Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange, at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're inside the ICE House. Our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership and vision and global business, the dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years. Each week, we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs and harness the engine of capitalism. Right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE's exchanges and clearing houses around the world. And now welcome inside the ICE House. Here's your host, Josh King of Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
It's one of our abbreviated episodes this week as we're squeezing in a quick talk with Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont, in the minutes before he heads up to our bell podium to ring the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange. For Governor Lamont, this is a repeat performance, two bells in two months, April and May, as the Nutmeg State celebrates NCAA championships in two prestige sports. Last month, it was the UCONN Huskies men's basketball team coached by Dan Hurley and now in May, it's the Quinnipiac University Bobcats men's hockey team, coached by Rand Pecknold, which wrote a 34-4-3 record in the '22-23 season to win the NCA Division One crown on the ice with its 3-2 defeat of the University of Minnesota at the Frozen Four before 20,000 fans at the Amalie Arena in Tampa, Florida. So now comes the Governor of Connecticut back to Lower Manhattan with another delegation in tow.
The fates of Connecticut and New York have long been intertwined. I worked for many years at the Hartford Financial Services Group, the giant Hartford insurer that's listed right here under the ticker symbol HIG. Also Charter Communications, Cigna, Stanley Black & Decker, Carrier, and XPO Logistics to name but a few, are all great companies headquartered in Governor Lamont's home state, but listed here in New York. And for a good part of the last century and well into this one, there's also been a steady stream of daily migration of people who commute here from Connecticut via Metro North and I-95 and other routes. The route recalling the many scenes in AMC's Mad Men when Sterling Cooper's, Pete Campbell makes the regular run from Cos Cob to Grand Central Station and back again.
But the story goes back even a lot further. At the beginning of the American Revolution, a 21-year-old school teacher named Nathan Hale from Coventry, a little east of Hartford, joined the Continental Army and in September 1776, volunteered for an intelligence gathering Michigan behind enemy lines in the British stronghold of all places, New York. Sent to report on troop movements, young Mr. Hale was captured, identified as a spy and sentenced to death. But before he was hanged, he said, according to the famous legend, "I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country." Well, Governor Ned Lamont might tell his fellow citizens that in 2023 he only regrets that he has but two New York Stock Exchange Opening Bells to ring for his state. In a minute, our quick conversation with Ned Lamont, the 89th governor of Connecticut, it's coming up right after this.
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Josh King:
Ned Lamont was sworn into office as the 89th governor of Connecticut on January 9th, 2019. He began his second term, just a couple of months ago on January 4th, 2023. And back when I was living in the west end of Hartford, I put my old advanced skills to work to put together an event in Elizabeth Park for Ned Lamont who was in 2006 writing a private sector success story and an anti-war message to propel him into the US Senate by taking down incumbent Joe Lieberman who pivoted to run that year as an independent. The gambit came up short, but he won the State House in 2018 in a three-way race and won in 2022 by a wider margin. And he holds the distinction of being the first sitting governor in our 360 episode run to appear inside the ICE House. So welcome governor back to the New York Stock Exchange.
Ned Lamont:
Great to be back.
Josh King:
A lot to talk about and not a lot of time, so let's get right to it. Two bells in two months. Is the last one still ringing in your ears? How was that experience?
Ned Lamont:
Well, Connecticut collegians are athletically gifted as you can tell, unlike their governor. So we are all here for the UCONN Huskies. They won in basketball, the winningest team in the 21st century for men's basketball and now it's the Quinnipiac Bobcats. They won in daring fashion, 10 seconds in the overtime just recently. So we're here to cheer them on. So it's cats and dogs, Bobcats and Huskies.
Josh King:
The Huskies started their tournament as the number four seat in the west region, but toppled, Iona, St. Mary's, Arkansas, Gonzaga, Miami, and you were in Houston to watch them beat San Diego State en route to their crown. What's the chatter in Hartford about the potential return of a dynasty up in Storrs?
