A Conversation with Governor Ned Lamont ‘72
Governor Ned Lamont is being interviewed by two Exonians in the Latin study. Hillary Yoon / The Exonian
By Teddy Capozzi and Lily Rampe
Q: Coming back here, what do you reflect on most? What did you enjoy most?
A: The Exonian. I worked my tail off that first year, but it was really exhausting. And then I got involved in The Exonian and I loved it. I stuck with journalism until I did this new gig. It’s really relevant to what I’m doing now because in journalism you have to like people, you hear their stories and you have to learn how to tell a story. In the political world, that’s what you have to do as well.
Q: Although Connecticut has done very well monetarily under your governance, there is still a large inequality discrepancy. What are you doing to combat that? Recently, you raised the minimum wage, but is there anything else that you plan on doing?
A: When I graduated from college, there were too many people looking for too few jobs, and today we have a lot of jobs we can’t fill. So when talking about opportunity inequality, the one thing I can do is give everybody that opportunity. So we’re providing free job training and a guaranteed job at the end of that training. Then you can continue going to community college or college in the evenings if you want to. We just cut taxes from the middle class and working families, like you said. When I came into office, the minimum wage was $10.10. Now it’s $15.69. So that’s an extra 200-250 bucks a week for a working mom or dad that could really use that.
Q: Being from Rhode Island, we have a large housing shortage. So I wanted to ask you what the situation is in Connecticut. Obviously mortgage rates are really high, and people are locked in to low rates from COVID. What has been the process of dealing with that?
A: It’s probably our biggest need. Not everybody wanted to be in Connecticut for a while, and all the cool kids were down there on the lower West side. But we’ve had about 70,000 or 80,000 young families move into Connecticut over the last three or four years, and they keep coming. But we have no housing to your bigger point, the same as Rhode Island. So what we’re doing is doubling down in terms of the support that we as a state can give. So it’s affordable housing, but it’s also workforce housing. Every business that wants to come to Connecticut says ‘We’ll give you a place for our workers to live.’ So our cities used to be 30% bigger than the larger days. So there’s a lot of opportunity to grow them back.
Q: How has COVID played a role in that? Connecticut did a really good job with moving through COVID and COVID relief, but what was that process like? What’s the priority and how is that moving forward?
A: I think we kept most things open…We had a lot of people come and visit the state and a lot of them stayed. Obviously it changed in lifestyle. I don’t think the idea of the nine to five, five days back at the office is going to continue. We’re half and half [back to work in-person], which mitigates some of the traffic. But it also means that it’s easier to maintain that lifestyle. Also, I think for Connecticut, we got our schools open. Those are all pluses in terms of helping us get through a tough time.
Q: Moving back a little bit, you were in the private sector prior to this. What was that transition like?
A: Back in the day, cable television was pretty cool. Now it’s more of a dull utility, I get it, but back then it was good. Every couple months it would be ESPN and MTV and CNN and new programs. So I worked for one of the great pioneers in the cable industry: a guy named Chuck Dolan who developed (Home Box Office). But I always wanted to be my own boss, so I started my own company, and we went to universities like Penn State and wired them up. We were the operator forum: it was half educational and half entertainment.
Q: Why did you make the transition from the private sector into politics and eventually to be the governor?
A: I did cable for 25 years. I probably was getting a little distracted. I had always been involved in my home community, like the board of Selectmen and I was a local guy and that’s probably what I would’ve been doing today had it not been for George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. I thought that was a miserable idea. [Chuck] Dolan had sent me to the Middle East a couple of times to help design systems. So I had some familiarity with what was going on there. I tried to get somebody to challenge a guy named Joe Lieberman who was Connecticut’s senator, but he was very hawkish in the war and nobody else would do it. So all of a sudden I found myself the last guy standing.
Q: There’s a lot of really concentrated wealth in Connecticut coming from New York and particularly Wall Street. Is that something that you ever worry about that you think will lead to instability?
A: I don’t think so in this sense: if you make sure that it’s a state where people have a chance, make sure they know that it’s a state of opportunity, and make sure that parents know their kids have the opportunity to have a better life than they did. It’s not always that way, but it is that way right now. So, we have a lot of rich guys in Greenwich, no question about it, but having that gap is less impactful than stagnation. What I hate is people feeling they don’t have that chance. I’d like to think in Connecticut, people feel like they have that chance.
Q: In the current political environment in the United States, it’s incredibly polarized. I’ve seen you pass some bipartisan bills. Do you think that’s important and moving forward, how do you see that working?
A: We’re a little more purpley in Connecticut and I’m a business guy, which Republicans like. But I’m also progressive on things like minimum wage and paid family medical leave. So I’m able to thread that. So our budget passed 35 to one, which was pretty good and a bipartisan basis. And this is what I want to do with Governor Sununu. It’s a little poisonous down there in Washington. They don’t seem to like each other. They want to shut down the government and impeach the president. But governors are, I think, a little island of sanity. Chris is Republican, I’m a Democrat, but you’ll find that 80% of things we agree upon because we’re building roads and bridges and trying to make our schools better. And some of these things just aren’t as partisan as they are in Washington.
