In the lead-up to this year’s presidential election, one Associated Press poll showed that Americans think President Joe Biden is too old to hold office. He is, in fact, the oldest president in U.S. history to be sworn in at 78, and former President Donald Trump is the second-oldest, at 70 years old (Ronald Reagan was 69 at his first inauguration). The average age of a sworn-in U.S. president is 55, according to a study by the Journal of the American Medical Association.
And how about Connecticut Governors?
When Connecticut renounced its allegiance to the British crown in June 1776, the state’s first post-colonial governor was 65 years old, the same age as current governor Ned Lamont when he was inaugurated for his first term in 2019. And after more than 60 governors in between, they have not been the oldest at their inauguration, according to a compilation of results of every gubernatorial election from 1775 to 1978 and other data compiled by The Connecticut Mirror.
While Lamont was the oldest governor to take office in almost 90 years, the eldest since the state’s formation was Gov. Charles Pond, who was 72 when he took office in 1853. He held the governorship for almost a year.
Former governors Dannel P. Malloy, M. Jodi Rell, Lowell Weicker, William O'Neill, Ella Grasso and Thomas Meskill were all less than 60 years old at the time of taking the oath.
The youngest sworn-in governor was Gov. John G. Rowland at 37 years old, who took office in 1995 and held office for almost a decade until he resigned amid a federal corruption investigation.
The typical age for a sworn-in Connecticut governor is 53.
