HARTFORD, Conn. — A congressional primary in Connecticut on Tuesday provides one of the clearest tests yet of Democratic voters’ desire for generational change in the party.
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Former Hartford mayor Luke Bronin, 47, is waging the latest rebellion against an entrenched incumbent, John B. Larson, who is 78 and running for his 15th term. But Bronin and Larson are ideologically similar, unlike other primaries pitting young liberals against older centrists, leaving age and experience as their primary differentiators.
Democratic voters across the country this year have demonstrated a preference for younger and more energetic candidates over more experienced counterparts, ousting four House incumbents over the age of 65.
“People are frustrated with the status quo,” said Amanda Litman, the founder of Run for Something, an organization that recruits and supports young progressive candidates. “Not only has my economic status not improved, but you’ve also told me you can win, and you have not proven that. So there is a real, deep-seated distrust in anyone who has been part of the process to get us to this point.”
Congress has also steadily aged since the early 1980s, and the current 119th Congress is one of the oldest in history. The median House member is 57. Representatives’ tenure in the lower chamber plays a significant role in determining committee leadership and seniority, particularly among Democrats.
The election in Connecticut’s 1st Congressional District isn’t as simple as choosing between young and old. Larson, who has served in Congress since 1999, would be one of the most senior members of the House if reelected. He’s told voters that he will be better positioned to fight President Donald Trump, bring funding to Connecticut and protect Social Security. He is poised to lead a critical panel on the safety-net program if he is reelected and Democrats win a majority.
“You’re going to have a person who will be chairman of the Ways and Means subcommittee on Social Security, that impacts all 330 million people in this country, or you’re going to have someone who’s going to be a freshman and won’t know what their committee assignment is when they get there,” Larson said in an interview.
Bronin is campaigning nearly entirely on themes of youth and competence. His campaign website opens with a statement that “this moment demands energy, urgency, and change,” and he has called for Larson to “pass the torch,” though he hasn’t explicitly criticized Larson as being too old to serve.
Much of the Democratic Party’s desire for youth stems from the 2024 election, when concerns over the mental acuity of President Joe Biden, then 81, forced him to drop out of the race in July of that year. Bronin said Democrats should learn from losing the White House and the Senate and failing to capture the House in 2024.
“If we don’t take that as a wake-up call, that as the Democratic Party we need to bring a whole different kind of energy to this fight, and we need to be a lot clearer about what we’re fighting for, then I think we are not recognizing the urgency this moment calls for,” Bronin said in an interview.
Larson has reasons to worry about his reelection chances. Bronin has outraised him, maintains significant name recognition after leading the largest city in the district and won the state Democratic Party’s endorsement over Larson for the seat in an upset at the May convention.
Some House Democrats ousted in primaries, including Rep. Adriano Espaillat (New York), the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and Rep. Al Green (Texas), held powerful positions or years of seniority in Congress. Four Democrats aged 70 or older have also died this Congress, raising the salience of age as an electoral issue.
Larson has pushed back on characterizations of the race as simply about youth.
“It’s not about age, generational change,” Larson said at a recent rally alongside Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont (D) and labor groups. “This campaign … is about who has the record of delivering in this community.”
Larson is presenting himself as the more liberal option, touting endorsements from the state’s progressive Working Families Party and unions.
When twice asked for specific policy differences with Larson, Bronin didn’t provide any. He instead described his focus as helping build a strong Democratic majority by bringing young voters back into the fold and being a “loud voice” for issues such as universal health care, lowering housing costs and moving toward renewable energy.
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Bronin criticized Larson for being hyper-focused on the issue of Social Security while stressing he will also fight to protect the program, which is forecast to run critically low on funds by 2032. Social Security is often called the third rail of politics because politicians avoid criticizing or proposing cuts to the program, which provides a lifeline to retirees, who are the most likely age group to vote.
Larson has gotten “stuck in routines” and “stuck inside the institution” during his many years in Congress, Bronin said. He described several older Democrats in Congress as viewing their job as “filing legislation and sending out a press release about it, writing a strongly worded letter, or giving a speech for the empty chamber for the C-SPAN cameras.”
Larson was loud, aggressive and enthusiastic when speaking at the rally with the governor, mingling with constituents and answering questions from reporters. Bronin was warmly welcomed with fist bumps and cheers at a fair in Hartford during the campaign’s closing weeks.
Several voters in Hartford expressed a desire for younger politicians. Congress is too old, Andrew Bourguignon, a student at the University of Connecticut, said in an interview in Hartford. He voiced concern over the ability of older members of Congress to carry out their responsibilities in office and be in touch with modern and relevant topics.
Older politicians in office are “not doing us much good,” said Max Messenger, a 26-year-old social worker, adding that many won’t be held accountable for mistakes that might affect future generations.
“We’re kind of screwed coming up right now with the cost of living, with education crisis, with the homeless crisis, substance use, and I feel like the older population is not as in-touch with it,” he said at a men’s health wellness fair in Hartford. “They’re kind of set, they’re towards the end of their life, they’ve got their retirement, and it works out for them, whereas our generation — we are having to pick up a lot of the pieces.”
Several recent episodes, aside from Biden’s, have prompted additional scrutiny of politicians’ ages. Dianne Feinstein, the oldest Democratic senator at the time, died at age 90 in 2023 after months of hospitalization and questions about her fitness to lead Democrats on the powerful Judiciary Committee. House Democrats also elected a 74-year-old representative to lead them on the Oversight Committee, over Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), before he died of cancer months later. Other lawmakers have shown a lack of aptitude with technology, including Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-South Carolina), who said in a July interview that he only learned a week earlier about ChatGPT, one of the popular artificial intelligence chatbots reshaping society.
Larson experienced a “complex partial seizure” that caused him to go silent for about 25 seconds while speaking in the House in 2025, according to his office. At the time, Larson attributed the pause to a heart valve replacement that he had 15 years earlier. He said that medication helps control the condition and returned to the House floor two days later, but the incident still heightened concerns about his health. Bronin has not raised it as an issue during the campaign.
Some institutional groups view Larson’s age and experience as an asset rather than a liability. Keith Brothers, the president of the Connecticut State Building Trades Council, a construction worker union supporting Larson, described the congressman at the recent rally as a “true warrior” for organized labor.
“I’m going to tell you right now, the one thing we don’t need in Washington is a freshman congressman,” Brothers said.
Larson and his allies have also sought to contrast his upbringing in public housing with Bronin’s identity, criticizing him as out of touch with the district. Bronin, a native of Rye, New York, one of the nation’s wealthiest suburbs, attended the private boarding school Phillips Exeter Academy before receiving a Rhodes scholarship and later studying at Yale Law School.
“I know what side of the street I grew up on,” Larson said during a fiery speech to the union crowd.
Bronin, as the race has neared its close and the candidates have traded barbs, has broadly avoided engaging in a back-and-forth about his history and politics with Larson. Instead, he has sought to keep his focus on change.
“I have tremendous respect for Congressman Larson,” he said. “We would be a stronger party if more of our leaders recognize that part of leadership is knowing when it’s time to pass the torch.”
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