Ned Lamont:
I think it's a real shot in the arm for the state. I know what hockey means for Quinnipiac. I know what basketball means for the basketball capital of America, which is Storrs, Connecticut. But for the state of Connecticut, it's just that championship. Having 45,000 people in the streets cheering on that basketball team, thousands there cheering on the Bobcats soon thereafter, it's just a shot in the arm for a state. We got 1% of the population and all the championships.
Josh King:
Now UCONN has this long history of bringing NCAA trophies back to Connecticut. Quinnipiac, not so much. For a politico like me, the university was always more synonymous with polling than hockey. What does a national title mean to really a small town like Hamden.
Ned Lamont:
It puts Quinnipiac on the map. Everybody's talking about this amazing upset victory that Quinnipiac did. Remember, they played, the coach played on the Hamden Town rink at midnight was the only time he could get going back 25 years ago and now they're national champions. And it's also a reminder, Quinnipiac is an amazing university, great scholars there, great programs, great polling center and great hockey team.
Josh King:
Coach also has a great Connecticut heritage too, was a standout player at Connecticut College. Your university system spanning from Connecticut College to Yale to University of Hartford where I worked with a lot of folks up there when I was there to Quinnipiac. I mean, you've got some of the best education in the nation at the higher levels.
Ned Lamont:
Yeah, we really do. My job is to keep those people in Connecticut. Now the best and brightest from really around the world come to a lot of these great higher ed institutions, and we've got amazing good paying jobs ready to go for them. I've got to do everything I can to keep them in the great state.
Josh King:
We're going to get more into that too, governor, but let's take a quick step back because I'm curious. You and I are sitting in the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Curious your thoughts about this place. Your great-grandfather, Thomas Lamont, was chairman of JPMorgan Chase, making the cover of Time Magazine just after Black Thursday, the Wall Street crash of 1929. You're sort of in your great-grandfather's old footsteps here.
Ned Lamont:
Well, this is the citadel capitalism. Everybody knows what the New York Stock Exchange means. That's why it's so symbolic and I love it when the New York Stock Exchange is bullish on Quinnipiac. We're bullish on Connecticut.
Josh King:
Your granddad played an important role in World War I joining the Liberty Loan Committee, which helped sell war bonds, which was a caused embraced on the floor of the exchange, one of the few actual securities I think we've ever really endorsed at their purchase. Now funding the war in Iraq was a major point of contention between you and Senator Lieberman in 2006. Did your great-grandfather's legacy ever enter your mind as you settled on where your stand was as you entered more national politics?
Ned Lamont:
No, not so much. I mean World War I, JP Morgan did play a role in funding the allies and helping them win that war. The war in Iraq was just a disastrous foreign policy decision. And I was a guy that was pulling telecommunications wire through my company and felt very strongly that somebody should stand up and I did.
Josh King:
You and your great-grandfather have more than a name in common. He was president of the Exonian and then went on to Harvard and so you. You could have done anything with your career after you left Cambridge in '76, but went up to Ludlow, Vermont to edit the Black River Tribune. Why did you go up there and what did the time in rural Vermont teach you?
Ned Lamont:
So I went to this small town of Ludlow, Vermont where GE, General Electric just pulled out their factory leaving a big hole in the middle of this town. They wonder what their future was and I covered what happened in that town over the next 18 months. So Josh, it was really ironic that when I started running in Connecticut, GE had just left for Massachusetts and Connecticut was wondering what its future was. Deja vu all over again.
Josh King:
I mean, that's right. What were your efforts when Emmelt was looking at moving to Boston and I remember the large campus that GE had. A governor or a state leader really wants to keep a business like GE intact. You'd want to keep the old United Technologies fully intact. It merged with Raytheon. Your efforts to sort of hold on to some of the companies that really have made Connecticut famous.
Ned Lamont:
Yeah, so I'm the first business guy to be governor of this state in many a generation. GE left not because they had a lousy relationship with the state government, they had no relationship with the state government. And as I dug more into it, really the private sector was working in one lane in the public sector. The two did not understand each other. I really tried my best to bring them together. We've got a group called Advanced CT, it's all the leading companies. We get together on a monthly basis. We're rowing in the same direction.
