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uh hi everybody i'm kyle constable i am ct mirrors manager of membership and audience development very excited to welcome you to our 2020 election preview event we've got an awesome lineup tonight and it should be a fun discussion about a very very critical time a critical juncture in this this country's history but first let me begin by saying this thank you you know without the financial support that everyone here tonight has provided by being a ct mirror member we wouldn't be here not just talking about this event i'm talking about ct mirror as a whole the vast majority of our funding comes from individual donors just like you so thank you very much for everything you do to help make this possible and let's go ahead and get this thing started john thanks so much kyle i was just taking a selfie so i could make sure i commemorated this moment thanks for for stopping by for this election preview special i don't know about you i'm mostly excited about this because it means that the election is almost here which means it's almost over um i want to first thank our sponsor the league of women voters i've done a lot of events with the league over the years moderated debates and done panel discussions and as we mark the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage i want to salute the league for their exceptional bipartisan work on behalf of voting rights and thank you for supporting our program tonight and everything that we do here at the mirror we're doing more and more of these events all the time here at the connecticut mirror and the best way to find out about them is to subscribe to our newsletters go to ctmirror.org and sign up if you haven't already while you're there please subscribe to our podcast steady habits each week we take a look at a different facet of life in the land of steady habits and this week we have a story of how connecticut's theater industry is struggling through the covet pandemic hope you can listen in it's really interesting our next event is coming up next week and i encourage you to sign up especially if you care about the future of journalism jennifer mcfadden of yale school of management will be moderating a conversation with john thornton of the american journalism project it's on wednesday october 28th at 5 30 p.m thornton's going to be talking about how local journalism is being reimagined why he's raised 50 million dollars to invest in local journalism that's a lot for local journalism and why the american journalism uh project gave a whole bunch of money to the connecticut mirror last december so it's going to be really interesting and i hope you can join us for that conversation yet paz is excited about that on to tonight's conversation joining me are three friends who i've spent plenty of time talking to on and off the radio and they're bringing a wide variety of perspectives and they're also all a lot of fun kalila brown dean is associate professor of political science at quinnipiac university she's got a really important new book called identity politics in the united states and she has a brand new very cool podcast called disrupted on connecticut public which you can also download anywhere you get your podcasts hello there professor how are you it's good to see you my friend it's good to see you too and uh good good to be back doing these things with you here uh i also want to welcome in liz currano she's a veteran republican strategist as we'll discuss she is currently working on a political action committee called fight for connecticut and she's a regular on wtnh's capital report liz good to see you thanks for being here thank you so much for having me and mark pasaneokus is the connecticut uh mirrors capital bureau chief he's a brand new grandpa and he's glad that he's here instead of watching mookie bets hit home runs for the los angeles dodgers welcome paz thank you and i do not begrudge mookie his success no no no one can be grudge mookie his success but we we can cry for red sox fans if you have questions for our panel you can submit them in the q a field you'll see them at the bottom of your zoo zoom screen and we'll get to some of them throughout the hour we're also taping this conversation for broadcast or podcast on steady habits so let's go around first there's a lot of issues to talk about the election is coming up but the election i think means something different to everybody and kalila i'll start with you right now a couple weeks before the election what does this election mean to you wow what a place to start you know i think this election is really about determining the health the strength and the function of american democracy to see people waiting in line for three four hours in places like north carolina to see people in harris county texas trying to get access to one drop-off box for early voting and still hearing all of the conversations about the right to vote what it means what it doesn't mean this is really about that future of understanding that in this country right now in the middle of two pandemics being covet 19 and also the racial reckoning what is the role of every person in this country in promoting democracy and and what i think is so important john two weeks out from the end of at least the voting period not knowing who the winner will be is that this is really a conversation that has to happen across partisan lines and across ideological orientation not only i want to get back to that in just a little bit because obviously that's a that's an important conversation we can all agree that that conversation needs to happen and so far it doesn't seem like it it's happened too much liz i will turn to you i mean right now what do you think this election means i would agree with the professor i think that the health of our nation's democracy is in the participation of uh the voting public and i think what we're seeing in terms of people getting out to vote using every opportunity to participate in the process standing in line to early vote voting by mail in places where that is allowed utilizing absentee ballots i think the call to action across the spectrum for people participating in the process and getting out and voting is really important and i think you've seen remember one of the things that hangs in the balance here across the country is redistricting and you've seen nationally a real move towards focus on legislative races in places where uh the uh balance of power is up for grabs just recently there's been i think 12 million dollars put into texas state house races uh just in the last week to try and flip that some of those seats from republican to democrat so i think that the attention to down ballot races and almost this bottom up approach to voter turnout is is good and i hope we see that here in connecticut as well where you really see this bottom-up approach uh to the way that we we participate in this process because all politics are local that's something else i want to get to too because while there's that bottom-up approach and that need for it you see so much attention still going to the top of the presidential ticket which of course we'll get to as well paz before we turn to some of those questions how about you what are you hearing from people and what are you thinking about this election a couple weeks out well i find this to be the most challenging election i've ever covered um and it's challenging in part because one of the toughest things for a reporter is recognizing cultural shifts in