Congressman John B. Larson used to speak fondly of Luke Bronin, the former two-term Hartford mayor. Democrats say the 77-year-old Larson on occasion mentioned the 46-year-old Bronin as a worthy successor in the 1st Congressional District. Whenever that day might come.

On Monday, between two public appearances hastily added to his schedule before an early afternoon flight to Washington, D.C., Larson described Bronin surprising him 10 days ago by asking over coffee to consider whether that time was now — and telling him that he wanted the job.

“I started to laugh, because I thought he was kidding,” Larson said.

Bronin was not the first to make a move towards challenging Larson ahead of the 2026 midterms, nor will he be the last. 

Like Bronin, Rep. Jillian Gilchrest, 43, of West Hartford, is gauging support for a challenge. Hartford school board member Ruth Fortune, 37, of Hartford filed campaign papers July 3, and Councilman Jack Perry, 35, of Southington said Monday he will announce his candidacy Tuesday, on Larson’s birthday.

But Bronin was the most direct among the would-be Democratic successors. He met Larson at Rebel Dog Coffee Co. near Pratt & Whitney in East Hartford, the factory town where Larson grew up in public housing and began his string of electoral victories by winning a school board seat in 1977.

“Listen, I give him credit, that he had the nerve,” Larson said.

But Larson is hardly sanguine about the prospect of his first challenge for the Democratic nomination since 1998, when he won a primary for an open seat being vacated by Barbara B. Kennelly to run for governor. Privately to Bronin and publicly to anyone who asks, Larson says he is not ready to leave.

Larson said he declined Bronin’s suggestion to reconsider seeking a term that would keep him in Congress beyond his 80th birthday.

“I can give you my answer right now,” Larson said he told Bronin. “I’m running.”

Larson’s account of the conversation in an interview with The Connecticut Mirror prompted Bronin, who previously had declined to speak on the record about his interest in the congressional seat, to issue a statement casting his approach as respectful, but blunt about the Democratic Party’s appetite for change.

Bronin said he reiterated in his recent conversation with Larson what he frequently has told him: He respected Larson’s work.

“I’ve also shared what I feel, and what I hear everywhere I go — which is that our country is in crisis, our party is struggling to meet the moment, and we can’t defeat Trumpism unless we start using a new playbook and carry our message everywhere, every day, with energy and urgency,” Bronin said. “I’ve also shared, respectfully, my hope that he might consider letting this be the time to pass the baton so that new voices can compete to carry that work forward.” 

Larson said he heard a simpler message, that Bronin no longer was weighing a run for governor, should Gov. Ned Lamont not seek a third term in 2026.

“He essentially said…’I’d like you to step aside so I can run for your seat,’” Larson said.

At 77, Larson is the same age that Lamont would be at the end of a third term, should he run and be reelected. Lamont, who has described himself as seriously considering a third term, has one announced challenger for the Democratic nomination, 41-year-old Rep. Josh Elliott of Hamden. 

Lamont said Monday any challenge to any incumbent should offer more than a promise of generational change.

“I think you have to earn in life,” Lamont said. “You just don’t say, ‘I’m younger. Time for a change. Vote for me.’ You have to have really compelling reasons. And there have been races in the past that were generational, but they were also based on substance, real changes people wanted to make.”

The governor spoke well of Larson and Bronin, the latter who acted as a campaign surrogate for Lamont in 2022. He has heard from both.

“I think the world of both of them,” Lamont said. “I know John for many years, and Luke for many, many years. Some day, Luke will be a great congressman.”

He did not say when that day might come.

On Monday, Larson appeared on short notice at two events on the governor’s public schedule: The launch of a capital campaign to raise $12.5 million for the second phase of a project to modernize the Hartford Public Library, and a riverside press conference announcing a state grant to extend Riverfront Recapture’s Hartford riverwalk by 2.5 miles into Windsor. 

At the library, Larson mingled with the governor, House Speaker Matt Ritter of Hartford and Bronin’s successor, Mayor Arunan Arulampalam, and Shirley Surgeon, the president of the Hartford council. Larson was not among the listed speakers in a program.

“Is there federal money in this thing?” Lamont quietly asked Larson.

Surgeon said she had been called by Bronin, and she pledged her support should the former mayor formally enter the race. Surgeon said Larson has been a good friend to the city, and she chatted amiably with him at the riverfront event.

But, Surgeon said out of Larson’s presence, the midterm elections are likely to place a new generation of Democrats in the House, and she would like to see Bronin among them, giving Hartford a representative in what could be a large and influential class.

Larson said he told Bronin the preservation and expansion of Social Security, his priority since before Republicans won the White House, Senate and House, is his reason for running again. He is the ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means subcommittee on Social Security and once again would be the subcommittee chair if Democrats recapture the House.

“We’re four seats away, and I’ll be chairman of that committee,” Larson said.

Larson has proposed the Social Security 2100 Act in successive terms of Congress. Among other things, it would increase benefits by 2% across the board for all Social Security beneficiaries for the first time in 54 years, restore student benefits up to age 26 and stabilize the Social Security trust fund by raising payroll taxes on higher earners.

Larson was unable to pass the bill when Democrats held the White House and majorities in Congress, and Democrats are unlikely to flip the Senate in 2026, but he said the issue would be problematic to oppose.

“I’d like to see the Republicans try to vote against providing increases to 70 million people who haven’t received them in over 54 years,” Larson said. 

He mentioned a conversation years ago with U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., then the leader of the conservative Freedom Caucus in the House and later the last of President Donald J. Trump’s first-term chiefs of staff, who told him the bill could attract conservative votes. 

Larson could not recall Meadows’ name, asking a staffer, “Who’s the kid from North Carolina?” 

Meadows was 53 when elected to his first term in Congress in 2012.

Gilchrest said she had hoped Larson would reconsider running in 2026.

“I’ve been trying to be respectful of the congressman, but that is becoming more difficult” as others make their moves, she said. Fortune’s declaration of a challenge to Larson played a role in the exploratory calls by Bronin and Gilchrest, and now Perry will become the second declared challenger.

Democrats are looking for new voices, Gilchrest said. 

“I think it’s more about a new leadership style in that people are looking for their leaders to be authentically themselves and not wait for a political poll to tell them what their positions are,” Gilchrest said, “I think people are looking for a Democratic Party that people can believe in.”

Perry is the former owner of a waste hauling and recycling business that he sold to a larger competitor and he calls himself a working class entrepreneur.

“I’m running for Congress because I, like many other people, am fed up with this broken economic system that is rigged against the working and middle class,” Perry said. “We need fresh leadership in Congress who will boldly fight back against Trump, MAGA Republicans, and corporate special interests to put people first.”