By Chris Powell
Like vultures circling above wounded prey, four ambitious Democrats are threatening to challenge U.S. Rep. John B. Larson as he seeks nomination to a 14th term next year in Connecticut’s 1st Congressional District, the Hartford area.
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Though Larson remains vigorous and articulate at 76, in February he froze up while speaking on the floor of the House of Representatives, suffering what was apparently a bad reaction to medication. The incident seems to have caused his aspiring rivals to suspect or hope that he could keel over at any moment and become a rung on their ladder to political advancement.
The problem is that no Democrats can identify anything Larson has done wrong other than having suddenly found himself in the way of a few Democrats who would like to represent a district that hasn’t elected a Republican in 69 years. His votes in Congress have been reliably Democratic, he has led nationally on the issue of strengthening Social Security, and his office is renowned for constituent service.
Larson’s potential challengers aren’t exactly superstars.
The most prominent, Luke Bronin, served two terms as mayor of Hartford and wanted to run for governor if his friend Ned Lamont wasn’t going to seek renomination. That Bronin now has set his sights on Larson instead indicates confidence that Lamont will run again.
The most memorable event of Bronin’s mayoralty may have been his quick capitulation to the anti-police protests that followed the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020. An angry crowd gathered at Bronin’s home and demanded that he defund the Hartford Police Department. Accordingly he went along with the City Council in cutting the police budget by 4%. He insisted that this wasn’t defunding the police department but “reimagining” it.
However its police have been “reimagined,” Hartford still has the usual shootings and stabbings every month and its school system keeps disintegrating and this year became famous worldwide for graduating an illiterate. Indeed, it’s hard to see how the city is any better for Bronin’s mayoralty or anyone else’s mayoralty in several decades.
Of course it’s hard to see how Hartford has been improved by Larson’s 13 terms. He got nowhere with a proposal to relocate the city’s highways into tunnels, which would have been impossibly expensive without ever addressing the city’s overwhelming problem, generational poverty. But then as a member of Congress he has a much wider focus than any mayor.
Another potential challenger to Larson’s renomination is West Hartford state Rep. Jillian Gilchrest, best known for her advocacy of legalizing late-term abortion and her support for transgenderism — men in women’s bathrooms, sports, and prisons, and so forth. In debate in the state House in June, Gilchrest asserted that there is an “infinite” number of genders. She meant an “infinite” number even outside the Democratic Party.
Also seeking to take the nomination away from Larson are two unknowns — a member of the Southington Town Council and a member of Hartford’s hapless Board of Education, a position in which it would seem impossible to claim credit for anything.
If Democrats, overwhelmed by Trump Derangement Syndrome, want to keep running off the rails to the left, maybe a majority of primary voters can be found to retire Larson, on the assumption that the 1st District will elect anyone on the Democratic line, no matter how crazy.
Still, 1st District Democrats might want to look at the latest national congressional polling from Rasmussen Reports.
Rasmussen finds that while public opinion of the Democratic Party nationally has seldom been lower, Democrats now hold a 46-42% lead over Republicans on a generic ballot for the U.S. House. If that lead and the historic pattern of mid-term elections hold, the Democrats easily will retake the House majority next year, and, given his seniority, Larson could become chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee.
But if some other Democrat is elected from the 1st District, he or she will be lucky to be appointed to the Committee on Bathroom Cleanliness.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
Chris Powell column 