Josh King:
I mentioned some of Connecticut's NYSE listed companies in the intro, among them, Charter Communications, dealing with cord cutting across the country as I listened to some of their earnings reports, governor. As you mentioned just now, you earned your fortune with hardwired hookups on college campuses and I wonder as you reflect on the business that you built, which is so much into pulling cables through dormitories and the hardwired aspect of delivering video. Now everything is over streaming services. Did you just have exquisite timing with your business in your career?
Ned Lamont:
Well, exquisite timing when I sold it to a streaming service, but hey, look, look at Tom Rutledge and what he did with Charter, that place was really struggling, it really antiquated infrastructure. He turned that around as a great entrepreneur. I found a niche market which was universities. This is sort of pre-internet. Universities were very international, so I was bringing in satellite programming from around the world and that's how we tried to change the learning experience.
Josh King:
You, governor, are the living embodiment of the adage that persistence pays off. I mean, after rising as far as the Greenwich Town Planning Board, you lost your senate campaign in 2006 as we talked about. And then your first gubernatorial campaign in the primary against Dan Malloy before you ultimately triumphed in 2018. Politics can be so humbling. I remember so much of the coverage in 2006. What drove you to dust yourself off and try it again?
Ned Lamont:
The first one was a little bit Don Quixote. I was the third selectman of Greenwich, so that was not exactly a calling card to run against a former candidate for Vice President of the United States, but I really felt very strongly that the country had taken a wrong direction. But as a business guy, I cared more about governing an executive job, so that sort of steered me towards the race for governor. I thought the state had lost a beat over the last generation or so. I did run briefly in a primary against somebody who won and then came back strong. And really thankful the people at Connecticut just reelected me. And I think they did that because they think the state's going in the right direction.
Josh King:
In your 2023 State of the State message, you began by saying, I'm going to quote you here, governor. "So I turned 69 yesterday. Time marches on, so we better hurry up. Maybe I'm less guarded, a little more blunt and feeling more urgency to get to yes." What are the urgent priorities you're working on with the legislature this session?
Ned Lamont:
First of all, we were a fiscal mess. We had gone from boom to bust to bust and cutting services, raising taxes. Now I'm in a budget cycle. We're talking about cutting taxes and increasing investments in education. So we've come full circle and I'm doing everything I can to make sure this is permanent. A lot of that is related to economic growth. We were a state that really hadn't added many new jobs over the previous generation or so. We got a lot of people moving into the state, a lot of companies expanding in the state. I know we have some recessionary headwinds out there, but I'm doing everything I can to keep that momentum going.
Josh King:
President Biden has a sense of urgency as well to finish the job as he says, but he's not like you, 69-years-old. He formally announced his reelection bid last week. I think you endorsed him again. That was in the Connecticut papers and I don't need to tell you about, governor, the actuarial tables. You've got a potential candidate in your state in Senator Chris Murphy who's just 49. Is it time to pass the torch to a new generation?
Ned Lamont:
I think Joe Biden's done pretty well. Look where this country was four or five years ago. Look where we are today. Look at the investments we've made. Look, we're an old state. Talk about old. Connecticut's, got really old roads and bridges, the rails were slowing down. This infrastructure bill is transformative, so as President Biden says, don't get hung up on the age, look at what I've done
Josh King:
In that State of the State address of yours, you addressed I think, what was the elephant in the room, addressing the partisan divide in your state's own chamber. You said, and I'm going to quote you here, "I would urge you at the end of that hearing to grab a beer or coffee with a member on your left or your right, see what you have in common and listen to what you don't have in common." Why can't we do that on a national level?
Ned Lamont:
We're beginning to do that in Connecticut. I mean, we had a bipartisan budget two years ago. I think we're going to have a bipartisan budget this time around. The Republicans thankfully have put forward their budget so now we can take their constructive ideas, see how we can get to a common good. I think down in Washington, DC, it's poisonous right now. Look what's going on in that House of Representatives and the dichotomy there. They don't talk and that's a big problem. And it's tough for President Biden because he came out of a more collegial US senate. He's only been there for about 50 years, so he knows the history there. I'm trying to get that recreated, at least that sense of collegiality.