the moment and i i think you know liz and kalyapa can identify with that as well that that's kind of you sometimes you think you see it you think you feel it and then a little time goes by and you find out no that wasn't quite it uh it was just indigestion um and you know trends in politics don't last the the way they once did um you know i can recall when the u.s house of representatives finally went republican and after decades and decades and this felt like a permanent realignment in american politics and it wasn't and then when the democrats regained the house you thought wow this is another significant realignment well it wasn't um so we've been doing we're 10 minutes into this and nobody has mentioned uh donald j trump uh so i guess i will you had to do it we'll do so yes that's what we're all um that's what we're all assessing is what is the trump factor how much of what we're seeing uh swirls around him and is generated by him and how much of that is just symptomatic of something else you know you know the professor talked about you know the racial reckoning um prompted by some very high profile incidents obviously george floyd but it feeds into what the president has been saying in tweeting and you know assessing that in the moment is not always the easiest thing for journalists so again my struggle is trying to separate out this moment from what is longer term and what really reflects changes in our in our culture and in our politics well i'm wondering kalyal if you can pick up on that though this idea that we seem to be at this reckoning point and so much of it does focus around donald trump the space he has created for some of the divisions that that we all know about our country but it's also fair to say that almost everything that you talked about in your opening statement things that liz talked about things that past talked about the real systematic problems in america i mean they predate donald trump pretty significantly and if he goes away after this election those things aren't necessarily magically going to fix themselves i mean how do you do you see that as we have an election that is so consumed by this trump factor but at the same time it's dealing with issues that are frankly much bigger than even this man in the white house you know i feel about this election the way i did about the election of barack obama in 2008 there was no possibility that electing barack obama would enter us into this post-racial era the way that some people said you cannot erase 200 years of political development with one election or one candidate and there's a reason that donald trump became president there is a reason why you hear people saying how much they still support him and being willing to risk their own health to go to a rally without mask and that is about a belief system that is about concerns about the country concerns about the rule of government that surpass donald trump and so the conversation that i've been having with my students is whatever happens on election day right people need to have a vote plan but what is the post-election plan what does it mean that you can have an organized militia threaten to kidnap the governor in a state because they don't like an executive order and so that is bigger than any one person it's bigger than any one candidate or party and i think that if people hang all of their hopes on one candidate again whatever your candidate of choice whoever that is if you hang all of your hopes on that one person and you hang the future of democracy and the meaning of democracy on one person then we have failed to really address the scope of the challenges that we face in this country liz this idea of finding common ground on things that should be obvious common ground for people maybe is one way to get at some of what we're we're talking about here the the idea that militias that threaten to kidnap the governor of a state is in some ways a political conversation that we should have or that that mask wearing is a political conversation that we have seem to many people to be utterly ridiculous they're they're just frankly things that are are settled and that most people are going to agree on can we find some common ground around just basic ways in which we want to act in society and is that a starting point for a bigger better political conversation i i would hope so i mean i would hope these are all things that we can agree on right i mean my my idea of politics has has always been uh under the guise that um we disagree on how to get to the solution not on what the problems are right uh and and and can you know that usually is based off of things that are a little bit easier to tackle uh from a partisan perspective but there's nothing partisan per se about the things the professor brings up in my view um i think math squaring doesn't have to be partisan uh it shouldn't be partisan i think um disagreeing with or or rebuking a militia trying to uh kidnap an elected official these are all things that i i don't hear much disagreement on among republicans i talk to not here in connecticut or elsewhere so to me these are not political posturing points that i come in in contact with um and i think yeah but i i wonder though i mean the there is this there is this chunk of the american electorate which clearly is very much in support of some of the the actions and the language of donald trump and it's not a small number of people it may not be the republicans that that you talk to in connecticut or probably the republicans you talk to too nationwide but it's a fairly substantial number of people in the country well it's interesting because i've had this conversation with colleagues going back now four or five years of how did we end up in in this situation and i think that there there's been a movement in the way that politics addresses issues and i think frankly the democrat and the republican parties from an establishment perspective have have missed that opportunity to be a part of that conversation and you see i think that created a lien for donald trump and in a way that while the traditional candidates were talking about issues and solutions and finding common ground and on things um the president was talking about things that were much more emotionally resonant with people um and and that drove people out that were not traditional republican voters so that in effect sort of changed the way the party communicated and i think is interesting you see some of that on the democrat side with bernie sanders right there's that sort of that vein of emotional resonance that establishment candidates had not been able to tap and and that we saw play out so i'm interested to see how the electorate responds in a general election uh particularly in these swing states that get so much attention and how that changes outcomes if at all were democrats able to go out and communicate with trump voters to say you did not get the deliverables that you were promised and so you need to take a different approach um that that will be interesting to me we're not getting that here in connecticut we're not getting swing state attention uh we probably never will but uh but so that's in a presidential election that's i think will be very interesting to see how that plays out mark you've been talking to a lot of republicans both these down ballot republicans who are running for office but also republicans who who may support them and you know you just wrote a piece about this in the mirror that suggests not all these folks really necessarily want