A new legislative session is set to start in Connecticut next month. The governing body’s House Speaker will gavel in for a third term for the first time in decades.
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Mark Pazniokas to discuss his article, “Matt Ritter is set to be longest-serving CT House speaker in 20 years,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. Read Mark’s story here.
WSHU: Being speaker of a diverse legislative body is not an easy job. Just look at what is happening with the House Republicans in Washington. So how come Matt Ritter, a Democrat from Hartford in Connecticut, has made it seem so easy to hold onto the gavel?
MP: Well, the numbers are better for the Democrats, and that helps, although, I will say, in the past, having a big majority sometimes brings its own problems, because there are different factions, and the House Democratic majority certainly does have its factions. But Matt Ritter has really been masterful at navigating that. He spends a lot of time building relationships with members in Washington. You know, one of former U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's (R-CA) problems was, I think, his relationship with a lot of his people was more transactional. One of his paths to his leadership role was the fact he was a huge rainmaker. He raised a lot of money for folks. In Connecticut, we have public financing, so that's really not part of the toolkit. There are some leadership PACs, and they do help a little bit, but it's just not the same thing.
WSHU: They used to play a more significant role in past years before we had public financing in Connecticut, right?
MP: Absolutely, absolutely. And there were different rivals for leadership positions. Back in the day, they used to have their own political action committees, and so they would really reinforce and almost encourage the divisions and the different caucuses, and you had challenges for leaders. You know, at that point, that has not happened in Connecticut for a long time. And public financing, I think, actually, is a factor in that we have ended up with a very orderly tradition. As far as people climbing the ladder, the last half dozen speakers have all been majority leaders before they were speakers. So, you know, it's almost like being the vice chair of a board of directors for a nonprofit, you know, in two or four years, you're going to be the chair, and that's really been the pattern here.
WSHU: Having one party control has pretty much seemed to help have that glide path to leadership.
MP: It does. Now, of course, the thing that is different with Matt Ritter is that he will be the first speaker in 20 years to be elected speaker for more than two terms. There's no formal limit, but there is a tradition in Connecticut, and ironically enough, the person who broke that pattern for the first time was his father, Tom Ritter, who was elected to a third term as speaker. But, you know, Matt Ritter has already reached out to lawmakers about the prospect of a fourth term and two years beyond that. You know, it's not guaranteed that he’ll do it.
WSHU: Is it because his father held this position and he was able to study what his father was doing, or how did that? I mean, how has he been able to deal with such a diverse body and still be able to hold on to leadership?
MP: His father became speaker, it was a very unusual thing, he was not the majority leader. He's the last speaker who did not serve as Majority Leader, and at the time, the House Democratic Caucus was much more divided than it is today. And one of Tom Ritter's appeals is that he was a conciliator and he was not associated with either the left or the right wing. I mean, he was the Banking Committee co-chair. It's not like he wasn't a substantive legislator, but that helped him, and he did what's now the playbook.
He knew that the speaker at the time, Richie Balducci, was only going to go for two terms, and Tommy Ritter lined up votes to succeed Balducci almost two years in advance. It was shocking when he did it, but I'll tell you, that's the playbook that his son followed, and that's the playbook that there are three women right now who are looking well ahead to competing for majority leader on the assumption that eventually Jason Rojas will succeed Tom Ritter as speaker. So again, this is the playbook that Tom Ritter wrote and that Matt Ritter really perfected.
WSHU: Talking about Jason Rojas. Were you able to feel out how he's taking the fact that it might take him a bit longer to get to that gavel?
MP: They’re not happy. Jason Rojas is not happy with that. I spoke to all three women who are competing to succeed Rojas eventually as Majority Leader. None of them are thrilled. But you know, there's a lot of respect for Matt Ritter, and there's really no sign of anybody trying to compete and force him out.
WSHU: Now, let's talk a little bit about his legislative record. How has he handled the passage of legislation and the competing interests?
