San Jose Inside editor Josh Koehn sat down for a interview last week with San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed. In the first part of their conversation, the two discuss the city's controversial pension reforms, the depleted police ranks, the current mayor's race, San Jose's lawsuit with Major League Baseball and Reed's insistence that he's not a closet Republican.

In 1988, while working for the late Sen. Ted Kennedy in Minneapolis—he was stumping for Hubert “Skip” Humphrey for the U.S. Senate—a revelation occurred out of the public sphere. As a witness to the event, it resonates today in the era of partisanship. It was an example of how politics really work when not viewed solely through the jaded lens of the media.

Ted Kennedy is dead.

Even after the funeral obsequies, how strange it is to hear; how jarring to read. Like all people, ordinary ones or acclaimed historians, I have been reviewing my connection to him and to the Kennedy family.