to see their lawn sign next to a donald trump lawn sign as as they drive through town no they don't and republicans in the northeast um are in are in a tough spot um you know uh there's a you know somebody like paul formica who is a state senator uh republican state senator in essex um i'm sorry uh east lime um and he is a former uh first selectmen they tend to be very practical folks and you know he's not a he's not a trump guy but he's a he's a republican and he the criticism he gets on his facebook page you know there was one day literally there was a comment that said why don't you denounce the president and the next comment was why don't you have a lawn sign for the president on your lawn and and that's sort of the dilemma that republicans in this area have if they do publicly break with the president they're going to lose a significant part of the base that is loyal to the president i live in west hartford where there's a candidate um who is a republican candidate who's had some interesting facebook uh video ads and he's tried to create some space between him and the president and connecticut republicans and and national republicans and he did so in a respectful manner he didn't he didn't certainly condemn the president he didn't even m ntion the president by name but you know he's had a tough time with some local republicans so you know i think we're in a spot where somebody like liz who part of her living was representing and helping advise republicans in connecticut you know they see they need to have mr trump kind of exit the stage and then see what things look like you know connecticut is gets caricatured as a blue state and it is in federal races for president and congress but connecticut really was kind of a purplish state for the general assembly and gubernatorial elections it's a very competitive landscape and the thing you got to remember is you know 2008 was a disaster for republicans what barack obama won and he was really the last president here to have coattail effects and the republicans were slammed i mean and you know earlier we were talking about trying to recognize what's a this tectonic shift versus a moment and in 2008 you know i mean i was i i was at crochet's campaign headquarters and and i was there when he became uh you know or he ceased to become the last republican member of congress from new england and you know remember it was only they only won 30 republicans only won 37 state house seats out of 151 and they were really irrelevant but yet every two years right through 2016 they climbed back they did establish an identity separate from national republicans it was you know social moderation fiscal conservative ism criticizing the democrats for their stewardship of the economy and uh the budget and you know 2016 it was a parody in the senate and they came pretty damn close in the house um and then there was mr trump and it's you know it hasn't been said do you liz do you need to establish an an entirely different type of connecticut republican party that is just completely separate from the donald trump ring of the the republican party in order for you to be successful i think that's impossible to do i think that if you i'm not quite sure how you could achieve that right we don't live in a vacuum this isn't unfortunately the truman show here right like you know where i can just pick what happens the the the fact is the republicans in connecticut to mark's point have always been the way we are social liberal to moderate uh fiscal conservatives jody rel was the first governor in the country to advocate and sign legislation that allowed for civil unions for for uh the lgbt community so i mean chris shays nancy johnson rob simmons these are these are connecticut republicans uh i think you look at our state legislature and you see those same kinds of republicans so the connecticut republican party it represents itself quite well i think that particularly looking at 2018 as much as donald trump played a role it was in energizing a democrat base that frankly in connecticut had not really been energized in a while right i mean you had eight years of dan molloy and there were a lot of democrats who who were not fond of their democrat governor they came out to vote for him um but in the midterm years in his midterm years he he did not fare well in the legislature to mark's point um and and you had eight years of a democrat president and no matter what the party in charge in washington midterms are very difficult the only outlier that in modern political history was uh george w bush in 2002. so there are trends that to mark's point maintain right there's there the turnout numbers normalize out of here in in some out years um and and those those sort of habits are pretty cyclical and predictable and what you saw in 2018 was very similar to what you saw in uh in some of the years and during president obama's tenure where you had uh republicans picking up seats in the legislature what we weren't able to do was convert that into wins at the congressional or the statewide level um and we could that's that could probably take up an entire hour-long podcast i may come back to that that with you i just want to actually turn we've been talking about republicans kalila and talk about democrats right now there had been a sense for some time up until recently i think in this very very long excruciatingly long election cycle that there is a a real divide between a kind of a bernie elizabeth warren wing of the party and a kind of joe biden wing of the party that is is more establishment and harkens back to to earlier times do you see two questions do you see that still in evidence in the democratic party and do you feel like the democrats right now at the national level and really across the board are making a case for being about something that is not just not trump no i think i language is important and labels are important because they often convey a particular perspective but nationally i can't tell you what it means to be a progressive because the definition of that varies based on the person who's responding to the question within connecticut that same sort of divide or murkiness is also apparent think about the police accountability bill that just passed and no one was happy with the outcome of that you had a group of people who said this is horrible it is going to make the lives of law enforcement officers more dangerous because now it is giving a license to people to do whatever they want you have people who identify as quote-unquote progressives saying this does not go far enough i want a more hard-line stance and what we know is that governing is always about the art of compromise that you have to stand somewhere in order to get closer to what you want realizing that you can never get everything and i think that kind of conversation amongst democrats nationally is also playing out in the state of connecticut to think about what we have seen in this state in the wake of covet 19. the ways in which the disparities around covet 19 contraction and also mortality has been heavily vested within black and brown communities across our state what will that mean in connection to the national election what will that mean if people don't have access to health care and to health coverage families who are already struggling in this sort of economic downturns now worried about will i be able to get the health care that i need will i be able to pay for the prescriptions that i need will my kid be able to go to school and have some sense of