MP: He has been very protective of his caucus. And what I'm talking about is he has members who represent Greenwich, one of the richest places on God's green earth, and people who are in the poorer cities, Hartford included. He has been very strategic about when he will call a vote on a bill, which is going to be problematic for some of his members. He always pushes the advocates to broaden the support as much as possible. That has led to some complaints that Connecticut, with a bigger Democratic majority, sometimes has not been as bold as some other places with narrower majorities, but in some of those places with narrower majorities, you don't have the same diversity of ideology and geography. So that's really been Matt Ritter's, one of his superpowers. I mean, he really is a three-dimensional chess player. He likes to compare himself to more of a sports coach. He loves basketball, but he's really super strategic, but that does cause some tensions in his caucus. Christine Palm, who took the lead -
WSHU: On the climate change bill, it seemed as if it was gliding towards passage, and then all of a sudden, they yanked it out.
MP: So Representative Palm followed the Matt Ritter recipe, and she drafted a bill that did not alarm the business community. There were more carrots than sticks, but in the end, it didn't win a single Republican vote, and the Senate Democratic never called it, which raises other issues about traditions in Connecticut. Connecticut is going to have super democratic majorities in both chambers starting next year, but Connecticut has a tradition of respecting the minority party. That tradition includes unlimited debate. And you know that, again, causes frustration at times among advocates who say,
Look, we have the votes under the rules. You can call the question, you can end debate and force things through. So Ritter takes the long view on that. I think he's an institutionalist, you know? He thinks about what's best for the institution over years and years, and to be fair to him, they have passed a lot of progressive legislation. It may take a couple of sessions, and you know, there are examples, like expanding paid sick days. Connecticut is now, they now have a law that will eventually result in really universal paid sick time for all it's a requirement on all private employers. But, you know, one of the things Ritter insisted on was that there'd be a long glide path. He wanted it to phase in over the years so the business community would not be kind of shocked or overly burdened by that. And that's kind of the classic Matt Ritter approach to these things that, you know, the labor movement has been very successful in Connecticut. You know, we have a good minimum wage, and it's now pegged to a wage index. So it's adjusted annually.
You don't have to have a political fight or a legislative vote anymore. Every January, it's adjusted based on inflation. And there have been some other, you know, labor things that he has certainly supported. But it's interesting, when you become the Speaker of the House, or when you become the majority leader, you're at the top of the ladder. But on the other hand, you do have to sublimate your own passions at times to reflect the collective will of the larger body. And that is, again, one of the things that Matt Ritter does very well.
WSHU: You mentioned the EV bill, the EV mandate, and where his own caucus had issues with it. The way they handled that, and pretty much well with the EV mandate now, with this change in Washington, I don't think we'll be revisiting that anytime soon.
MP: No, I think you're right. But that was an example of Matt Ritter; he addressed the liberals in his caucus, and he said, you know we have this bad habit of wagging our finger at people who are not on board with us. And the opposition to mandating or accelerating the transition to electric vehicles, it started as a Republican issue, but, you know, there are members of the Black and Puerto Rican caucus who are looking at their constituents and saying, these cars are a little bit more expensive. Will there be a charging network available? And, you know, the majority of the Black and Puerto Rican caucus members have urban districts, not all of them, but the majority do. That was a legitimate question: Would their constituents be able to, you know, participate in this transition? And, you know, Ritter, who is, I think, personally, quite liberal on social issues. Again, he is a pragmatist, and that's a word he's very comfortable with people applying to him and his own brand of leadership.
WSHU: And he knows how to count votes.
MP: That was one of my favorite quotes from, you know, one of his members. He says he knows when a maybe is a no and when a maybe is a yes, and that is part of it. You think of vote counting as an easy task, right? You ask people if you are with us or not. There is a lot of nuance as to where people really are. What is their degree of comfort with casting, perhaps a hard vote in what's going to be a party line thing? And you know, Ritter has a real ear for that.
