David Lightman joined the McClatchy Washington Bureau in 2007, spending nearly a decade as a White House, congressional and chief political correspondent before becoming congressional editor in 2017; he is now chief congressional correspondent. Before moving to McClatchy, Lightman was the Hartford Courant’s Washington bureau chief for 23 years. He has covered every presidential campaign since 1980, and in 2007 he won the David Lynch Memorial Reporting Award for regional coverage of Congress. From 1971 to 1981, he worked for The Evening Sun in Baltimore, where he covered the Maryland legislature, and, from 1978 to 1981, was the paper’s chief Annapolis correspondent. He joined the Hartford Courant in 1981 as a reporter. A Washington native, he has also worked for the Hagerstown Morning Herald (Maryland) and The Riverside Press-Enterprise (California). In 2018, he was president of the Gridiron Club.