence, and now it's back in Massachusetts. Now, you have covered some huge stories over your career. Tell us about some of the biggest ones. Uh, well, I've done every governor since 1993. I would say 98% of the time since 1993 I've been full-time working out of the state capitol building. I briefly covered the courts, which was a lot of fun. Uh, covered trials full time and I did 6 months covering business, but 98% of the time every single governor, but I go all the way back at the Greenwich paper. I remember covering the Bush Gorbachev summit for your veteran viewers. Bush Gorbachev, that's when Gorbachev was still a big deal, when the Soviet Union was still a big deal. Obviously it's been broken up, as you know. So I was covering this since before the fall of the Berlin Wall, but I'm really not that old. Uh, what about Sandy Hook? I think you, you covered that too. Is that right? Yes, yes, I covered Sandy Hook. Uh, I was at the state Capitol the day of the Sandy Hook shootings. What happened with that was we knew, uh, I had gotten a tip from one of my editors about how bad it was, but we had not really confirmed it all and we had not put it up online yet, the severity of it, but we knew a ridiculous number of people have been Uh, killed. Uh, the initial reports came out and you may recall the initial reports said that a teacher had been shot in the foot and the shooter was deceased. That's what the original report came out, but obviously that was not true. Um, and, uh, there was a, a, a, actually it was in December, there was a big Christmas party that day and all the top officials came to the Christmas party and Unfortunately, I had to tell them what the truth was, uh, that it was way, way worse than, uh, what they thought. Now you have an interesting story you told recently when we were at a, a panel at Fairfield U about a, a very young Ned Lamott, who you covered years ago. Yes, yes, I've known Ned Lamont since about 1985, 1986, 198987, right in there. Um, yes, I knew Ned Lamont when he was running for the board of selectmen in Greenwich, and he eventually did get on the board of selectmen, but in those days he didn't even have kids then. There was, it was three people in the United States who knew who Ned Lamont was Ned, his wife, and me, and that was it. And my how things have changed and then we became a state rep and on the way up there as well. Yes, yes, he, uh, yeah, obviously Ned Lamont is incredibly well known now, but yeah, so this is like the mid 80s. Uh, he did run and he did win a seat on the three-member, excuse me, the three-member board of selectmen with, uh, so it was two Republicans and Lamont was the one Democrat. So he got outvoted quite a bit, 2 to 1, but it was a cordial relationship. Oh, I'm sure, yes. Well, we have to pause for a moment, but, uh, we will continue our conversation with Chris Keating when we come back.

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Welcome back to Power and Politics. We continue our conversation with Capitol Bureau Chief of the Hartford Courant, Chris Keating, and let's talk, uh, politics. This is, uh, something that you get paid the big bucks for at the current, uh, and let's talk about, uh, the upcoming primaries next month. Uh, first of all, in the governor's race, uh, for the Democrats, it seems to be heating up a little bit here. Uh yes, uh, Josh Elliott, who's a liberal Democrat from Hamden, Connecticut, um, he's putting up, he's putting up a challenge. He just got his money, or he'll be getting his money, $3.7 million. So you may see a lot more TV ads from Josh Elliott against Ned Lamont. He's running against Lamont from the left. Uh, he doesn't think Lamont has raised taxes enough on Fairfield County residents and, and wealthy people around the state. Uh, the top tax rate is 6.99% in Connecticut, and he wants it to go higher, uh, and he's basically upset with Lamont because Lamont has not done that. Now the governor is running for, for a third term here. Um, could, could this be, uh, a close primary, you think, or? Well, uh, historically in Connecticut, uh, primaries are low turnout, uh, middle of August, uh, in this case, August 11th is the low turnout that normally helps the incumbents, people with name recognition. However, what I was going to say is, uh, generally the, the The Liberal candidate does very well historically in Connecticut primaries, both, both for the national level. By that I mean, you know, presidential primaries, uh, narrow Democratic primaries, the people who are fired up are often more on the progressive end of the spectrum. Interesting. So any races here across the street where we could maybe see an upset? Well, uh, up in the Hartford area, I'm, I'm covering, uh, John Larson, who is a 28-year incumbent. He's running in a four-way Democratic primary. Uh, uh, the biggest opponent is Luke Bronan, the former mayor of Hartford. So that, that is a very big deal. Uh, there's a couple of minor primaries in the 4th and 5th district, more down your way, uh, but some of the The marquee primaries. Uh, the Lamont race is probably the biggest. This congressional race with Larson and Bronan is in 2nd place. Uh, there's others. There's a, uh, longtime state rep from 1986, Pat Dillon in, uh, New Haven in a three-way primary. Uh, so that's very big. Uh, and there's a senator up here named Doug McCrory also in a three-way primary that, that is also big. All right, Chris Keating, thank you so much for the time. Thank you, sir. Well, that's all our time. I'm Mark Sudall. Thanks for watching.

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Rep. Jim Himes and Capitol Bureau Chief with the Hartford Courant Chris Keating join the show this week.

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