Sunday evening, eight year old Woodbridge, CT resident Fiona Hynes interviewed current Stamford Mayor and Connecticut Gubernatorial hopeful Dan Malloy on her Internet Radio Show.

For the past year and a half, Fiona has hosted Fiona’s Radio Show on Blog Talk Radio, a website that makes it easy for anyone online to set up a talk radio show over the Internet.

I initially heard about Blog Talk Radio at a PodCamp NYC 2 in Brooklyn April 25-26 2008. BlogTalkRadio was one of the sponsors, and I thought it would be interesting to set up a BlogTalkRadio show. I had considered setting it up as a political radio show where various elected officials and candidates could call in to talk about Connecticut politics.

However, I decided to give it a test with my daughter first. The show went very well and Fiona’s Radio Show was born. Every Sunday evening at 6:30, Fiona and I talk about the events of the week. It has been some great father-daughter time, and the episodes are saved online, so we can go back and listen to older shows. I hope this is something that she will be able to listen to years hence when she has children of her own, and I strongly encourage other parents to consider similar methods of talking with their children, recording the discussions, and perhaps sharing them online.

In the fall of 2008, Fiona interviewed Marc Garofalo who was running for State Representative here in Woodbridge. Recently, the idea came up for her to interview Stamford Mayor Dan Malloy who is considering a run for Governor. Mayor Malloy called into Fiona’s radio show on his way home from an event and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro’s house, where our senior U.S. Senator, Chris Dodd, was talking about the latest efforts to reform our health care system. Mayor Malloy was headed to an event in Stamford and spoke with Fiona via his cellphone.

Fiona had prepared a few questions for Mayor Malloy. Her first question was open-ended, asking Mayor Malloy to tell the audience a little bit about himself. His answer included talking about why he was running for Governor and why he thought he would be a good Governor. These were Fiona’s second and third questions. It provided a good opportunity for Fiona to work on improving her interviewing skills and adjust her questions on the fly. She asked him to speak about a little bit more about this and then moved on to her questions about public financing of elections and health care reform.

Mayor Malloy spoke about the importance of the public financing system, acknowledged current difficulties with it in terms of changes that should be made by the legislature and the issue of a wealthy candidate opting out of the system.

He talked about his strong support for health care reform. As he spoke about his experience as Mayor of Stamford, he mentioned that Stamford is one of the two municipalities in Connecticut that still runs nursing homes. With some prompting, Fiona asked what he had learned from running a nursing home in terms of health care reform.

Fiona also asked him about the impact of Rell deciding not to run for re-election would have on the race. Mayor Malloy considered this a benefit in that it would generate more interest and coverage of the race by the traditional media earlier in the cycle.

You can listened to the interview with Mayor Malloy online.

People who are involved in the political process have probably heard much of what Mayor Malloy had to say on the radio show. Unfortunately, too many people do not tune into what is going on politically around them, especially on the state and local level. Yet with the Internet, it is possible for even an eight year old to interview a Gubernatorial candidate and encourage listeners around the state to become more involved. Mayor Malloy encouraged listeners to visit Dan Malloy for Connecticut to get more information or get involved with his campaign.

Fiona and I are not ready to make our endorsements yet. We would like to give other Gubernatorial candidates a chance to call in and speak with Fiona. However, we feel very comfortable in saying that if Mayor Malloy ends up getting elected he will be the best Governor that we’ve had in Connecticut during Fiona’s life so far.