normalcy there to know that their safety is also protected and i don't think there is enough of a conversation beyond party elite to actually connect on the ground and that's something that we see nationally and also within the state across political parties but i think in this year where so many people who started this year feeling okay are now realizing in october that they're not as secure as they thought when you see 40 percent of black owned businesses permanently closing that raises the question of what the role of government should be beyond our sort of narrow definition of what a conservative approach is to government it really is about all people deciding what's going to happen next you know when klyla talks about the police accountability bill i'm i was struck i was reminded of something and it's easy to a degree to win an election you know you get the votes it's over it's easy to pass a bill and it's over but what's hard is what happens after that and what i'm talking about with the police accountability bill um there was a moment that i share was lost and that moment was for the first time in my career seeing police officers stand shoulder-to-shoulder with protesters not everywhere but boy in a lot of places in connecticut and then the police accountability bill became about um qualified immunity which is a it's a legalistic thing i i i really fear that people on both sides have kind of misconstrued the importance of that it was vital to the advocates to have a limit on qualified immunity for police officers and it was vital for the police officers to fight that and maintain the status quo there but to me the success or failure of that police accountability measure is going to be really a cultural change you know it's going to be will there be a difference in how police officers are trained um what will be the techniques on de-escalating um you know the brianna taylor uh episode where a woman was shot to death in her apartment something that probably was uh fated you know once the police made you know the really ill-considered decision to do a raid in the middle of the night for a low-level going after a low-level drug dealer this was not trying to capture a terrorist who's going to you know blow up a school but so anyway i i think i i think of the police accountability bill in the same way i think of the election i i'm wondering what happens when somebody wins then what happens do we come back together is there some kind of healing uh and again i keep going back to kind of culture because i've seen ugliness this cycle that i have never seen before in my 40 years of being a reporter most of it in connecticut of of just seeing casual disrespect you know when i'm interviewing somebody in ridgefield the other day and people are walking by giving this guy the finger or in farmington valley where i was told earlier today that you know somebody was hanging a sex toy on the wand sign of a woman running for the general assembly you know this is a little different place that we're in the level of anger is real it's not just on social media and so the question to me is after this election how will the leaders how can the leaders of both parties turn down the temperature and kind of make things work again and liz i'd like to actually put that to you and you know mark was talking about things that were happening in real life for the most part but we've also seen these episodes of zoom bombing uh a johanna hayes event uh a first congressional district debate the other night it happened to a candidate in delaware this the stuff is happening all the time and i i don't know as we we say this every single cycle it's gotten uglier than it's ever gotten before but it's really gotten uglier than it's ever gotten before this year i think some of that to mark's point is is really cultural um i think i i talk with candidates and and former elected officials all the time i know i have have been a victim of of this uh constantly and i think we have keyboard warriors who feel like there is a fair amount of distance between them and the person they are attacking and that empowers people to stay and do things they would not do in person and that is not good for society that's not good for humanity that's not good for politics but mostly just as people we need to do better and so i think i have this conversation i'll invoke his name i'm sure he won't mind i have this conversation with john mckinney often and we talk about some of the things that he went through after the bill the gun bill that they passed after the tragedy at sandy hook and and some of the things that were said and done to him and we talk about his dad who uh some you may know was a member of congress a very long time ago and some of the horrible things that were said uh to him and about him and and messages received then and and talking with members of of congress and elected officials on all sides of the aisle this is something that people it's just sort of par for the course comes with the territory unfortunately but i do think that social media in particular has empowered people in a way that there is a distance between them and the person that they are attacking in a way that they feel there's it's okay um and that it is not okay how much of it is how much of it is emboldened by the the guy who's in the white house right now i mean there's there's no one who does this in terms of name calling baseless accusations saying things that that aren't true about people spreading conspiracy theories the man in the white house does that more than almost anybody in america and he sets a a bit of a tone i mean does some of that change liz if if if the resident of the white house changes well i sure hope it changes period if the president gets reelected that has to change if if is not re-elected it has it has to change i think that the president has done it in a way that absolutely has added to the problem not uh not made the problem go away um and he bears a lot of responsibility for that but i have seen as well it's sort of emboldened a bipartisan call to action where the rules of decorum that existed maybe when nancy johnson was a member of congress no longer exists and i do think a lot of that is that we can just pound something out on twitter and feel good about ourselves and just kind of drop the mic and walk away and that's a bipartisan problem some of the things that i've seen democrats say on twitter very much match what what the president and republicans say as the leader of the free world he should do better um i think that there's a difference between individual responsibility and institutional accountability here and you know i interviewed the widow of congressman elijah cummings and she talked about what it meant that her husband was literally fighting for his life and being attacked not only by the president but by his enablers and his supporters who were wishing death upon him as he was in a fight for his life and still this commitment to democracy she talked about him having to defend his friendship with mark meadows who at the time was congressman mark meadows not chief of staff and making it clear that we are friends yes i'm a part of this party but we are people and so that institutional design piece that i think is so important here liz is that there was a break that happened long before twitter became this cesspool and that is decision making by people like newt gingrich as speaker of the house to say those bipartisan social gatherings we used to have we're not going to do that the