Democrats held their nominating convention for the 1st U.S. House District at Goodwin University in East Hartford on Monday, May 11, 2026. Pictured is undecided Bloomfield delegate Jenette Lawrence, center, with Jennifer Marshall-Nealy, a vice chair of the Bloomfield Democrats, and former state Treasurer Joseph Suggs Jr.
Dan Haar/Hearst CT Media
Democrats held their nominating convention for the 1st U.S. House District at Goodwin University in East Hartford on Monday, May 11, 2026. Pictured is Rep. John Larson talking with supporters of Ruth Fortune, Rachel Taylor, left, of Hartford and Alisha Landau of West Hartford.
Dan Haar/Hearst CT Media
Democrats held their nominating convention for the 1st U.S. House District at Goodwin University in East Hartford on Monday, May 11, 2026. Pictured is state Rep. Jillian Gilchrest, who won a place on the August 11 primary ballot.
Dan Haar/Hearst CT Media
EAST HARTFORD — In the minutes before voting started at the 1st Congressional District’s Democratic convention Monday night, Jenette Lawrence held out as a rare delegate in a Goodwin University auditorium brimming with signs and shirts for the four candidates.
She was undecided. And the race was too close to call.
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Would she cast her vote for U.S. Rep. John B. Larson, seeking his 15th term in Congress, who held the top spot in the state Senate before his 28 years in Washington DC? Or former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, hardly an upstart as a mid-career politico, who’s trying to force Larson into retirement?
Her choice was between those two, not the longshot candidates state Rep. Jillian Gilchrest, D-West Hartford, or Ruth Fortune, a member of the Hartford Board of Education.
The 55-year-old personal trainer, on the Bloomfield Democratic Town Committee, had heard the pitches. But neither Larson nor Bronin broke through to her deeply, personally.
Democrats held their nominating convention for the 1st U.S. House District at Goodwin University in East Hartford on Monday, May 11, 2026. Pictured is Bloomfield delegate Jenette Lawrence, who was undecided, with Rep. John Larson and Joseph Suggs Jr., the former state Treasurer.
Dan Haar/Hearst CT Media
“I’m teetering on both sides. I have different reasons,” Lawrence told me as the convention chairman, John Kennelly, son of Barbara Kennelly, who held this seat for 17 years in the ’80s and ’90s, grandson of the legendary state and national party boss John M. Bailey, called for nominations.
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Tradition, you see, matters around here. Larson, in his beloved East Hartford hometown, in a building he helped make happen, held most of the delegates from Lawrence’s town, the folks sitting all around her in the back on the left side as you faced the front. But Lawrence is not the go-along, get-along type.
“I would say I’m leaning more toward Bronin even though the town is leaning more toward Larson,” Lawrence allowed, reluctantly, as I pressed her.
A unicorn amid the horse-trading
Lawrence was something of a unicorn in this political hall. I had set out to find an undecided voter because I viewed them as the upholders of pure democracy, arriving not with a flag of the chosen team but rather with a goal to listen, watch, talk with the candidates one last time and make a decision in the ancient tradition of the citizen at the forum.
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My quest to find Lawrence, or any undecided delegate, took me on a tour of the flawed but colorful artifact of democracy we call a political convention, a celebration of horse trading as much as ideas, where party insiders wield their power. I learned from Kennelly that the campaigns had a count of 20 undecided delegates out of 419.
But numerous town chiefs including Marc DiBella in Hartford, son of a power broker who served with Larson in Hartford, could point to no undecided delegates.
Democrats held their nominating convention for the 1st U.S. House District at Goodwin University in East Hartford on Monday, May 11, 2026. Pictured is Hartford Democratic Chair Marc DiBella, left, with his delegation.
Dan Haar/Hearst CT Media
“If they are undecided until now, I don’t know where they’ve been,” state Sen. Saud Anwar, D-South Windsor, a Larson supporter who’s widely believed to want the seat someday.
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Bronin showed confidence. “We’ve built a huge amount of traction across the district. You can feel that,” he said.
Fortune supporter Rachel Taylor, of Hartford, told Larson the party was anti-democratic, blocking Fortune’s path to the ballot, a path steeper in Connecticut than in most other states.
“You could help us get on the ballot,” she said to the congressman who grew up in public housing a couple of miles away and launched his political career 49 years ago as a local teacher seeking a seat on the board of education.
