Opinion: In government, representation matters, and we need to see more of it By Aidee Nieves City Council President Aidee Nieves Despite their political differences, if you were to look at the list of governors for the state of Connecticut going back to Jonathan Trumbull in 1769, there would be one unifying quality that all of them shared — they were all white. And with the exception of Ella Grasso and Jodi Rell, they were all male. This tells only a very narrow story of who lived and lives in Connecticut. When the first census was held in 1790, non-white individuals (comprised of both free and enslaved persons) made up 8 percent of Connecticut’s population. By 2019, nearly 35 percent of the state’s population was non-white. For a country that was founded on the ideal of a government of the people, for the people and by the people, communities of color and native people have been largely shut out of positions of power.