Steve Contorno is a senior reporter covering national politics and the 2024 presidential election for CNN, based in Florida.

After joining CNN in 2021, he led the network’s coverage of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis across all platforms, from the governor’s rise within the GOP through the end of his unsuccessful presidential campaign.

Prior to CNN, Contorno spent eight years at the Tampa Bay Times, eventually becoming the newspaper’s lead political reporter. In that role, he broke national stories about DeSantis’ political operation, followed the 2020 presidential campaigns in Florida and authored the paper’s popular weekly state politics newsletter. His coverage of the 2018 Florida governor’s race was recognized as the best political reporting in the Southeast by the Society of Professional Journalists. Outside of reporting on politics, Contorno covered the Pulse Nightclub Shooting in Orlando, the reopening of the Florida Keys after Hurricane Irma and the fight over Tampa’s Confederate monument.

Before moving to Florida, Contorno worked in Washington, D.C. as a staff writer for PolitiFact. He previously covered Congress and Virginia politics for the Washington Examiner, Wisconsin politics for the Green Bay Press-Gazette and the Illinois statehouse for the Chicago Sun-Times.

A native of the Chicago suburbs, Contorno graduated from the University of Illinois College of Media in 2009 and is a proud alumnus of the Daily Illini, where he served as its top editor. He earned a masters degree in Public Affairs Reporting from the University of Illinois-Springfield in 2010.