Welcome to the Capitol Report Tip Sheet, a weekly newsletter from Mike Cerulli and Tom Dudchik.

This week, we'll break down the latest committee chair assignments and dish on a well-sourced rumor about a key Republican legislative appointment. Plus, Ritter gets the Paz treatment...

From sunny Florida, the Senate President announces his chairs and mulls Heisman prospects

It was partly cloudy Sunday afternoon with a high of 75 degrees in Key Biscayne, the small island town due south of Miami Beach.

Key Biscayne was the site of this weekend’s board meeting of the State Legislative Leaders Foundation (SLLF). Three Connecticut legislators — Senate President Pro Tempore Marty Looney, House Speaker Matt Ritter, and Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff — are members of the SLLF’s board. Looney is the current chair of the SLLF.

For those keeping tabs on the plethora of acronymed political organizations, the SLLF is an organization of state senate presidents, state house speakers, minority leaders, and majority leaders. The SLLF is a separate entity from the National Conference of State Legislatures, which maintains a 63-member executive committee and has its own subordinate organization focused solely on speakers of state houses, the National Speakers Conference.

That tangle of national organizations of state legislative leaders mirrors an equally sprawling landscape of legislative committees in the Connecticut General Assembly. Legislative leaders recently announced the creation of one new standing committee – a spin-off from the existing Government Administrations and Elections Committee – and one new select committee focusing on special education.

The composition of the General Assembly’s committees was on Senator Looney’s mind when he touched down in Florida last week. The Senate President’s leadership team rolled out their picks to chair each committee on Friday after weeks of deliberation.

The incoming 25-member majority saw few changes to their roster of chairs. Freshman Senator-elect Paul Honig will take the reins of the Veterans Affairs Committee, replacing Senator Martha Marx who will move to co-chair the Housing Committee.

Looney and his leadership team also named Senator-elect Sujata Gadkar-Wilcox to co-chair the new committee spun-off from the Government Administrations and Elections Committee which will be focused on government oversight. The Senate President told the Tip Sheet the new committee will mirror many of the functions of the former Legislative Program Review and Investigations Committee, though a possible point of partisan debate could arise over whether or not the new committee will be constituted in the same bipartisan manor as its historic predecessor.

Looney said Gadkar-Wilcox, a Quinnipiac Law School professor who focuses on human rights and constitutional law, was the right choice to run the committee because of her familiarity with the minutiae of the law.

When Looney spoke with the Tip Sheet on Friday, he was also mulling his pick for another high honor: the Heisman Trophy. Looney has previously put his Heisman prediction on the record live on the Capitol Report Sunday show, but his trip to Florida made a a repeat of that tradition difficult. So, the Tip Sheet will be the venue for this year’s predictions.

Close observers of Connecticut politics will know that Looney is something of an encyclopedia when it comes to college football.

Did you know Yale has two Heisman trophy winners? Well, Marty Looney does. The New Haven native is quick to note that the distinction is “something they’ll always have over Harvard.”

Looney said he believes Dillon Gabriel, the star quarterback for the Oregon Ducks, should win the Heisman this year. Looney’s reasoning, he told us, was rooted in a belief that the Heisman should go to “the best player on the best team.”

But, Looney admitted, the most likely winner, and his formal prediction, is Travis Hunter, the two-way Colorado star. The Senate President told the Tip Sheet he sees a parallel between Hunter and 1997 Heisman winner Charles Woodson. Woodson is, to date, the only defensive player to ever win a Heisman. His career at Michigan was also punctuated by standout performances as a punt returner and occasional receiver – mirroring Hunter’s two-way arsenal.

Of course, the Tip Sheet couldn’t let Looney off of the topic of college football without some tougher questions relevant to Connecticut politics.

Would his love of college football translate into even more support for UConn’s financially challenged football program?

“It’s important to support UConn football,” Looney said. He specifically noted what he called needed improvements to Rentschler Field. Those improvements could require tens of millions in new capital spending that Looney signaled he would be backing.

“UConn has had an excellent season to this point,” Looney said, expressing confidence in the hard-charging leadership of head coach Jim Mora. “All of the losses except the first one were close.”

What about the Republicans?

To date, House and Senate Republicans have not made any public announcements about their committee leadership picks. Insiders have been paying particularly close attention to who House leadership will tap to fill outgoing State Rep. Holly Cheeseman’s ranking post on the Finance Committee. Cheeseman, who was defeated by Democratic Representative-elect Nick Menapace, commanded considerable influence and respect on the tax writing committee and sometimes stood as a sole voice of dissent on the State Bond Commission.

The rumor mill is stirring with buzz that State Rep. Joe Polletta will be the pick to succeed Cheeseman. Multiple sources, including members of the House Republican caucus, told the Tip Sheet they believed Polletta could be announced as the ranking member this week.

The elevation of Polletta, who has served in the House since 2017, would mark a major advance for the 36-year old legislator from Watertown.

Matt Ritter and the art of the profile

With the decline of the newspaper business, there has been a dearth of long-form reporting on local politics. It’s a story that is familiar to all those who have worked in and around state politics: shrinking newsrooms, thinner crowds at press conferences, and fewer young people entering journalism with a focus on politics. Perhaps no journalistic format has suffered more as a result of the local news contraction than the political profile.

Written profiles are typically reported over the course of several days, weeks, or even months. Well-reported profiles can offer a window into the world of those seeking and wielding power.

Sometimes, a profile can trace a politician’s life and rise through the ranks. A 2004 profile of then-Attorney General Dick Blumenthal serves as a touchstone for anyone seeking to understand the enigma that is Connecticut’s senior Senator. The Tip Sheet is reliably told that, to this day, some new staffers in Blumenthal’s office are given copies of the profile as a sort of primer on “R.B.” (as he is referred to within the office).

Profiles can also capture a portrait of a politician at a specific point in time. Any politico worth their salt should be familiar with the 1990 profile of Senator Ted Kennedy, “Ted Kennedy on the Rocks.”

In the pages of GQ, veteran journalist Michael Kelly eloquently painted a picture of the aging Kennedy – a man whose name is invariably preceded by phrases like “liberal icon” and accompanied by his honorific “the Lion of the Senate.” Among other revelations, the profile entered the phrase “waitress sandwich” into the niche political lexicon of beltway insiders.

Kelly’s cutting profile read in part:

“There is a great desire to remember him as we remember his brothers. The Dorian Grays of Hyannis Port, John and Robert, have perpetual youth and beauty and style, and their faces are mirrors of all that is better and classier and richer than us. Ted is the reality, the 57-year-old living picture of a man who has feasted on too much for too long with too little restraint, the visible proof that nothing exceeds like excess.”

In the tradition of great political profiles, Mark Pazniokas took to the digital pages of the CT Mirror to check in with Matt Ritter. The state House speaker has just locked up a third term and is weighing a run for a historic fourth term. Paz’s profile leaned more on present-day analysis than a deep biographical dive. But the piece is still full of great details, many of them basketball-related, ranging from Ritter's penchant for pick-up games at Orangetheory to the time Geno Auriemma playfully called him a "little punk." Of course, it’s impossible to talk about Ritter without engaging with that unshakable American fixation: political dynasties.

Paz writes: 

“His father is Thomas D. Ritter, who was elected from the same district at the same age in 1980, succeeding his own father, George Ritter. It took Tom Ritter a dozen years to become a leader, winning the speaker’s job at age 40. The son became the majority leader after six and speaker after 10.”

Thanks for reading, we’ll be back next week!