Ella Grasso: Connecticut's Pioneering Governor

5 Working in the Vineyards

[ 69 ] Ella Grasso embarked on her tenure as Secretary of the State with her usual high energy, enthusiasm, commitment, and determination to succeed and excel at the tasks and challenges that lay before her. Inheriting an office that was the vital record-keeping agency for the state, the Secretary of the State came into contact with lawyers, business leaders , and corporate executives, as well as local election officials, namely Town Clerks and Registrars of Voters. Large numbers of lawyers and businessmen customarily appeared in the Secretary’s office to file trademark papers, security agreements, incorporation papers, and other legal documents required by state law. Contacts with Town Clerks and Registrars of Voters of the 169 towns and municipalities was another vital component of the Secretary’s duties , since local municipal officers implemented the election laws, and the Clerks and Registrars also carried out legislative mandates that the General Assembly passed concerning voter qualifications, voting procedures , and election laws. The Secretary of the State’s office is also an office of unlimited opportunity to build a base of public service—not only in the areas spelled out in Connecticut’s Constitution and Statutes but as a base from which one could build widespread public and voter recognition for an ambitious incumbent determined to advance politically. “It is a great office for doing that if you’ve got the energy . . . and she did,” noted Washington Post columnist David Broder. He frequently visited Hartford to confer y 5 Y working in the vineyards Ella Grasso [ 70 ] with John M. Bailey about the Kennedy campaign strategies for the 1960 election and recalls visiting Ella Grasso in her state capitol office. Her energy and enthusiasm for politics and public service was quite evident to that keen observer of the political scene.1 Ella’s second floor office in the State Capitol, across the hall from the Governor’s Executive Chambers, became a meeting place for concerned civic organizations and groups to gather since accommodations for organizations was virtually non-existent elsewhere in the building. “I gave space to the League of Women Voters,” Ella explained, and her office was dubbed a “people’s lobby” bringing visitors, good government organizations , and people unfamiliar with the legislative lobbying process to the Secretary’s domain. “Everybody who wanted to have a meeting place and didn’t know where to go came to my office,” she recalled.2 Her office was also a “gathering place for reporters . . . she . . . understood every facet of government,” noted a Bridgeport Post editorial writer. In fact, she would willingly explain the most complicated statute or legislative proposal in layman’s language. Ella was the interpreter for the press.”3 Additionally, when the General Assembly was in session, her office was used daily by the Democratic Party’s legislative team and party chairman John M. Bailey. It was conveniently located on the same floor as the House of Representatives with the Senate chamber one floor above and was a convenient location to discuss the legislative agenda for the day. Her office became known as “Ella’s Place,”4 and it “came to resemble clubhouse sessions of a football team in first place,” and John M. Bailey “gloried in it all.”5 It was there the party’s political chief and the Ribicoff brain trust (Ella Grasso, Jon Newman, C. Perrie Phillips, and George Conkling) worked together with the legislative leadership to develop the Democratic stance on upcoming legislation. Ella’s role in these discussions was crucial because she frequently reminded the party leaders of their Democratic platform promises and public commitment to abolishing county government and supporting court reform—issues she had long backed during her tenure in the legislature. The Ribicoff Working in the Vineyards [ 71 ] team pushed for and achieved legislative approval of court reform, abolishment of county governments, reorganization of the Department of Health and the creation of both a Department of Mental Health and a Department of Consumer Protection, as well as a law banning discrimination in housing on the basis of race, religion, or nationality.6 The bill to ban discrimination in housing, which had been pushed by a coalition of “blacks, labor, and liberal groups,” was not favored initially by John Bailey.7 Jon Newman (later a federal judge) and Ella prodded him, and Bailey eventually supported the bill. As a result, “Connecticut became one of the first states to have a statute prohibiting discrimination on the...