idea that to go to the state of the union of this country that we all love and that we all contribute to you have to be with your party over here i'm going to be with my party over here and we're going to send a clear signal that bipartisanship is viewed as weakness so that flows in many ways that we see happening across the air which makes it possible to have a debate a presidential debate and you can't hear any policy as two hundred and ten thousand americans have lost their lives and instead we have to figure out how to mute a microphone in order to get substance that shouldn't be acceptable to anyone regardless of party and the concern that i have to mark's point you know we're going to head into a gubernatorial election in our state what should we be stealing ourselves for and preparing for in this state as we approach that election the nastiness the vitriol the seeming inability or unwillingness to understand that there are common challenges facing our state that regardless of how you feel transportation is an issue regardless of how you feel access to public education support for small businesses can we address those challenges head on without getting into some schoolyard taunts that i wouldn't accept from my kid or my students and yet we not only accept it from our elected officials we we reward them by paying their salaries to continue doing it it's like being in an abusive relationship where you don't know why you keep going back but you go back because it's familiar and there's some kind of security and familiarity professor you you are absolutely right in terms of this has been going on for a long time and i think it does coincide and mark will get a chuckle out of this i think a lot of it coincides with some of the changes in campaign finance law where the way in which campaigns are run and finance changed significantly and so everything had to become partisan because everybody had to get their chance to go raise the money they needed to raise and differentiate themselves and so i think what you're talking about in terms of the way that gingrich kind of shifted things to a more partisan i think that coincided with some significant changes in campaign finance law that changed like entirely the way that congress behaves here's where all where i'll say i think connecticut for how bro broken washington is and probably unfortunately will be for some time i am so proud of the way that connecticut leader have operated in very difficult spaces achieving some really monumental outcomes over the course of the last 10 years let's say but particularly the last six years when you look at the things that they tackled things they disagreed on on completely opposite sides they were able to find that common ground they were able to come together and to your point earlier they didn't all agree with the outcome but boy did they do some really big things and one of the things we haven't talked about is the fact that we've got three legislative leaders who are retiring this year and these are this group of leaders uh feminist claritus house republican leader len fasano senate republican leader uh senator looney democrat president and joe arisimo is the speaker so senator looney is staying around but the other three this group of people have achieved some really big things and so i don't expect to see the kind of thing we're seeing at the federal level you know where you're more likely to see that in a republican primary or a democrat primary if there is one i think the internal politics will be much more feisty and better uh than we'll see in a general election because connecticut voters do not tolerate that and have not tolerated that here in connecticut do they tolerate it at the national level because it's part of unfortunately how broken washington is yes but i think here in connecticut we have a reason to be very proud of the way that the leaders of both parties have comported themselves uh during their tenure in the legislature and what that's done for our state um mark i i'm wondering if you can pick up on that a little bit our friend diane smith once wants us to dive into the connecticut legislature and maybe some some interesting races that are there as liz points out there's going to be changes in leadership certainly um it's it's fairly clear that the connecticut legislature isn't isn't changing from democrat to republican this time around but what should we be watching for on election night uh so depending on how big the blue wave is i mean if there truly is this tidal wave then doing granular analysis district by district will be less important um but you know so a couple of things to think about um in the state senate we had a whole bunch of close races last time there were i think it's nine senators who won with no more than 52 percent of the vote um one of the things that i'm struck by this year is a huge number of rematches uh you have people who came close uh in 2018 and in a lot of ways this election is a continuation of 2018. you know the uh the democratic base was energized by the president uh by the women's march by subsequent events on um on police brutality um it all seems to be part of of really one giant campaign since 2018 and there are a lot of candidates trying to you know write the finale to a story that they opened up in 2018. so that's something to look for is again all the rematches and some were in very close races you know there's a democratic state rep maria horn up towards your way uh john in northwest connecticut and she unseated uh a kind of a moderate republican name brian oller and there was a recount that's how close it was well brian oller is running again again against maria horn so you know that's something that'll be on my list election night i i just want to point out that if you drive through the beautiful scenic town of norfolk which is which is lovely this time of year with the changing leaves there is a an older or horn sign in every single yard save for one there's um there's a a few folks who've decided to put out rick astley signs um rick astley of course the the 1980s singer famous for um uh he's never gonna give you up he's never gonna let you down he's never gonna turn around never going to make you cry never going to say goodbye um so i just i i guess you're not singing i'm sad you're not saying i've i've driven through town several times now the last couple days looking for the rick astley signs amid the the uh oller in horn signs i apologize for for interrupting your astute political analysis for that anecdote i just thought it was important and and maybe we'll sing later on in the program but you know and one of the other things to keep in mind is the people who are most vulnerable in either party they tend to be in the districts or swing districts so these tend to be the people who are a little bit closer to the center you know the democrat be left of center but not that far away from the center and and that is one of the the things that people in both parties will quietly if not privately bemoan is who on the other side they might beat because you know one of the little secrets uh it's not a secret to liz or kalila or you is you know ned lamont doesn't much want to see 26 democrats elected to the state senate on november 3rd you know 23 i mean 22 would be fine which i have now he doesn't want to lose anything but the more you have the more complicated his life gets the more complicated marty looney's life gets because it becomes harder to manage a caucus when you have uh you know in the case