CT Congressional Delegation Makes Pitch to Keep GE in Fairfield

With General Electric set to decide by the end of the year where it will call home, several congressional Democrats met with CEO Jeff Immelt on Wednesday in an effort to smooth over GE’s strained relations with federal lawmakers and to keep the company in its Fairfield headquarters, according to the Fairfield Citizen.

The Citizen reports U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, along with 4th District Representative Jim Himes met with Immelt in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday.

Murphy told Hearst Connecticut Media that they wanted to “make it clear to him that we were prepared to move heaven and Earth to keep GE in Connecticut.”

Immelt was in Washington on Wednesday, lobbying lawmakers to renew the charter of the U.S. Export-Import Bank and GE made no comments about the meeting with Connecticut lawmakers, according to the Citizen.

Last week, Immelt told CNBC that a committee is reviewing its options and the company is taking the decision very seriously.

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“We’ve been there for 40 years, so we would never do anything like this carelessly or casually,’’ Immelt said during the TV interview, via the Hartford Courant. “It’s the kind of thing you only think about every 40 years. You want to make sure you get it right.’’

Immelt gave an indirect answer when asked if GE would move out of Connecticut, saying:

“You want to be someplace where people support job creation, where it’s attractive to talent, good cost of living, and that is very supportive of what a high-tech exporter has to be all about. It is a global battle that we are in, and we need people who are on our side.”

Suitors have lined up for GE ever since Immelt sent an email to the company’s Connecticut employees in June, notifying them that he has “assembled an exploratory team to look into the company’s options to relocate corporate HQ to another state with a more pro-business environment.”

Since then, Florida Gov. Rick Scott has taken out radio ads and made a personal visit to Connecticut. Also, Indiana took out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal lending its support to GE and Governor Michael R. Pence sent a letter to Immelt.

More recently, Bloomberg reported that GE has had discussions about relocating to Atlanta and that it was possibly meeting with a developer regarding space at Three Alliance Center, a 30-story building being built in Atlanta.

That news came on the heels of a Politico New York report that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, visited the Fairfield headquarters July 30 on a recruiting trip for a possible move to Westchester County and incentives New York might offer.

GE has also been linked Texas but Bloomberg recently reported that the company has crossed off the Dallas area for a possible relocation site.

As more and more states attempt to lure GE out of Connecticut, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and his administration recently proposed specific assistance to keep GE in Fairfield but details of the discussions haven’t been divulged.

Read more about Wednesday’s meeting in Washington at the Fairfield Citizen here.