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Reflecting on Connecticut’s Place on the Campaign Trail

By Dennis House

 

Our great state is many things, but a battleground state is not among them. If you are eager to see presidential candidates visiting diners, shaking hands at the gates of a factory and holding rallies, you’ll need to relocate to Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona, or one of a handful of states that could either go Democrat or Republican and play a crucial role in who will be the next president.

Connecticut is now considered a reliable, blue Democratic state, which means Kamala Harris and Donald Trump won’t be coming to here to campaign—though a trip to “visit an ATM” isn’t out of the question. More on that later.

I love covering presidential campaigns and following them as soon as they begin. I find the primary process entertaining yet deeply flawed. I enjoy the drama over the “veepstakes” and the conventions. My biggest convention memories come from 2000 when there were Connecticut connections to both tickets. I was assigned to cover the candidates in Los Angeles and Philadelphia that year. That was the year Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman was the Democrats’ vice-presidential candidate and New Haven-born George W. Bush was the GOP standard bearer. He remains the only president born in our state, though he lost Connecticut badly that year.

The Democrats have now carried Connecticut for the past eight presidential elections, and not even one was close. Before that, the Republicans’ Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan (twice) and George H.W. Bush won Connecticut in the 1970s and 1980s, all by somewhat comfortable margins. Kennedy, Johnson and Humphrey won the three races of the 1960s, but Republicans Thomas Dewey and Dwight Eisenhower won the three before that. Democrat Franklin Roosevelt took the prior three. Incidentally, in 1932 during the Great Depression, Connecticut was one of only six states to reject Roosevelt and choose to stay with the very unpopular Herbert Hoover, who is often blamed for the worst economic period in American history.

Back to our lack of battleground status. It has been a while since Connecticut attracted candidates from both political parties to fight for votes here. 1988 comes to mind when Vice President George Bush, a Republican, and the Democratic nominee for president, Michael Dukakis, campaigned here. Bush had Connecticut roots having grown up in Greenwich. His father was a U.S. Senator from our state, and he went to Yale. Bush went on to carry Connecticut that November, but it was the last time the state went red.

I’ve been asked if I have ever interviewed this year’s nominees; the answer is yes and almost.

In 2016, former President Donald Trump believed he could recapture Connecticut for the GOP. I got a call from Trump’s campaign about 9 a.m. on Saturday that I’d been selected to have an exclusive interview with the Republican nominee at a late summer campaign stop at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield. I called my station, they called in crews and I headed back to Connecticut from vacation. As the Secret Service requires, we had to get there hours in advance; we did and then continued waiting for nearly 4 hours. There were also dignitaries and people waiting to meet and get a picture with Trump. I made small talk with Linda McMahon before I was whisked off to my designated waiting area where we waited and waited. With our interview scheduled for 7:30 p.m., a campaign staffer came in and informed us about 7 p.m. that the interview and the campaign visit had been cancelled with no explanation. I was told they would make it up to me with an interview later when Trump was in White House…which never happened. He lost Connecticut to Hillary Clinton that November.

I have interviewed Vice President Kamala Harris twice. The first time was in West Haven during the COVID-19 epidemic when I was issued this White House mask that made me look like Donald Duck. The second time was at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain where the Vice President was less rushed; we had a few moments to chat off the record. In both cases, the waiting time before the interviews was much shorter but under similar conditions to the almost Trump interview. You had to arrive early, go through security checkpoints and more. The interviews with Harris were limited to under five minutes each time, which is about what I was expecting with Trump.

I’ll close with my first “interview” with a president, actually a former one. In 1990, I was an anchor in Rockford, Ill., and was assigned to cover former President Ronald Reagan’s visit to his boyhood home in Dixon, Ill., which had been transformed into a museum. We were told there would be no interviews and the property was cordoned off and surrounded by police and Secret Service. My gut told me to leave the phalanx of media in front of the house and instead camp out at the back of the house. I figured Reagan would want to see his childhood backyard. My hunch paid off. Reagan came out the back door. It was just my photographer and me, along with a network pool camera. I asked the great communicator about three questions as I walked alongside him. My boss was thrilled that we were the only station to get a comment from a man who rarely gave interviews.

How do we get Connecticut to become a battleground state again? I think a start would be an earlier primary date. Remember in 2008 when Barack Obama came to the XL Center in Hartford? It was February 4 and the eve of the Super Tuesday primaries. In recent cycles, the Connecticut primary has been in April, long after most of the candidates have dropped out. Is there any hope for presidential candidate visits this fall? Unlikely. President Joe Biden beat Trump by 20 points in 2020. There are no polls indicating Trump is even remotely close to Vice President Harris in our state this year. It is possible both could fly in and out for a well-heeled fundraiser. Candidates often use Connecticut as an ATM and come in without any public appearances and leave with a haul of donations to spend in battleground states.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a memory from 1960 when thousands packed Prospect Street in Hartford when John Kennedy came to Connecticut for an election eve campaign stop. Connecticut was a battleground state then and Kennedy flipped Connecticut Democrat.

Dennis House has been covering the news in Connecticut for 31 years. He can be seen weeknights at 6 and 11 p.m. on WTNH and at 10 p.m. on WCTX. He also hosts “This Week in Connecticut” Sunday mornings at 10 a.m.