Let me tell you something. When I’ve been at a job for five years, my boss starts asking what I’ve done lately. When John Larson has been at his job for almost thirty years, the entire Connecticut Democratic establishment lines up to hand him another term like he’s a tenured professor who can’t be touched. Well, Tuesday night, the voters of Connecticut’s 1st District finally did what nobody in the fancy offices of Washington had the guts to do. They showed him the door.
Luke Bronin, 47, beat Larson 54 to 34 with half the votes counted. A former Hartford mayor walked into the convention and took the party endorsement right out of the incumbent’s hands. NBC News says Larson is the tenth House member to lose a primary this year. Seven Democrats, three Republicans. That’s not a coincidence, folks. That’s a pattern.
Now here’s where I have questions for the manager.
Hakeem Jeffries endorsed this man. The entire Connecticut congressional delegation endorsed him. The unions endorsed him. Every single person whose paycheck depends on keeping things exactly the way they are lined up behind a 78-year-old who has been in elected office since my oldest child was in diapers. And they lost. They lost to a guy who outraised them, outworked them, and had the audacity to say what every normal person watching C-SPAN at 2 a.m. has been thinking: maybe the job isn’t giving “red-faced speeches to an empty chamber for the cameras.”
Dannel Malloy (CC BY 2.0) via Wikimedia CommonsBronin said that. On the record. To NBC News. He said Larson has been in office “for about 50 years” and gotten “stuck in a routine.” Fifty years! I’ve been married for 16 and my husband still can’t remember which day is recycling pickup. But we’re supposed to believe a man who has been in politics since the Carter administration is bringing fresh ideas to the table?
And here’s the part that really got me going in the group chat. Larson’s pitch to voters was, and I am not making this up, “the issue here is Donald Trump.” That was his answer. When asked why he deserved another term, he pointed at somebody else. I’ve raised four kids. I have heard “but he started it” approximately ten thousand times. It didn’t work when my seven-year-old said it, and it shouldn’t work when a congressman says it. You don’t get to keep your job forever just because you can name the person you think is worse than you.
Larson told Roll Call he’s “proud to stand with labor because I know what side of the street I grew up on.” And look, I respect that. Public housing, working-class roots, that means something. But you know what else means something? Knowing when to go home. My grandfather drove a delivery truck for 40 years and then he retired, because he understood that at some point you’ve done your part and you let the next person take the wheel. He didn’t park the truck at the depot and refuse to get out.
Bronin said this moment calls for members of Congress who will “build a movement” outside the Capitol walls, not just sit in subcommittee rooms collecting seniority like it’s a pension multiplier. He’s 47. That’s not a kid. That’s a grown man with executive experience who ran a city. He looked at a 78-year-old who hadn’t faced a primary in three decades and said, no, actually, I think I’ll run.
AlvieFirefly (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wikimedia CommonsSeven Democratic incumbents have now lost primaries this cycle. The party brass keeps endorsing the old guard. The voters keep overruling them. At some point you have to ask: who exactly are these endorsements for? Because they sure aren’t for the people showing up to vote.
The voters spoke. The establishment didn’t listen until it was too late. And John Larson is going home after nearly 30 years because he thought pointing at Donald Trump was a substitute for a reason to stay.