of the senate anything above 18 you know is extra and you know people get to do their own thing and you get a lot of pressures you know um when the republicans got greater numbers they had a fairly vocal group of of people far more conservative than the you know the bulk of the republican caucus and larry caffaro before them as clark has had to deal with that and then feminists had to deal with that and of course life got simpler for them as when their numbers went down um so you know i'm not sure she would agree with that well i know you're right um but it's that's one of the hard things about these big wave elections you know you whichever way it goes you tend to lose people who are what you know liz was talking about people who are the workers who yeah they're partisan but they're partisan on this issue but they're going to work with the other side on that issue you know um you know the recent energy bill is an example you know you have the two democratic co-chairs of the energy and technology committee working with the two republican ranking members and the democratic co-chairs made it clear that they had the votes with democrats to probably go a little bit further than some of the republicans would have been comfortable with but they thought it very important to say no this is a bipartisan effort energy policy particularly when it came to the reliability and cost should not be partisan you know you get into climate change you know okay it's a little bit of a different animal so that's sort of the i guess one of the concerning things if we have a huge wave um will it become harder for the parties to work together as opposed to when it was 18 18 in the senate and you know you get people on both sides who say the budget they put together um in 2017 had a really a lot of smart things in there volatility cap it kind of made sure that if you were running big surpluses you weren't gonna you weren't gonna spend it you were going to use it to pay down pension debt you know stuff like that um so it's it's a little bit hard to kind of maintain that balance and particularly this year i don't think we're going to see much of a balance on november 3rd i i want to get to a couple questions that people are putting in here um mark gilbert has uh has written a a question that i i love and it's fairly detailed for a an event like this but i'll read it says given the intersection of this pandemic struggling economy disintegration of social support systems and racial injustice exposed beyond argument what are the issues you think we should first pursue that will have the best chance of finding success in connecticut what specific structural changes do you think need immediate attention wow it's a big question and and because it's such a big question i want to put it to you kalila brandi um handle that one yeah yeah i was just thinking that actually my students have an exam next week so you could come write an exam question for me or just let me capture this one i'll be sure to give you um full credit for that thank you so much i like he even has a and b it's almost like you know c and d like none of the above i think mark's an educator i love it but but i mean well to that point i mean but he's asking i think a very important question i mean when we when we think about a time like this i mean what are the things that we actually need to try to fix and what are the things that that if we were to try to fix them they would actually have some have some residents right now i mean that that is a hard thing to think about because there's so much in this world that seems so very very broken and often it feels like those two things are in conflict with one another what we should be doing and what we can do in an expedient way based on the first part of the question i am very laser focused about the investments that we are making in young people in our state one of the things that covet 19 revealed is the fractures in our system of public education across our state so that some people thought that you know well let's keep people safe by moving to zoom or moving to google classroom that sounds great but that requires that you have stable consistent internet access in your home it requires that you have the equipment that you will need in order to engage it also assumes that there is a parent who can be there with you to help walk you through that and we also realize this year that unfortunately for many children home is not a safe place for them to be and so it raises these broader questions about what are the investments and commitments we need to make into education that will require a structural change when it comes to funding when it comes to the types of opportunities that young people have and john i think that feeds into every other policy area and challenge that we are facing in connecticut you want to have a a police force and a law enforcement system that looks like the community that it protects and looks like the community that it serves well you have to cultivate a pipeline early on so that people see public safety as a career that they want to be a part of or that if there are changes that they want to to make they need to be a part of that and set up very early on to do that so what are the kinds of vocational training programs we have in our schools to do that how are we pursuing entrepreneurship for young people so that they can create the small businesses that will drive the economy of our state and at a very basic level it's hard for a kid to pay attention in a virtual classroom when they are uncertain about whether their family will be able to stay in their home the next month or the month after that or if going back to school in person is better for their social emotional health but then puts another family member at risk because we are now seeing an increase in multi-generational family units in order to consolidate costs so i think that's where we need to focus what are the opportunities we need to create for young people and most importantly how do we listen to what young people are saying if all of us as adults are feeling the stress and the anxiety and the heaviness of this year whether it's election or covet or racial reckonings then certainly young people are feeling it magnified i i think uh liz you know kalila touches on one of the many things i think that we're probably learning from this year right we're seeing all sorts of systems that some people thought were working a lot of people thought weren't working and they're just exposed right it's it's very clear that something in our education system is fundamentally wrong when we when we can't educate kids through a pandemic and that's just one of many examples what what are some things to to our our viewers question there that you think we need to focus on coming out of all this as we get through this very important election well i i want to echo what the professor said in terms of the what we have what has been exposed right i mean one in four connecticut uh students lost learning during the pandemic for all of the reasons the professor mentions right i mean this was this has been as a working parent with two young kids this has been very difficult for everybody um and so i think that connecticut started this in a space where we have one of the have consistently had one of the worst achievement gaps in the country and there is just no excuse for that um and i think what i would love to see again is is having a more bipartisan dialogue about the solutions because to your point mark about