House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, and House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora, R-North Branford, sat side by side Wednesday night, amiably talking before a live audience about a working relationship that survives partisan differences. In some capitals, that alone would make news. Had the event occurred in Washington, D.C., featuring their congressional counterparts, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., the city would have been abuzz. A week ago, Axios reported their shaky ceasefire was no more, and “the smack talk has gotten personal.” Not so in Hartford, where Ritter and Candelora are in the sixth year of a legislative bromance of sorts. They are not averse to occasional smack-talking, but it’s always over their significant policy differences. As they say in the oft-quoted “The Godfather,” “It’s not personal, it’s strictly business.” On Wednesday, they sat for public questioning by John Dankosky as part of The Connecticut Mirror’s “In the Room” series with the state’s elected leaders. Sprinkled through the audience were lobbyists who, like journalists, make a study of the Ritter-Candelora dynamic. Thirty minutes into the one-hour conversation, they disagreed forcefully, albeit respectfully, over the state’s Trust Act and its various revisions, which limit official cooperation with federal ICE agents carrying out the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants.  Candelora called the crackdown “a politically charged disaster.”  But he faulted Connecticut’s laws as far too restrictive on the ability of law enforcement to cooperate with ICE, and he suggested that the tactics of some protesters are putting people in harm’s way, leading to fatal confrontations, like the shooting of Renee Good. “What we saw with the killing in Minnesota, you know, that woman had no intention, I’m sure, of hitting an officer with her car,” Candelora said. “I think she also did not believe that she was going on a suicide mission.” Ritter seemed relieved at the opportunity to disagree. Both men are mindful that their constructive working relationship can be double edged: Are they too cooperative? Does cooperation equate with a less-than-aggressive defense of the core differences between the Democratic majority and Republican minority? “I don’t agree with what Vinnie just said, right?” Ritter said. “I’m proud of the Trust Act laws that we passed, and I think we should focus on the most dangerous people, whether they be American citizens or not.” He added, “Let there be no mistake. We don’t agree on everything. But I’m almost so glad that question came up and you could see that there are differences, and this is how you deal with it.” There is potential for sharp differences this year in the three-month legislative session that opens on Feb. 4. Ritter said the Democrats plan to implement no-excuse absentee voting, something possible due to an amendment to the state Constitution passed by voters in 2024. Despite vehement opposition from parents who home-school their children, Ritter said legislators also will be looking at limited new oversight of homeschooling, which now is virtually unregulated. The impetus is the shocking case last year of a 32-year-old Waterbury man who authorities say was held captive by his stepmother after she pulled him out of school when he was 11. The family had interactions with child welfare authorities, but no one investigated the boy’s disappearance from school. “If you’ve had a lot of interaction with DCF and law enforcement, you just suddenly withdraw your kid. We might need to have better follow-up on that,” Ritter said. “That might get really ugly, Republican versus Democrat. I think it depends how it gets drafted.” House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, House Speaker Matthew Ritter, D-Hartford, and host John Dankosky at CT Mirror’s “In The Room” event in Hartford on Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. Credit: Stephen Busemeyer / CT Mirror Both leaders said school funding formulas also will be on the table, as will the state’s continuing struggle to meet the challenges created by federal spending cuts and other actions, some of which come with little notice and no explanation. Ritter and Candelora share frustration over the unpredictability coming from Washington. Candelora said he and Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield, wrote the Trump administration, questioning the rationale for twice shutting down construction of the offshore Revolution Wind project. Each time, a federal judge lifted the stop-work order. Similarly, Candelora said, there was no explanation for why a provider of behavioral health services to schools in his district was informed this week that $600,000 in federal funding was being canceled, effectively immediately. “They have not been given a reason to why that money has been clawed back,” Candelora said. Candelora was among the Republicans who joined Democrats in creating a $500 million fund to respond to federal cuts, which can be spent at the discretion of Gov. Ned Lamont until the start of the session. Ritter became speaker five years ago, the same time that Candelora became the Republican minority leader. But they developed a relationship earlier, working on a  bipartisan budget in 2017 that broke a protracted stalemate in Ritter’s first session as majority leader, his first leadership post. Ritter was dubious about Republican overtures to be part of a budget deal, which would take away one of any minority party’s key tools: the ability to criticize the more unpopular portions of a tax-and-spending plan. “Matt was the majority leader, and he came to me and he said, ‘You guys really serious about negotiating this? Are you just going to pull the rug out at the last minute?’ And that was at the very beginning of negotiations,” Candelora said. Comptroller Sean Scanlon, a mutual friend, vouched for Candelora as substantive and trustworthy, Ritter said.  At the time, Scanlon was a state representative from Guilford, a community that Candelora also represents. He met Candelora on election night in 2014, when he won his first term defeating a candidate backed by Candelora. Scanlon was impressed when Candelora stopped by his victory party. “It’s nice to meet you, and I want you to know we’re going to work together on behalf of this town,” Scanlon recalled Candelora telling him. “And there was never a day after that day that I did not have a truly productive, good working relationship with him.” Scanlon said Ritter and Candelora are institutionalists — “two guys who believe in the importance of institutions running well and who believe that the foundational principle of it running well is trust and communication, even when you disagree ideologically over things.” Candelora, 55, was elected in 2006 to the 86th House District of Durham, East Haven, Guilford and North Branford. The district is 88% white, and the poverty rate is 3%. Ritter, 42, was elected in 2010 from Hartford’s 1st District, representing the West End, Asylum Hill and a few blocks of the North End. As a white man, he is a racial minority in a district where one in five residents are white. The poverty rate is 25%, and half the population is considered low income. Their political differences are many. Like every other Republican, Candelora opposed the omnibus housing bill passed in special session last year. But Ritter was stumped when Dankosky asked for an example of a difference that was especially difficult. Candelora was not. “The religious exemption,” Candelora said. “Oh, yeah,” Ritter said. Their differences on Ritter’s successful push to end religious exemptions for school-age vaccinations were heated and unusually public. Mothers opposed to the vaccination mandate filled the Legislative Office Building, and the dispute became a national story. The debate in the House stretched past midnight, a rarity during Ritter’s time as speaker. “It was a difficult process to negotiate, and you had people very impassioned on each side,” Candelora said. “You couldn’t get consensus. And, you know, then it became the challenge of having to somehow figure out a way to turn the temperature down and get the bill to a vote.” There was a compromise over the timetable for implementation, and the bill finally came to a vote. Democrats hold a 102-49 advantage in the House, but Ritter said he soon will consult with Candelora about the Democratic agenda, if only to give him a heads up and inquire about potential areas of compromise or common ground. “I can, because we’ve been dating for a while now,” Ritter said straight-faced, pausing briefly for the inevitable laugh. “I got a sense of where I think I could engage with him and where I probably couldn’t.” At some point in the next three months, Candelora undoubtedly will denounce some element of that agenda, either over its substance or out of a need to rally a small GOP minority. “I have to understand that Vinnie has a job, right?” Ritter said. “He’s got a job to do, and I have a job to do. I think we know that.” It will upset some people at the state Capitol, but not the speaker or minority leader. “A lot of people up there are much more sensitive,” Ritter said. “Vinnie and I have lost all sensitivity.” It’s just business, not personal. ...read more read less