The state GOP leader who wanted to be a catcher
The guy who will be sworn in as a top Republican leader in Connecticut next month learned how to govern around the kitchen table as a kid.
His father was a Republican, his mother a Democrat. Kevin Kelly, the Senate minority leader-elect, was raised to respect all sides.
“There were no squabbles at the kitchen table,” he said this week, adding that one brother is a Democrat now and another a Republican. “Everybody was working to get to the same place.”
This doesn’t sound like a Washington Republican, does it? Certainly not the ilk of a Mitch McConnell, the U.S. Senate Republican majority leader who refuses to raise most Democratic bills for a vote.
Kevin’s Connecticut Republican brand is different. He values collaboration, and sees government’s purpose as helping people.
After he takes the oath of office on Jan. 6, for a sixth term but new to the party’s highest leadership role in the Senate, it will be interesting to see how he also plays the loyal opposition to the Democratic tight control.
A clue might be found on the baseball diamond.
State Sen. Kevin Kelly, whose 21st District spreads through Stratford, Monroe, Seymour and Shelton, spent more than an hour Tuesday morning Zooming with the Hearst Connecticut Media Editorial Board. It was his first edit board in his new role, he said.
Quick background: Our board for interviews consists of the editorial page editors for Hearst’s newspapers in the state — John Breunig, for The Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time; Hugh Bailey, for the Connecticut Post and New Haven Register; and me, for The News-Times in Danbury and The Norwalk Hour; we also write for the Middletown Press and Register-Citizen in Torrington.
We three opinion editors frequently meet with Connecticut’s movers and shakers, whether they are politicians, directors of organizations and nonprofits, or experts on certain issues. Usually it’s a fascinating back-and-forth and we’ve worked together long enough to know what line of questioning each of us is likely to pursue.
So I was not surprised when John asked Kevin what position he had played.
Kevin’s father was a catcher, a player talented enough to go to Notre Dame on a baseball scholarship and then play for the St. Louis Cardinals organization.
Naturally, Kevin wanted to play, too, but in 9th grade had a reckoning.
“My dad taught me,” he said, “but as you can see, I wear glasses.”
“All you got to do is watch the ball,” he recounted his dad’s instruction, “if it spins like this, it’s a fastball; if it spins like this, it’s a sinker, if it spins like this,” Kevin said bending his right hand to demonstrate each, “it’s a slider.”
“Dad, I can just about see the ball, let alone see the laces and how fast they’re spinning,” he replied.
He kept playing in recreational softball. But he remains a big baseball fan — the Cardinals are his favorite team and catcher Yadier Molina his favorite player — and you’ll likely hear a lot of baseball analogies tossed around the Capitol. When outgoing Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano, who did not seek reelection, used sports analogies it was football, which he played at Yale.
It’s a new game in Hartford now.
‘In every play’
To gauge how Kevin might use his new leadership role to govern, look at his background.
He’s connected to Bridgeport, where his parents grew up. His father was a brake salesman for Raybestos, which brought the family to Allentown, Pennsylvania, where Kevin was born. They moved back to the Stratford-Bridgeport area.
“God only knows, I didn’t say as a kid, ‘I want to be Senate Republican leader some day,’” he said, “but here I am.”
But when it was time for college and his dad gave this advice: study something you like, he knew it would be politics.
He worked in the state Department of Social Services office in Bridgeport, eventually investigating eligibility for Medicaid. Those 14 years informed his perspective and prompted him to attend the University of Connecticut Law School nights to study elder law.
“It was more of a vocation, a mission.” He wanted to help people before “the die was pretty much cast.”
That interest led to him serving on the Aging, Insurance and Human Services committees in the General Assembly.
“Never forgetting my time with DSS, the shoes on the ground. Seeing a role and purpose for government — people need help,” he said.
This upcoming General Assembly session will bring many challenges, one of the first being how to swear in 36 senators and 151 representatives during a pandemic. Usually it’s a time of celebration, a life event to share with loved ones. Even with masks, that would be risky.
There’s the conducting of business — making sure the public can speak remotely during hearings — and the resolving of issues, the monster one being creating a balanced state budget to guide the next two years.
That’s no small task at any time, but with families struggling and in need of more services while the economy is hurting and businesses also need aid, this coming session is not for the feint of heart. From crafting a budget arises revenue questions — allow recreational marijuana and tax it, like other states? — and expenses, such as feeding the Special Transportation Fund to rebuild highways, bridges and rails.
Whatever happens, it all comes down to affecting Connecticut’s taxpayers and residents one way or another.
“I always come to the equation by staying focused on the issues themselves,” Kevin said. “It’s when you get the partisan politics involved it can go sideways.”
Neither party is right or wrong, just different, he learned at the childhood kitchen table.
“The Democrats and Republicans all want the same better, greater, wonderful Connecticut,” he said. “It’s in the methodology.” You want to get to New York City — do you take I-95 or the Merritt? Maybe it’s both or neither — it’s Route 1 because of traffic, he said, for example. “But you’ve got to have the conversation.”
A catcher plays defense, but as a powerful leader of the minority Republicans in the state Senate — pitching alternatives to majority Democratic measures — Kevin Kelly will have to play offense.
He seems eager to be in his new position and ready for whatever the next few innings bring.
“Catcher I think is the best,” Kevin said. “You’re in every play, but also you’re the field general making sure everybody is where they need to be.”