Hartford Courant interview with the guy who
lost the election for governor

During the last campaign for governor here in Connecticut, I supported and voted for Bill Curry, the Democrat running against Republican John Rowland. I remember at the time being very frustrated because there was very little media coverage of Curry and that there didn't seem to be much money being spent on his campaign and that our allegedly democratic senator, Joseph Leibermouth (who ran for vice president AND senator and is now spending his days in New Hampshire) didn't make a strong push for Curry.

The Hartford Courant, one of the oldest and most-respected newspaper in the United States, at that time was content not to delve too deeply into the Rowland administration or look at the issues that would actually have an impact on Connecticut citizens. Now, after two years, the newspaper is finally getting around to talking seriously with Curry:

Bill Curry: How Do You Like Me Now?
We've talked about signs of abuse of government, signs you pointed to in your campaign. Why was it hard for the public to see this and why was it hard for the press to pick up on it?

"Among the people upon whom we rely for leadership, Connecticut had slowly lost sight of its own values. It's like the thing about slow-boiling a lobster, it had happened slowly over time. It began with camping equipment and concert tickets. Year after year in which no one really questioned anything led to fundamental failure. The worst change was among the institutions of government, then the journalists and other leaders, and then the least changed was the public's opinion. What happened here, it was as if the state had made a collective decision to stop enforcing its own ethics laws.

"The public understands what happens here. This is Connecticut. We were the Constitution State. We were the home of New England town meeting democracy and now we're Louisiana with foliage. This is the Rowland legacy. And everybody knows it. ...

"In a decade, my state that I live in and love has become the most corrupt state in the nation, and when we said it a year ago it was hard to get a hearing."

Connecticut is a small state with several major newspapers (including, the Courant, the Connecticut Post,, the New Haven Register, and the Stamford Advocate). One would think that with all those journalists hungry for a chance to jump into the major league (or even to the newspaper next door, the New York Times), or even just doing their jobs, that just one of them would have taken a closer look at Rowland and his sleazy administration a long time ago. This, after all, is his third term. But no--even on the state's huge loss due to the Enron fiasco, there was no investigative reporting going on. Laziness? Complacency? Some kind of a deal with the state administration?

Maybe as the tax bills start showing up in mailboxes around the state, people will start to demand some answers.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 12/21/03 at 12:05 PM
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