U.S. Rep. John B. Larson, D-1st District, accepted the endorsement of Attorney General William Tong on the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, each ignoring the congressman’s three Democratic rivals to focus on their party’s great unifier: President Donald Trump.

The chosen venue for the Tuesday morning press conference was the community center named for his late mother, Lois Nolan Larson, at Mayberry Village, the one-time federal housing project in East Hartford that has been a blue-collar touchstone for Larson through his nearly 50 years in public life, the last 27 as a congressman.

Tong, the first of the state’s six statewide constitutional officers to take sides in the rare intra-party challenge to a Connecticut congressional incumbent, said he and Larson share modest beginnings that shape their politics and fuel their opposition to a president the attorney general has sued 45 times this year.

“I don’t have to guess what John Larson is about. I don’t have to guess what this campaign is about. It’s about the people that live here,” said Tong, the son of Chinese immigrants. “It’s about the people that fight for every inch, every single day.”

Larson, 77, who has not had a Democratic primary since winning the open seat in 1998, is facing a challenge from former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, state Rep. Jillian Gilchrest of West Hartford, and Hartford school board member Ruth Fortune.

Tong’s repeated references to Mayberry Village and  Larson’s upbringing in a public housing seemed calculated to draw a contrast with Bronin, who grew up in Rye, N.Y., and Greenwich, and is by far the best funded of the three challengers. 

Larson is “fighting for people that come to Mayberry Village, that come to the community center here. He’s fighting for immigrants like my parents, who walk around with a target on their backs every single day,” Tong said. “That’s why I’m supporting John Larson. The other reason why I’m supporting John Larson is because in our official roles, we are on the front lines of this fight against a president and the federal government that every day seeks to do us harm.”

Tong’s endorsement was expected. He had joined Larson in September in opposing the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants and speaking out against the Department of Homeland Security targeting the congressman over his harsh criticism of the tactics employed by DHE’s  Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Larson had compared masked ICE agents to the SS and Gestapo of Nazi Germany.

On Tuesday, Larson accused Secretary of State Marco Rubio of lying to Congress when he assured members that the Trump administration was not working for regime change in Venezuela, not long before U.S. commandos seized its president, Nicolas Maduro, snubbing congressional leaders who should have been consulted.

“How about respect for the law, the Constitution and the War Powers Act?” Larson said. 

He offered sarcastic praise for the president on one count.

“At least he was honest about this: It’s about the oil. It’s about the oil and taking over those refineries,” Larson said. “And by the way, who’s going to defend those refineries and the American corporations that go there? And who’s going to defend that pipeline? United States military. This president and his administration need to come before Congress.”

Larson said Democrats need more than criticism of Trump and pivoted to a favorite topic: the preservation of Social Security. He faulted Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee after President Joe Biden quit the race, for failing to talk about issues other than Trump’s fitness.

“I begged the Harris administration to talk about Social Security, to put it out there, and we didn’t. We talked about Donald Trump, and as bad as he is, if you don’t have a plan, you’re not going to be successful. And we will have a plan, and you’ll hear about it in more detail.”

Larson said he is working with two other members of the House Ways and Means Committee, Richard Neal of Massachusetts and Mike Thompson of California, on legislation addressing student debt and the difficulty in renters becoming homeowners.

“We’re going to be back to the new New Deal,” Larson said.