A CT newcomer up-close at the inauguration
It’s ironic, in a way, that the only person we’ve found from Connecticut who attended the Biden-Harris inauguration as a guest, not a member of Congress or family, has no strong political connection to the state and has only lived here a few months.
Maybe there were others in the sparse crowd, I don’t know. But there, perched in the ideal spot Wednesday, was Fabrice Houdart, newly from Newtown, sitting a few rows above the U.S. Capitol platform as history unfolded. He could glance to his left and behold a clear view of the National Mall festooned with flags, but barely a living soul.
“It was a great honor and then, you know, because we had a difficult, traumatizing four years, it felt like a lot of optimism,” Houdart said to me from D.C. after the swearings-in. “It’s a new day for America.”
He scored his phenominally rare ticket as a close friend of Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif. He’s from France, not a U.S. citizen, though he lived in Washington, D.C., or New York for 19 years, working for the World Bank and the United Nations on LGBT and other human rights issues.
Houdart doesn’t yet know much about the state where he moved on Sept. 1, part of the wave of New York City emigres escaping to suburbia and exurbia in the pandemic shutdown. He did exchange greetings with his Congresswoman, Rep. Jahana Hayes, CT-5, who had given him a U.S. flag to fly at his historic house after he moved in.
Ironic in a way, that the Connecticut guy up-close at the inauguration didn’t come from the state’s political culture. And yet, in a deeper sense, Fabrice Houdart, born in Paris, was the perfect person to represent the population of his new home state.
He is exactly who Connecticut desperately needs to attract and keep. And as a gay, professional, single father of two 7-year-old boys, he’s finding Newtown, and Connecticut, ideal.
“When I came to Newtown it was kind of the first time I went outside of a big American city and I was amazed at how welcoming people were,” he said. “My neighbors quickly understood and they would ask, ‘Oh, do the kids have a mother?’ and once they would understand they were very supportive.”
He’s separated from his co-parent, who owns a house in a nearby town. Houdart’s rented house, much to his joy, was a tavern where the officers of Gen. Rochambeau stayed over on the French army’s famous march to the battle of Yorktown in 1781, the American Revolution. One neighbor repaired a French flag that he flies, which ripped in a windstorm.
Most important, his sons, U.S.-born citizens, seem very happy. “They said that the people are much nicer than in New York,” said Houdart, 42. “The schools have been extremely welcoming and they know that the boys have gay fathers.”
Houdart, 42, is a managing director for Out Leadership, a global think tank, where he works to expand the LGBT representation on the boards of large companies.
I ask whether he’s a partisan Democrat.
“I cannot vote but inclusiveness to me is a value I really believe in and the Biden administration has shown that they are the most inclusive administration so far,” he said, citing Biden’s pick of Pete Buttigieg as transportation secretary and just this week, Biden’s choice of Rachel Levine, a transgender physician and Pennsylvania’s top health official, as assistant secretary of Health and Human Services.
“To me, all of those are great signals,” Houdart said.
Then there was Lady Gaga singing the Star Spangled Banner. “Gay men love Lady Gaga, she has a great outfit,” Houdart said. “And I love the fact that they were very serious about the pandemic.”
Everyone at the inauguration had to be tested for
COVID-19, he said, at least
48 hours before he event. Yet another contrast with the Trump administration that was impossible to miss Wednesday.
At the moment when Biden took the oath, Houdart said he was thinking of what a long-shot it had been for Democrats to win the White House and Senate. He took a selfie of himself with Biden’s and Chief Justice John Roberts’ hands raised in the background — and said he’ll frame his inauguration ticket.
As we talk, I think of another upbeat Parisian who documented American political culture, Alexis de Tocqueville in the 19th century. America’s partisan culture wars strike Houdart as odd.
“Of the 11 members of Congress that are openly LGBT, they are all Democrats. There are no openly LGBT Republicans in Congress. And to me that is very strange because I work globally, and usually you have openly LGBT people in both parties, in the conservative side and the progressive side.”
He was not aware of Connecticut’s LGBT-welcoming political scene. I told him about the state comptroller, the longest serving state Supreme Court justice, the recently retired head of the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system and numerous other ranking officials who are LGBT, not to mention that this was the first state to adopt civil unions legislatively, in 2005 — though not without a long struggle.
“So I’m basically in a very gay state?” he asks.
Representation matters, he tells me, not only to help eliminate discrimination. “To me, LGBT people have a different sensibility to life based on their experience and so it makes sense to try to have more representation of the various sorts that you find in society.”
We talk about my reporting 15 years ago, that it was Fortune 500 corporations, not progressive government policies, that led the way toward civil unions and ultimately gay marriage. And yet, representation on corporate boards remains very low.
“A lot of what I work on is to say to companies, ‘Look, if you are looking for a board member, here is ten profiles that may not be on your radar screen but that are very talented ... that would make your board even more effective,’ ” he explained. “I really believe in the power of the private sector.”
And, of course, the power of government to guide markets matters a lot in the global world-view that’s as prominent in Connecticut as anyplace. That’s why Houdart felt uplifted at the inauguration.
“You know, I kind of needed that. It’s not the most cheerful period of my time in the United States. I had to change cities, life is difficult because there’s less socializing, and so I thought that being there was very cheerful,” he said. “You can see a huge difference between the discourse of Joe Biden and the discourse of Trump, it’s the discourse of hope whereas the discourse of Trump is the discourse of conflict and tension.
“We are turning the page.”