Josh King:
You ticked off a lot of things in that speech. Let's address a couple of them. You talked about making it easier for people to get back to work. What's holding them back from filling all the unfilled jobs you have right now?
Ned Lamont:
I think COVID was a shock. I think a lot of people have not gone back to work. A lot of folks at my age took retirement because they figured this is a break in the action. A lot of young families, young mothers said maybe childcare is more of an issue for me. So I've done everything I can to make it easier to get people back to work. We've expanded daycare, expanded childcare, provide free workforce training for people, guaranteed job if you get that 20 week program and everything from IT to laser welding.
Josh King:
We had Peter Salovey, the president of Yale on the show not too long ago. His class of 2023 is going to graduate on Monday, May 22nd. And a lot of them are as they usually do, take their degrees out of state and start their careers. You talked about career connect with a CT on the end in your speech, but how do you keep the best and the brightest from taking their talents down to South Beach?
Ned Lamont:
Yeah, that's the most important question. A, I'm getting the businesses in front of these students while they're still students, while they're still maybe juniors in high school, not to mention just juniors in college as well. Second... So they get experience, they get an apprenticeship program. They fall in love with the Hartford, the travelers, or learn about other skills. Secondly, I put in place a tax cut, where if you hire a Connecticut, a graduate, we'll give you a 25% tax credit if you start paying down their student debt. So that means that Tomo Networks will have an incentive to hire Connecticut and Connecticut will have an incentive to stay here.
Josh King:
You also talked, I think in the State of the State about rekindling a spirit of entrepreneurism in your state. You have this great legacy, I mean, Bushnell and the whole crowd. But we had Jonathan Rothberg, the founder of Butterfly Network on the show. His company's listed here on the NYC. Can your small business boost fund help incubate more Butterflies from Putnam in the northeast corner of the state to Stanford down in the southwest?
Ned Lamont:
Yeah, I think we spent too much time trying to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to recruit big businesses and it became a bribe game, who I could incent people to come. Butterfly is exactly an example of working off the Yale New Haven Med Care ecosystem, what they've been able to grow. We have hundreds of small startups in and around the life sciences following that lead, and that's what our Boost fund does. Give a little bit of startup money, help them get what they used to call the friends and family round before the venture capitalists come and help them jet propel, and then they go public on the New York Stock Exchange.
Josh King:
And we're always happy to have them here, governor. One more topic that you talked about, which we've alluded to in this conversation so far and has been talked about by Connecticut Governors from Malloy to Rell to Roland to Wike, and I'm sure many before Lowell, is transportation. You tweeted a couple of days ago that you broke ground on the new Exit 74 on I-95 in East Lyme. Can the projects move fast enough to make an impact on your congestion challenges?
Ned Lamont:
That's why this infrastructure bill is so enormously important. And as you point out, everybody used to say, God, the congestion on 95, 91, oh my God, they got to build a new lane in each direction. It's not the way it works. You look at the heat map, there are four or five exits where everybody jams up. That's where 90% of the congestion takes place. So we're going to have that rebuilt over the next few years. You're going to see Metro North speed up 10 or 15 minutes over the next five or six years, so we're going to use our location as a real strategic advantage. New York, Boston, great place to visit, don't have to live there. Maybe you got to get there once or twice a week. You're going to get there faster.
Josh King:
I am a frequent user of your interstates and the Northeast corridor on Amtrak. Ideas like high speed rail, maglev, elevated rail and bus along the interstates have been floated for decades. What's the grandest vision you can imagine to make your state an easy thoroughfare for jobs in commerce? You think it's achievable in any reasonable period? It doesn't have to be within your term, but do you buy into any of the big ideas that are well beyond rebuilding an exit?
Ned Lamont:
Yes and no. I don't want to over promise to people. We're going to be able to take 10, 20, 30 minutes off your commute. I'm not sure it's going to be Shanghai to Beijing speeds right now.
Josh King:
Let's talk about one success story that I had an early hidden hand in, the Yard Goats host the Redding Fightin Phils for a six game stretch starting tomorrow at Duncan Field. Way back in 2008, I worked on a plan whereby the Hartford would help build a stadium for the old New Britain Rock Cats. That plan fizzled with the financial crisis, but the deal ultimately got done with a new stadium downtown. Do you see economic impact beginning to benefit your capital city?
