Steve Contorno is a senior reporter for CNN, covering national politics from Chicago.

After joining the network in 2021, he led CNN’s distinctive coverage of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, chronicling the governor’s rise within the GOP through the end of his unsuccessful presidential campaign. Contorno then shifted to covering Donald Trump’s political comeback, tracking his movements and messaging in key battleground states, investigating his ties to Project 2025 and his expanding business portfolio, and interviewing his running mate, JD Vance, at the US-Mexico border.

Before CNN, Contorno spent eight years at the Tampa Bay Times, ultimately serving as the newspaper’s lead political reporter. His work there broke national stories about DeSantis’ political operation, documented the 2020 presidential campaigns in Florida and authored the paper’s popular state-politics newsletter. The Society of Professional Journalists honored his coverage of the 2018 Florida governor’s race as the Southeast’s best political reporting. While in Florida he also covered major events such as the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, the Florida Keys’ reopening after Hurricane Irma and statewide debates over Confederate monuments.

Earlier in his career, Contorno was a staff writer for PolitiFact in Washington, DC, and covered Congress and Virginia politics for the Washington Examiner. He also previously reported on 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, where he was editor-in-chief of the Daily Illini. In 2010, he earned a masters degree in Public Affairs Reporting from the University of Illinois-Springfield.