Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

The announcement that appeared in the Hartford Courant was brief and modest, a little less than 150 words, five famished paragraphs: Michele Jacklin, former reporter, columnist and editorial board member had left the paper and joined the gubernatorial campaign of current Bridgeport Mayor John DeStefano as Director of Policy and Research. Other journalists have passed the bar dividing journalism and politics without damage to their careers. Pat Buchanan, initially connected with Richard Nixon, has passed over and under the bar several times; George Stephanopoulos moved effortlessly from Bill Clinton’s campaigns to become a television commentator; and closer to home, Charlie Morse, once the Courant’s chief political columnist, appropriately ended his career at the paper by joining the campaign of Lowell Weicker, an ideological soul mate. Some political watchers were mildly stunned by Jacklin’s move; not because she had passed through the revolving door that connects journalism and pol...

Gov. Jodi Rell pledged to sign the civil union bill now snaking its way through the legislature only on condition that Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, the White Knight of Connecticut politics, assured her that the measure would not allow gay marriage. Here, as always, language was important. Even though nothing in the bill under consideration “allowed gay marriage,” the bill would not be a barrier to gay marriage – unless there were a provision in the measure that reserved marriage for couples of the opposite sex. The senate has resisted such language. Many states have adopted constitutional Defense of Marriage Acts (DOMAs) to prevent courts from overturning traditional social conventions such as male, female marriage. States without DOMAs are especially vulnerable to court ordered legislation legalizing same sex marriage. The Attorney General position in Connecticut historically devolved from the King’s Attorney in colonial times. The attorney general is historically and constitu...