Ned Lamont:
Yard Goats, not the winningest team in the history of the farm clubs, but the most popular team. Everybody is going to those games. We have hundreds of units of housing all built in and around there. Maybe early on, I thought, oh my God, this is Brighton Circuses. What are we doing with Minor League baseball? But it brings hundreds and thousands of people into our city, a lot of young people coming in. You got to move to Connecticut and that's what I love about these type of programs.
Josh King:
You hinted on another thing that I heard that perhaps our Queens based owner of the New York Mets might buy the Yard Goats and make a nice sort of Amtrak connected farm system. Any chance that Steve Cohen might make a big move from his home in Greenwich up to Hartford?
Ned Lamont:
That was an easy suggestion for me to make, but I thought it made some sense. I mean, we're sort of Red Sox, Yankees back and forth, and I said, hey, if you want to get the Mets on the ground, how about a farm club right there in Hartford? We all fall in love with the players, then they get down to a city field, we'll stay in love with them.
Josh King:
It makes a lot of sense. Governor, my old friend, Luke Bronin, announced last year that he is not going to seek a third term as mayor of Hartford. He helped provide stability to the city, but it's still beset by a lot of its geographic economic, political challenges. What do you see as a vision for Hartford's Renaissance and what kind of leadership will the next mayor need to get there?
Ned Lamont:
Well, Luke really showed that leadership. He was a great mayor for a city that was struggling, no question about it, was on the edge of bankruptcy five years ago. The good news for Hartford is as I alluded to with the Yard Goats, we have thousands of new people moving into the city. I don't know where they work. Sometimes they're working for Google or Apple. They're doing this remotely, but they like it because a high quality of living and low cost of living.
Josh King:
You tweeted that a big company called FullStack Modular is relocating its US headquarters from right here in the Brooklyn Navy yard to where Quinnipiac is in Hamden in a 124,000 square foot building that's going to bring about 100 new jobs to the state. Now, I'm not advocating that more moves come at Brooklyn's expense, but what do you have to do to make Connecticut as attractive as possible to more companies calling the nutmeg state?
Ned Lamont:
Housing. I mean, right after workforce making sure that your company can get the workers they need, they need a place to live. And we got lots of beautiful suburban areas. We got our cities are coming back, but we need more housing. Studio, one bedrooms for 20 something so they can get started. And that's what FullStack does. They build it at half the time and half the price and four or five stories high.
Josh King:
There are no term limits to the office of governor of Connecticut. You've only just started term two, but do you have your eye on a third? And if not, would you rather head to Washington or up to Sky Farm in North Haven for your next chapter?
Ned Lamont:
I got to tell you, if you are a business guy, you want to be a governor. I mean, Senate, Congress taking orders from party leaders, that's not my thing. I love being governor. I think we're making a difference every day, so we'll see what the future brings.
Josh King:
You tweeted that UCONN is now ranked number 10 in NCAA baseball. The NCAA men's lacrosse tournament gets underway with the quarterfinals on May 20th. Currently, your only home state team and the top rankings is Yale, which sits at number nine. If the Huskies win the College World Series or the Bulldogs make it to the finals in Philadelphia on May 29th, will you and President Salovey bring them here to ring the bell in June, making it three bells in three months?
Ned Lamont:
You're going to get so tired of us showing off, ringing bells and boasting about our teams. You betcha.
Josh King:
Governor, you're always welcome to the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for joining us inside the ICE House.
Ned Lamont:
Thanks Josh.
Josh King:
And that's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Governor Ned Lamont, the 89th governor of the state of Connecticut. If you like what you heard, please rate us on iTunes so other folks know where to find us. If you've got a comment or question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show, email us at [email protected] or tweet at us @icehousepodcast. Our show is produced by Pete Ash with production assistance from Ian Wolf. I'm Josh King, your host, signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next week.
Speaker 1:
Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties express or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of the information and do not sponsor, approve or endorse any of the content herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the proceeding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.
