Gov. Ned Lamont and his challenger for the Democratic nomination, Josh Elliott, will take turns Thursday afternoon in a hotel ballroom fielding questions from union members who will decide the next day if either of them will be endorsed by the Connecticut AFL-CIO ahead of the Aug. 11 primary.

For the first time, the business of winning an endorsement by the state’s largest labor federation will happen behind closed doors: The Sixteenth Biennial Political Convention in the grand ballroom of the Omni New Haven Hotel at Yale is off limits to the press.

“I don’t know of any other organization that opens the process like we used to, but we talked amongst our affiliates and decided that we want it to be private so that our members could speak openly without worrying about their name being in the press,” said Ed Hawthorne, president of the state AFL-CIO.

In past years, the political conventions have offered an unvarnished view of the mood, preferences, goals and even disagreements within the labor movement in Connecticut, a state with one of the highest per-capita union memberships in the U.S., albeit largely on the strength of public-sector unions.

In 2016, a non-gubernatorial year, the convention offered labor a chance to memorably vent about the reluctance of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and Democratic lawmakers to increase spending for raises and other items on labor’s wish list in a decade marked by a chronic fiscal crisis.

“Two years ago, we couldn’t endorse Tom Foley because we knew he would stab us in the chest,” Sal Luciano, then a senior union official, told the 2016 convention. “And so we endorsed Dan Malloy, who ended up stabbing us in the back!”

The AFL-CIO had endorsed Malloy over Foley, the Republican nominee, in 2010 and again in their 2014 rematch. 

John W. Olsen, who was president of the AFL-CIO for 25 years and remains an emeritus member of the federation’s executive board, said Wednesday he would have preferred an open convention, even if it exposed differences among unions.

“We are a democratic institution. We have fights,” Olsen said. “We need to try to get our message out.”

Olsen noted that candidate interviews in his day were conducted by a committee  whose recommendations were debated and voted on publicly. Interviews for the statewide candidates are done now via questions from the entire convention, a potentially messier proposition.

“We’re the only ones that I know of that do our endorsement interviews on the floor of the convention for any statewide office,” Hawthorne said. “Every other state federation does it, kind of, behind closed doors.”

In other states, endorsement recommendations come from executive boards or their political arms known as committees on political education, or COPE.

“Ultimately, we are extremely democratic, because it is determined by the delegates at the convention,” Hawthorne said. “There’s no predetermined ‘here’s who we want.'”

Lamont is the first incumbent Democratic governor to face a primary since 1978, but Hawthorne said that was not the impetus to close the convention.

Lamont, a Democrat seeking a third term, already has the backing of the building trades, but he has clashed with labor over his refusal to consider higher taxes on the wealthy and his veto of a bill that would have provided jobless benefits for strikers.

The governor’s message Thursday to the AFL-CIO will emphasize the role he played in passing a higher minimum wage, a nearly universal mandate for paid sick time, paid family and medical leave coverage, expanded collective bargaining rights for public employees and protections for workers who leave captive audience meetings.

After the veto in 2025, Hawthorne complained that most of those achievements came in his first term.

“There’s first-term Ned Lamont and second-term Ned Lamont,” Hawthorne said then. “He mentions the minimum wage — first term; paid family leave — first term; expanded collective bargaining — first term.”

No Republican candidate is addressing the convention. To speak, Republican gubernatorial nominee Ryan Fazio would have had to complete a written questionnaire and seek the endorsement. Fazio, who voted against a higher minimum wage and other key labor bills, said his absence did not reflect an unwillingness to listen to labor.

“I would always welcome the invitation to meet with and listen to Connecticut workers, including at the AFL-CIO convention,” he said.

The only contested Democratic nomination for statewide office is governor. 

The other statewide officers, all Democrats, will address the AFL-CIO convention: Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz and Attorney General William Tong on Thursday; Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas, Treasurer Erick Russell and Comptroller Sean Scanlon on Friday.

All endorsements for statewide, congressional and state legislative offices will be made on Friday by the votes of the convention. The voting will be closed to the press.

The other high-profile Democratic primary is for Congress in the 1st Congressional District of Greater Hartford.

John Larson, the 14-term incumbent, lost the Democratic convention endorsement to former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin and now faces a four-way primary with Bronin, state Rep. Jillian Gilchrest and Ruth Fortune.

All four sought the AFL-CIO endorsement.

Two national labor leaders will deliver keynote speeches Thursday morning: Liz Shuler, the national president of the AFL-CIO; and Brian Bryant, international president of the IAM.