Long-time U.S. Representative John Larson (D-CT-1) is facing a primary challenge for the first time in his nearly three decades in the office.

WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Mark Pazniokas to discuss his article, “Fight for generational change takes aim at U.S. Rep. John Larson,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. Read Mark’s story here.

WSHU: Hello, Mark. John Larson (D-CT-1) was first elected to Congress nearly 30 years ago. Though he’s not the longest-serving member of the state’s congressional delegation, he’s facing multiple challengers for the Democratic Party nomination this year. That’s very unusual for a Connecticut incumbent. Is that what prompted you to do the story?

MP: That and a couple of other things, I really wanted also to get a personal sense of what it’s like for a senior member of Congress at this point in their career to face something that you haven’t faced before. He had a, you know, a little scuffle two years ago, but nobody, nobody who had the wherewithal to get the convention votes to qualify for a primary. But this is very different. You know, you have multiple challengers, one of whom has significant financial resources, the former mayor of Hartford, Luke Bronin (D), and he also has the contacts to make a real, serious run at Larson for the endorsement at the convention. I don’t think there’s any doubt that Luke Bronin will qualify for a primary. The only question is, how close can he come to actually winning the endorsement? That will be something that, you know, we’ll find out on May 11.

WSHU: Something interesting about Luke Bronin, he actually approached Larson privately and asked him to step down this year. Could you just tell us how that went? And it was kind of strange. He did that even before he declared that he was running for the seat.

MP: Yes, I think that gesture was both self-serving to a degree on the part of Luke Bronin, but also a sign of respect that, before he went public, he did want to sit down with Congressman Larson and make the argument that look, you have had a really good career, but there’s a hunger in the party right now. Because it’s not just him, you know, you see people who are actually, quite frankly, a little bit older, like Nancy Pelosi, she’s calling it quits after previously stepping down as the House Democratic Leader. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, a former House Majority Leader. He’s not running this year. Jerry Nadler, you know, who was a committee chair. So the zeitgeist is overused at times in politics, but there does seem to be something in the air, in the water this time, both inspired somewhat by Joe Biden’s flailing at that debate that led to him ending his campaign for president as an incumbent, an extraordinary thing, and now you have Donald Trump. You know, Joe Biden left the White House as the oldest person ever to hold the White House. Well, Donald Trump will be older at the end of his term.

WSHU: Let’s talk a little bit more about the congressman. He had a health scare that was on live TV, on C-SPAN. He froze during a House floor speech. Could you talk about that and how he’s dealing with the fallout from that? That video went viral.

MP: It did indeed. It was called a partial, complex seizure. He says that it is a consequence of the heart surgery he had 15 years ago. He is now on medication that he was not on previously. Other things, you know, are you dehydrated at that moment? He had one much more minor incident at a press conference where he seemed to pause, and of course, that’s one of the problems now, when you have a pause like that, people are going to be on the edge of their seats. But there did seem to be that second very minor incident. Since then, there have been no signs of that. And in fact, he had another viral moment where he had a very fiery speech at a committee meeting, going after Elon Musk and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, now MS NOW, picked up on it and said, ” You know, Congressman Larson is hydrated. He’s had his Wheaties, and he’s back. So, I mean, he did have that moment as well.

WSHU: So let’s talk a little bit about the other challengers. We’ve talked about Luke Bronin, who was a former mayor of Hartford and raised, started out with more money in the bank than Larson when he went into the race. What about the other challenges? Who are they?

MP: So the person who went first was a woman named Ruth Fortune. She’s 37 years old, or at least she was when she jumped in. She is a mayoral appointee on the board of education in Hartford. She has an interesting story to tell. She came to the U.S. as an undocumented immigrant from Haiti as a child. In a stroke of both misfortune for Haiti and luck for her, after that devastating earthquake in Haiti, Haitians who were already here were granted temporary protective status, which gave her some status in the U.S. and eventually put her on a path to citizenship. You know, she’s since gone to law school, she’s an estate lawyer, married with a couple of kids in Hartford. And again, she is of the moment to the degree she can talk very passionately about immigration and about ICE enforcement. Jillian Gilchrist is a state rep, as she points out, at Town committee meetings where she’s seeking support, she took out a long term incumbent to win her seat in the State House of Representatives. She’s not capitalized on that, perhaps as much as one would expect. She has not turned this, as far as I can tell, into a cause election about it’s time for women to hold this seat.

WSHU: What is the reception? Getting the party nomination is a closed event. Party insiders, how are they faring as they go around from town committee to county town committee?

MP: That is hard to judge as a reporter, as you know, without making that my full-time job. There are more than 400 delegates. The selection does not begin until Tuesday and will run for a full week, but the universe of potential delegates really comes from the town committees, and that’s why the four of them have been going around the district, all 27 cities and towns, knowing that at this point they’re speaking to potential delegates. Which, by the way, also says something about Connecticut and the quirky politics. It’s really inside baseball. At this point, people may wonder: Whatever happened to that congressional race that we heard so much about last summer, when a bunch of people jumped in to challenge John Larson? Well, it’s been quiet conversations at town committees all around the district. That will change shortly, at the end of this week, the beginning of next week, they’re going to be able to get hard delegate counts, and we may get some early signs of whether or not John Larson can, once again, win the endorsement, and then the second question will be, who else will qualify for a primary? You know, Jillian Gilchrist is from West Hartford, which has the second most delegates after Hartford, but it’s not guaranteed that she can carry the whole group of delegates there. John Larson has some support, certainly, as a long-term incumbent. So you know, it is the insider game until after next week.

WSHU: But the initial earthquake would be if Larson fails to get the nomination. I mean, that has never happened.

MP: Well, yes. It’s an amazing little factoid in Connecticut politics that no incumbent member of the House of Representatives from Connecticut has ever faced a primary. John Larson won the Democratic nomination for an open seat in a 1998 primary. But again, I mean, that’s an amazing fact that this has just never happened.

WSHU: Well, we’ll be looking out to see how this plays out, but it’s fascinating to look at the behind-the-scenes of how they’re working it.

MP: I hope people enjoyed it, because it was a fun story to report, and it is interesting to sort of get under the hood on this stuff. And again, these are all personal stories as well.