It was with great sadness that I read in this morning’s Courant that Nick Carbone was badly injured in Hartford Monday. He was attacked on the streets of Hartford, the City for which he has done so much, and beaten so badly that he will need brain surgery.
I grew up in Hartford. In the years before I left to work for Legal Services in New London (which is how I got here) Nick Carbone was the most powerful man in Hartford. In those days there was no strong mayor in Hartford, and for reasons that I never understood and with whose historical roots I am unfamiliar, the Deputy Mayor wielded most of the political power in the City. Carbone was the Deputy Mayor and the undisputed main man in Hartford. He is a good man who cares about Hartford, proven if by no other fact than that he continued to live in the Frog Hollow area when he most certainly had other, and obviously safer choices. From the Courant article:
Carbone — politician, populist, developer and agitator — grew up in the South End and joined the city council in 1969, when he was 32. By 1971, he was elected majority leader, and he remained a powerful council voice for most of the decade as deputy mayor.
While at city hall, Carbone spearheaded the construction of roads, schools, garages and a police station. Under his leadership, the city filed lawsuits and administrative challenges over utility rate increases, discriminatory suburban housing practices and the state property tax system. He also recruited a slew of administrators and oversaw the reorganization of city hall.
In 1979, frustrated with earning only $4,000 a year as a councilman, Carbone ran for mayor against George Athanson and lost. He later left politics and turned his attention to the city’s booming real estate market as he tried his hand as a developer. He helped develop some of the buildings that surrounded him when he was attacked Monday.
Carbone later ran the Connecticut Institute for Municipal Studies, a state-financed think tank devoted to helping “communities in crisis.”
Early in the history of this blog (way back in pre-history on the old .mac version), I received an email or comment (I can’t remember which) from him, commenting on something I wrote. It was, as I recall, the first time I had any inkling that anyone was actually reading what I was writing and I got a tremendous kick out of it.
According to the article, he has stayed involved in Hartford politics, and appears to remain a committed progressive. Hartford needs people like him, and I certainly hope he’ll be back soon fighting the good fight.
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