Democratic candidates in Connecticut’s U.S. House races were declaring victory Tuesday night as the party made widespread gains nationally, likely retaking control of the House, in an election cycle dominated by an unpopular president.

Connecticut’s House delegation appeared all but guaranteed to remain all blue next year, with four Democratic incumbents holding their seats. One new member — Luke Bronin — won Connecticut’s 1st Congressional District seat based in Hartford, where Democrat Rep. John Larson had served since 1999.

Around 11 p.m., the Associated Press had called the races in the 1st, 2nd and 4th Districts. And in the other two districts, Democrats held strong leads.

Bronin defeated Republican challenger Amy Chai, a physician who previously ran for Congress in a different district. He joined statewide elected officials Tuesday night at Hartford’s minor league baseball stadium Dunkin’ Park, including Gov. Ned Lamont, Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz and the constitutional officers on the verge of winning their bids for reelection. U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who was not on this year’s ballot, also attended the party.

Speaking to supporters, Bronin began with words of appreciation for the absent U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, who suffered a stroke over the weekend, and he thanked Larson for his service in Congress.

As the newest member, Bronin will join a congressional delegation with decades of seniority in Congress. He said the task for Democrats now is to use the opportunity given to them to win the American people’s trust and lay the groundwork for retaking the White House in 2028.

“Donald Trump’s entire presidency has been a con, and today, we can say the American people have stopped falling for it,” Bronin said.

Bronin, who served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve and was deployed to Afghanistan, was heavily favored over Chai and Green Party nominee Mary Sanders.

Chai said her views don’t fit neatly inside a political ideology and she described herself as an “open book.” She was either unaffiliated or part of the Libertarian Party until last year.

To the west, U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes appeared on the verge of winning a fifth term to Connecticut’s 5th Congressional District over Republican opponent Chris Shea, a firefighter and retired Navy SEAL. The seat remains the most competitive in the state, but it got significantly less national attention and outside money than previous years.

Elsewhere in Connecticut, there were few surprises as races were called for U.S. Reps. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, and Jim Himes, D-4th District. Rosa DeLauro, D-3rd District held a strong lead as results trickled in. All three will be vying for top roles on their committees if Democrats take back the House.

In Waterbury, a lively crowd gathered at the same downtown hotel where Hayes held her last two election night watch parties. Before the race was called, Hayes entered the hotel ballroom around 10:20 p.m. to massive applause. She embraced supporters and danced before she took the stage.

Hayes said Shea called her five minutes earlier “conceding that the numbers do not look good for him.”

“I just want to say that this cycle was different. It was nastier. The attacks started earlier. They were more personal and there was more at stake. But we just kept working through it,” Hayes told supporters. “We kept turning out voters in every part of this district, and we crushed it in places that they said we would never get.

“And tomorrow, we get back to work,” she continued. “We get back to doing the work so that we can right size this government and put a check on this administration.”

Shea, a first-time candidate, gathered with supporters at the VFW in Oakville. He wanted to bring change to a district that’s been elusive to Republicans for years. Shea campaigned on his experience serving in the military and at the Pentagon.

Hayes’ closest reelection race was in 2022, which she won by a little over 2,000 votes. But she’s won every other race by more comfortable margins. Election analysts had rated this year’s race much closer to Democrats than recent years, particularly in a midterm election that was trending away from Republicans.

In the eastern part of the state, Courtney bested Republican opponent George Austin in the 2nd Congressional District.

When Courtney first ran for office in 2006, he was part of the blue wave that swept Democrats back into the majority — but in his own race, he flipped a Republican-held seat by eking out a victory with an 83-vote margin. Two decades later, the congressman has easily won reelection through a coalition of voters that cuts across party lines.

Austin is a business owner and works in construction. He noted local Republicans haven’t “put up a blue-collar candidate in a long time.” The district is the most rural one in the state and home to defense contractors like General Dynamics Electric Boat.

From her New Haven-based district, DeLauro declared victory, entering a historic 19th term representing the 3rd Congressional District. She faced a challenge from Republican Chris Lancia. Thomas Egan, a lawyer who ran unsuccessfully for elected office, was also on the ballot as the Independent Party nominee.

Lancia is a Coast Guard veteran and former federal law enforcement officer who works as a manager at TNI, a provider of fiber networks. He was a first-time candidate and former Democrat who said he believed it was time for a fresh face representing the 3rd District.

At the congresswoman’s Election Night party, at New Haven’s Schubert Theater, attendees wore hot pink buttons that read, “Fight Like Hell.” Around 9 p.m., DeLauro made an entrance, wearing an iridescent dress and matching scarf and lipsynching to “Proud Mary” as it played over the speakers.

In a speech to her supporters, DeLauro thanked her family and her campaign team and congratulated the four other Democratic congressional candidates on the ballot. “We don’t have the final numbers, but they’re all winners,” she said.

“When I get back, and I get the gavel of the Appropriations Committee…” she said, before being interrupted by chants from the crowd of “Ro – sa! Ro – sa!” 

“I want that gavel!” she quipped, pledging that she’d use the chairmanship to “restore the power of the purse to the Congress.”

And from the southwestern corner of the state, Himes won another term to Connecticut’s 4th Congressional District against Republican Michael Goldstein and Independent Party nominee Benjamin Wesley.

The seat was a Republican stronghold for 40 years and was represented by more liberal Republicans. That changed in 2008 when Himes first ran and flipped the seat during the first election of Barack Obama. Himes defeated Chris Shays, a moderate Republican who would often buck his own party.

Since then, the 4th District has been reliably blue. Himes has some theories about what happened, pointing to changes in the Republican Party and less about the electorate itself.

It’s the third time that Goldstein, a doctor and attorney, ran for the seat. He lost the Republican primary in 2022 but became the nominee in 2024, eventually losing to Himes. Wesley, a mechanical engineer, was also running for the second time.

In the lead up to Tuesday’s elections, Republican congressional candidates bemoaned the lack of support they received from their own party. Republicans haven’t had a member of Congress represent Connecticut since 2009, but they hope the party reinvests in them at the federal level.

“I think that a more engaged Republican Party would probably be much better for the candidates,” Goldstein said in an interview weeks before Tuesday’s elections. “But this has been this way for a while. I don’t see it changing soon.”

Outside of Connecticut, Democrats were having a strong night in the overall battle for control of the House — and possibly the Senate. In 2006, Democrats had a wave year, capturing both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections of George W. Bush’s second term as an unpopular war waged on.

Connecticut’s lawmakers could gain considerable influence if Democrats take back the majority in one or both chambers of Congress. They see potential majorities as a way to put a check on the last two years of the Trump administration.

As she said in her victory speech, DeLauro is hoping to reclaim the gavel of the House Appropriations Committee. She has served as the ranking member since 2023 of the influential panel that crafts spending bills, allocates money and funds the government. She previously served as chair for two years starting in 2021.

Courtney hopes to ascend leadership on the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, which is part of the House Armed Services Committee. And Himes wants to secure the chairmanship of the secretive House Intelligence Committee.

Hayes, meanwhile, will run in Democrats’ contested leadership race for the top spot on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

There’s a common theme in their prospective committee leadership plans: oversight of the Trump administration.

“Connecticut, for a really small delegation, we’re going to punch well above our weight, and most of that is due to Rosa DeLauro’s likely appropriations chairmanship,” Himes said in a recent interview. “From the standpoint of the power of the purse, I think it is going to be a really powerful check and balance.”

CT Mirror reporters Maia Nehme and Theo Peck-Suzuki contributed to this story.