some of the unsexy things that were in that 2017 budget that have made a fundamental structural change in the way that we govern as a state i think if we can get those kinds of outcomes on the issues uh that mark is talking about boy will we really fundamentally change things here right i mean we need a better opportunities for people in education we need a better way to provide support and opportunity to the business community particularly small businesses who have been so disadvantaged by what's happened during the pandemic so i think that all of it needs to be fixed and i think it all works together you can't have a strong economy if you don't have an educated population you can't employ people who are not ready for the workforce um and so you you really can't just pick one of them as a priority you really have to tackle all of them um and i think we are in a better position to tackle these things because of the bipartisan that work that was done uh in in previous budget cycles that put us in a position to where we are financially stronger than we would otherwise be um and again i would say the call to action here is for the new group of bipartisan leaders to get their heads together and and work to tackle these problems because we know we can fix them if they work together one of the least sexy things that's going on right now is this governor lamont's administration before the pandemic started paying some real attention to again the the really boring area of workforce development and this this sort of builds on what kalila was talking about what's going on in the schools and you know governor malloy sort of started the effort to trying to connect job training to actual jobs and this is you know this is something that's hugely important because you know you have to remember in connecticut that 40 percent of the state is really vulnerable that they're either they're either under the poverty level or they are in they're on the bubble you know um if they do don't have enough money in the bank to deal with any an unexpected expense of like more than four or 500 bucks and the pandemic has been this huge stress test about that but before the pandemic you know people be surprised to learn that one of connecticut's problems in being slow and growing jobs is that there were like 10 000 manufacturing jobs going wanting you know these were jobs that that pay a middle class salary and you know so before the pandemic you know i mean i was working on a story then i i'm now revisiting it updating it but about the extent to which connecticut is preparing people for the jobs that are there and also the extent to which they are reaching down into the element of the workforce that and i don't say this to put anybody down but it's sort of the marginal end it's the people who are doing maybe two part-time jobs to eke out a living but they don't have benefits um you know maybe they're at minimum wage or slightly above minimum wage and that's a big chunk of connecticut that's vulnerable so this doesn't require a lot of legislative action but it would be nice if people would wake up to this issue and get behind to do the hard work of making sure that we take these job training programs some of which are very successful they're very good at actually placing people and knitting it together into a system that that works and you know that's been something that's you know sort of went on the back burner during the pandemic but they're they're starting to step that up again but that's going to be one of the things that will determine if connecticut really turns the corner in a way that has any sustaina ility not just for the well to do but for for how to bring more people into the middle class and give them a stable uh earning we just have a a couple of minutes left and i want to ask paul brunding quickly about something that i probably heard from voters as i've i've done some national radio programs over the course of the last several months i i've talked to pollster stan greenberg on my on my podcast who talks to you know voters who say that they are um they're unsure who they're voting for which i never really believe um and everyone everyone who everyone talks to says that health care is the thing that is most on people's minds because we've never fixed the problem of providing health care in america to two people we've maybe given more people health insurance than they had before but that hasn't solved the problem and then as we go through a health pandemic it really comes to the forefront that our health care system is is broken is is health care the thing to you kali lebron dean that that's most on the table right now in this election or that needs to be addressed nationwide more than anything else i'm always hesitant to say the issue but i think it is definitely in the top two and here's why healthcare as you said has to be more than just health insurance and health coverage care also includes looking at total holistic health and wellness it looks at prevention it looks at access that people have access to care access to uh counseling and behavioral health services that can help people make it through these kinds of challenging times and i think that in a system and in a place where you have people who had good jobs who you know did all the things they were supposed to do and we're still finding a difficult time getting access to testing or getting access to treatment and as we know from cases here in connecticut people who went to get treatment and were turned away and sadly lost their lives because of that that is something that again i don't think we should politicize because people are struggling in montana just as they are struggling in the commonwealth of kentucky to keep themselves healthy and safe and on the cusp of a major vote to appoint someone to the united states supreme court and the implications of that for the very fragile measures that we do have in place to at least create some kind of coverage and access this issue is not going away a last thing for you liz to get back to something that we touched on earlier we we mentioned this idea of of the role of government and what it it could or should be and i guess i wonder if if you feel like that's one of the things that's on the table this this election because you know i grew up with my a world view of republicans and democrats that that thought about what the role of government should be in a i think in kind of a little bit of a black and white way and that seems to have been let's just say muddied by this year of of covid in which governmental intervention is incredibly important to people's lives and i guess i'm wondering if that's something that you feel the the different approaches to what role government plays is something that we're we're really going to be thinking about this election well i think it's interesting because i think it plays off of the conversation about what are the priorities and and while stan might be correct at the federal level here in connecticut we like living here uh generally speaking our quality of life is very good but we lack affordability and that's true across the board and that creates a lot of problems in terms of talking about the role of government from from what i've seen i think people in connecticut are not looking for a government to try and uh make things more complicated right when they're talking about how are we going to fix how are we going to empower parents uh to edu better educate their their children and to make the choices that work for them