Business in brief: Ted Koppel’s son found dead

New York – A son of former ABC News anchor Ted Koppel was found dead in an apartment after a day of bar hopping with a man he’d just met, a law enforcement official said Tuesday.

A drunken Andrew Koppel, 40, had been placed in a back bedroom of the Manhattan apartment to sleep it off and apparently had been dead at least four hours before anyone realized, said Belinda Caban, who lives in the apartment.

He was declared dead around 1:30 a.m. Monday, New York Police Department Detective John Sweeney said. The cause of his death hadn’t been determined, but there was no evidence indicating a crime, police said.

Black gubernatorial candidate loses

Montgomery, Ala. – A congressman seeking to become Alabama’s first black governor lost Tuesday to a white Democratic primary opponent who had garnered support from the state’s four major black political groups.

With 58 percent of the precincts reporting, Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks won the Democratic primary for Alabama governor with 65 percent of the vote to Rep. Artur Davis’s 35 percent.

The state’s traditional civil rights organizations backed Sparks after Davis voted against Obama’s federal health care overhaul. But Davis, a Harvard lawyer who led President Barack Obama’s campaign here in 2008, had endorsements from Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a civil rights pioneer from Alabama, and Mobile’s first black mayor, Sam Jones.