I've always bought into the spin that Connecticut's private colleges tend to breed liberal-minded graduates, that voter registrations of administrators, faculty and students lean heavily Democratic.

And yet some prominent names in state and national politics from these schools are turning up in the Republican column.

Connecticut Republican Chairman J.R. Romano and the politically ambitious Republican first selectman of Trumbull, Timothy Herbst, are both Trinity College graduates.

Themis Klarides, the House minority leader and one of the most outspoken critics of Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy, is also a Trinity graduate.

And now we have a graduate of New London's Connecticut College about to be explainer in chief for the Trump Administration.

Just this week, Sean Spicer, Class of 1993 at Connecticut College and the new White House press secretary, lectured civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis of Georgia for saying Trump will not be a legitimate president.

Last week, Spicer opened the Trump press conference by scolding the media and decrying the airing of unsubstantiated reports of Trump cavorting in Moscow with prostitutes.

You might think the cozy college community up the hill in New London would squirm a bit at the notion of one of their own defending the outrageous Donald Trump on the world stage, day after day, tweet upon tweet.

But a news report on the college website boasts about the new prominence of this graduate.

Government professor William Frasure gushes in the college announcement about his former student's new job.

"The most important journalists in America will be sitting before him every day. Aside from Trump's, his will be one of the most listened-to voices in the country," the professor said.

Reading this part of the Connecticut College website, you might not know that Connecticut is sending protesters by the busload to Washington this weekend to march against the Trump presidency.

Indeed, Spicer is putting Connecticut College into some prominent publications, although I'm not sure it's the kind of publicity you might necessarily hope for.

A profile of the new press secretary in the Washington Post unearthed a letter Spicer, then active in student government, wrote to the college newspaper complaining that they misspelled his name, identifying him as Sean Sphincter.

He said in the letter he believed it was a malicious and intentional attack, according to The Post.

I suspect we are going to hear a lot more complaints in the near future about intentional and malicious attacks by the media.

I couldn't find the I'm-not-Sean-Sphincter letter to the College Voice in the newspaper archives, but I did find some reporting on his campaign as a senior to become a young trustee.

He ran then on a platform that might have made his new boss proud, vowing, if elected, not to cut the budget or services but rather to bring in more revenue.

He proposed moving more older students off campus, and replacing them with younger students, who would pay tuition and bring in more revenue.

This plan included hiring more teachers for lower-level classes, presumably faculty who would make less money.

Candidate Spicer also promised not to close any of the school's dining rooms, a budget-cutting proposal being weighed at the time.

I thought of young Spicer promising fellow students to keep the dining halls open this week, as a more mature Spicer was trying to explain the boss's still-evolving plan to give people insurance coverage while repealing Obamacare.

He has, as one conservative blogger noted, what may be one of the hardest jobs in Washington these days.

Maybe he will continue to make his alma mater proud.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com