and their families we're talking about less government intervention when we're talking about empowering small businesses and letting uh entrepreneurs create a space that allows them to succeed we're talking about less government intervention not more i think that in terms of the response to the pandemic certainly things like ppe and testing and protecting particularly those most vulnerable to us and identifying trends uh like where we started this conversation or the professor was talking about the fact that our black and brown communities have been uh so disproportionately affected by this pandemic in particular how are we going to address those issues and our vulnerable populations that is the role of government and i think that's what people are going to be looking for but in terms of the recovery and reopening and where do we go from here i think politicians are not necessarily the most trusted uh group of people in terms of finding ways to fix things i think that people feel they are much better at controlling their own destiny and their own outcome so that might be a very traditionally republican answer for you but that's probably the lane that i would stay in because i think people are going to make better decisions but it's the role of government particularly i think to identify those who have been adversely affected by this and how do we help them and how do we stop them from being impacted by things like this in the future pas the last question for you comes from one of our um one of our viewers here who says um does our panel see president trump's effort to appeal to suburban voters by warning the democrats want quote low-income housing invading their towns they see it striking a cord in connecticut i've looked for evidence of it and it's it's i you know it's hard to say uh you know we it's it's something that you know in my business you look for issues that fit into an existing narrative because those are the arguments that tend to have power if if they're striking something that people are leaning that way and in new england in connecticut local rule is huge and you know marty looney the leader of the senate you know when he pushed a sort of a school regionalization bill and it was a lot of carrots and and and looking at some of these smaller systems you know politically i mean that was just a really bad door to open and they're kind of paying for that in concert with you know police accountability and again generally speaking affordable housing connecticut has a great degree of segregation um you know this is a bad thing to bring up in the last minutes of of a discussion um but there's no question connecticut has in many communities restrictive zoning two um two-acre zoning and there's also an issue of of cost even if you wave a magic wand and you allow multi-family housing and a lot of these suburbs in fairfield county that don't currently allow it you're still up against some of the most expensive real estate in the united states so i mean that's you know that's a longer conversation but yeah it it is grabbing some attention i'll be honest i have no idea how to weigh that against the the true anger uh in the suburbs um particularly women towards the president the president who is very verbally abusive uh to his opponents particularly women um there's a lot of here there's data there's a lot of polling there you know there's a gargantuan gender gap there's always been a gender gap uh republican you know women you know leaning a little bit more towards democrats but now it's huge because of this president you know who not only wants to tell you that kamala harris has bad politics but that she's also a monster that has not played well so i guess the question for that the person is which one tilts the balance is it concerned about you know affordable housing or is it concern about the president the interesting thing is you see black lives matter signs all over the suburbs now my colleague jackie ray thomas had a story where there was one of these uh sort of demonstrations black lives matter and and there was a black gentleman who lived in one of the suburbs who said yeah they're all with us on black lives matter and police stuff but let's talk about zoning and it's going to be a different talk so there's there's plenty of jaclyn ray thomas stories to go through with anecdotes just like that one um i know that's a hard question to ask is the last question but we we ran out of time i mean we only had so much time so that was the radio i mean it didn't shut off at eight o'clock but i went a couple minutes over i i want to thank you all very much for doing this i want to thank our our audience i want to thank kalila brown dean associate professor of political science at quinnipiac university her book here look at this i got product placement right it's called identity politics in the united states and she's got a cool new podcast called disrupted on connecticut public calila just give us give us 30 seconds on disruptive what are we here so you will hear conversations with black law enforcement officers in connecticut about what it means to be black and blue in this time you'll hear about the role of art and promoting social change and next week you will hear about how we manage the stress of elections and promote better health so thank you john for having me and thank you to the connecticut mirror we we probably should have just spent the entire hour just talking about how how we can be more healthy maybe maybe you can come back after the election and talk about that i'm looking forward to it thank you liz karanowicz is a veteran republican strategist and she's got this new political action committee called fight for connecticut give me 30 seconds on what fight for connecticut is liz fight for connecticut is an effort our honorary chair is thomas claridis who is retiring from the state legislature this year and the goal is to draw attention to the fact that one-party control of connecticut leads to sort of one-sided solutions and we need to be thinking about things in a different way excellent she's also a regular on wtnh's capital report say hi to the capital report gang for me and thank you so much liz for being here it's great to see you i will thank you so much and thank you to the connecticut mayor for having me and mark pasanochis is the capital bureau chief of course of the connecticut mirror are you going to watch that ball game pass or were you just giving up on baseball for the year i watched a little bit of the first game just i turned on just in time to see mookie hit a home run and i have to admit i i cheered for him mookie steals a base everyone in america gets a free taco was that was the big story from from last night thank you all very much for joining us i know there's a lot of other things going on we do have another event coming up next week as i was talking about at the top of the program jennifer mcfadden of yale school of management will be moderating a conversation with bruce potterman he's the publisher of the mirror in john thornton of the american journalism project he has really helped to jumpstart a lot of journalism programs and projects across america raised some 50 million dollars to invest in local journalism that is next wednesday october 28th at 5 30 p.m you can go to ctmirror.org events to sign up for that and there are a lot more events coming up with the connecticut mirror as well you can always subscribe to our podcast steady habits just go to steadyhabits.org goodnight everyone thanks for joining us