“Yes, but I’m trying to help myself,” Larson said, reminding her that he’s a candidate. “She’s done a great job,” he said of Fortune, but she should work her way up to a race for Congress like he did.
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Personal stories ‘hit home’
Larson took a seat in the first row, center, between state Sen. Matt Lesser, D-Middletown, and Daniel Papermaster, the lawyer and longtime political insider who’s Larson’s campaign chair.
Fortune and Gilchrest sat at opposite sides, both in the front row. Nearly every speech described this as a crucial moment for America – a perennial cry in politics that just happens to be true in 2026.
Bronin remained at the back of the auditorium through all the nominating and seconding speeches, working the crowd the whole time.
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The Democrat who emerges as the 1st District nominee, after a primary on Aug. 11, is assured of winning the general election in this pure blue district. The question Monday night was not who can win in November, but who best to battle President Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress who do his bidding.
Lawrence received a visit from Bronin during the speeches. She moved between seats, talking with several people including Danielle Wong, the former Bloomfield mayor. She remained at the rear as the crowd surged forward during the voting.
Democrats held their nominating convention for the 1st U.S. House District at Goodwin University in East Hartford on Monday, May 11, 2026. Pictured at center is Jenette Lawrence, a Bloomfield delegate who was undecided, talking with former Bloomfield Mayor Danielle Wong.
Dan Haar/Hearst CT Media
One of those conversations would finally sway her vote.
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A smiling Larson greeted the Bloomfield delegation, posing for a photo with Lawrence, just as Joseph Suggs Jr., the 85-yerar-old former state Treasurer, announced the tally: 17 for Larson, four for Bronin.
Lawrence, in the end, was one of the 17 Bloomfield voters for Larson. It wasn’t the campaigning, nor even the issues, she told me. She was persuaded after hearing a story about Larson helping her friend Sasa Harriott expand her home healthcare business.
The key: “Stories of things he had actually done,” she said,. “These things really hit home because they were personal.”
Anatomy of a ‘political earthquake’
The reason Lawrence had leaned toward Bronin was more about change than the candidate, she told me. Bronin had not won her vote.
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But Bronin won the night, as Larson’s strategy of leveraging Gilchrest delegates failed. The Larson camp, leading Bronin slightly after the initial voting, engineered a deal.
Former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin is all smiles after narrowing winning the First Congressional District Democratic convention, where delegates had to choose between incumbent Rep. John Larson D- East Hartford, Luke Bronin, Jillian Gilchrest and Ruth Fortune on Monday, May 11, 2026, at Goodwin College in East Hartford.
Jim Michaud/Hearst Connecticut Media
Gilchrest had 37 of the 419 votes. To win a spot on the August ballot, she needed 28 more. Manchester, solid for Larson to a delegate, provided those 28 votes for Gilchrest in the vote-swapping period at the end of the first ballot.
In exchange, Gilchrest would drop out of the second ballot, a coveted spot in the Aug. 11 primary in hand, and work to persuade her 37 delegates to support Larson, thereby putting him over Bronin.
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I followed her to the West Hartford section, her hometown. She had lost some of those delegates in recent days and the swapping did not go well despite Gilchrest’s hard efforts alongside her top aide, political veteran Jacqueline Kozin. In the end, Bronin picked up a dozen West Hartford votes and beat Larson 214-204.
Lawrence exited right after Bronin boomed, “We just saw a political earthquake in this convention,” hand-in-hand with her husband, Patrick, a school vice principal who was there to support her, not as a delegate himself. Satisfied with her vote, she said she intended to vote for Larson in the primary.
Democrats held their nominating convention for the 1st U.S. House District at Goodwin University in East Hartford on Monday, May 11, 2026. Pictured is Rep. John Larson immediately after former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin was declared the winner.
Dan Haar/Hearst CT Media
Fortune told me she’s confident she will collect the necessary 3,734 signatures to petition her way onto the ballot. “I planned for this. We’ve already got 1,000 signatures,” she said.
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Bronin, as the Row A endorsed Democrat, may face a four-way primary with the 28-year veteran incumbent on Row D. “Anybody whose vote I didn’t win tonight, I hope to win your vote in August,” he said, aiming his remarks at the likes of Jenette Lawrence – a denizen of pure Democracy.
dhaar@hearstmediact.com