Q: I would say you’re a little bit more of a free thinker than maybe some other Democrats or Republicans because you’re going to stray from them a little bit. So what is it like making your own models and theses on what you think of issues as opposed to just looking at the people around you?
A: I think I got into politics late. I had a strong private sector background, and I’m old enough to the point that I don’t care as much about what people think of me. I mean, if you’re young and you’re Student Council president and then you want to be a legislator, they have to have a little more of a narrow ideological path. Like I said, we have pretty good support on both sides of the aisle and that’s not always the way it was in Connecticut.
Q: You seem to be a pretty big sports fan. You were trying to talk to the NHL about possibly bringing the Whalers in?
A: We have the heart for Whalers. Connecticut doesn’t have a lot of professional sports teams and so when they left, that was a body blow. It’s 25 years later. I was just at a memorial service for a cop who died tragically, and he had the whole XL center festoon with Whaler jerseys just to show you what a hold it had on him as a young boy growing up. So I’ve reached out to Gary Bettman, he’s the commissioner of the NHL. It’s an uphill climb, we have a lot of hockey teams already in the northeast and he says, “Boy, for TV I want to have a team in the southwest.” And I go, “That’s great, but nobody likes hockey in the Southwest.” So we’re making our case, but we’ll see.
Q: Did you have a role model or a mentor that helped you get to where you are today? Is there anyone that inspired you?
A: Yeah, I think Chuck Dolan was a great entrepreneur. From that business side, I loved him. We had a swashbuckling guy named Ted Turner; he started up CNN and he was an outlandish personality. And then, in my hometown, we had a guy named Lowell Weer who went on to be a Governor. So from a political side, I admired him. He was a conservative Republican, but then the Republican party moved on him quite a bit. He became an independent and got elected as Governor as an independent. I thought that was pretty inspiring.
Q: How have your goals shifted over your time? When you realized that you would have several more years, where did your mind go?
A: Well, when I took office, the House was on fire. We had to put out the fire. You had multi-billion dollar deficits and people leaving the state businesses grumpy and GE had just left. And so that first few years was just about stabilizing the ship. Now we’re in pretty good shape. We’ve had five pound budgets and surplus, which was fun. I mean, now I really get to make investments that make a difference. Now I get to do housing. Now I get to speed up the rail service by 15 or 20 minutes in each direction. Now I have the state of Connecticut feeling positive about itself. The positivity feeds on itself. And I’d like to think we have some of that momentum now.
Q: The Connecticut budget has been in surplus for four years and your rainy day fund is also at the legal limit. What was the process of that like? How difficult was it to do that?
A: So our revenues are like this, right? And when Facebook and Google are doing well, we’re feeling really rich. And then they used to just spend right up to that moment. And then when the market went back, all of a sudden we had a deficit. So we said that doesn’t work. So we put away about 15% of our budget as you point out, in a rainy day fund. I used to think a rainy day fund was all about a recession. But now it’s when the Republican Congress goes back into session and you may have a lockdown, and it gives us a lot of stability. It gives the business community a sense that if we have this recession, we’re not going to have to raise taxes, we’re not going to have to cut education spending. Certainty is really important. You can give people hope and dreams, but also a little bit of certainty, which gives people the confidence to make investments.
Q: Switchging topics, you passed multiple bills protecting the right to abortion in Connecticut. Why is that important to you? And especially with the overturn of Roe v. Wade, how has that affected Connecticut as a state?
A: I thought the courts were there to protect our rights. Now you have a Supreme Court that was funded, taking away a right that we thought was established going back 50 years. So we re-established it loud and clear in Connecticut. We said if you come from a red state where they’re outlawing or virtually outlawing abortion, come to the state of Connecticut to get your full range of reproductive care. And if they try and come after you with prosecution or something out of Texas, we’ll protect you. We won’t participate in that. I sent a message and it’s part of why some businesses and a lot of young families feel comfortable with Connecticut’s values.
Q: What are some specific goals for your last couple years that you think the people of Connecticut will be really excited about?
A: I want to bring our cities back to life by having more affordable multi-family units in downtown areas with all the restaurants that go with it. Also speeding up the city transportation hubs. Look, young people want to be in a more urban environment. We had the stereotype that Connecticut was this leafy suburban area but we have some great cities. They went through some hard times, but now they’re coming back. We have a lot more people living there, and I want to keep that momentum going.
Q: In freeing up space for housing, do you have to wait for monetary policy to change? Is there anything that you can actually do to combat that with currently really high rates, or is that a time matter?
A: Well, we’re doubling the amount of investment the state’s going to make in housing. Instead of walking away, developers come to the state of Connecticut and say, “Give us a low interest loan so we can make up the difference.” Before I thought we were just going to turbocharge and everything was going to go. But now, as you point out with higher interest rates, I’m just trying to keep the momentum going.
Q: Is there any debate about Connecticut having the best pizza?
A: We debate a little bit with New Jersey. They think they have pretty good pizza, but I point out to the governor of New Jersey that there’s a movie called Mystic Pizza, as in Mystic Connecticut.
Editor’s Note: The Exonian requested an interview with Governor Chris Sununu, but his schedule would not permit it.
