Politics & Government
Bronin’s platform: fix tax code, reduce deficit, Abundance
Former Hartford mayor tackles tough task of unseating First District Congressman John Larson
By Scott Benjamin
HARTFORD – He steps out of the passenger seat of a car that stops briefly on Main Street in San Juan Center wearing jeans and a green T-shirt - which, considering his resume and fund-raising prowess – should have a statement-making ivory sash on it.
“There is not a lot of parking there,” he says.
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He has been associated with the big names – Yale, Yale Law, Rhodes Scholar, the Navy in Afghanistan, Barack, Dannel, City Hall.
It is mostly a young crowd at Semilla Café + Studio, some of them typing on their lap tops. There are T-shirts for sale on hangers and around the corner from the dining area there is a table with art supplies. There also is a booth where an air personality can play the hits – including Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.”
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Two staff members hug Luke Bronin, 46, as he orders hot tea. He was the mayor for eight years and helped rescue the Insurance City from bankruptcy.
Mark Pazniokas wrote in Ct Mirror in 2022 that Gov. Ned Lamont (D-Greenwich) has had effusive praise for Bronin.
Lamont said, “A lot of businesses were thinking about relocating. And here we are, six years later, talking about hundreds and soon to be thousands of units of housing being built in this city. More people moving into the city. More young people moving into the city. The business community feeling a lot more confident about the future of our capital city.”
Bronin is now running for Congress in the First District along with three other challengers who are seeking to wrest the Democratic nomination next summer away from incumbent John Larson – who took office around the time that Michael Jordan won his last title with the Chicago Bulls.
The other challengers are attorney Ruth Fortune, a member of the Hartford Board of Education, Southington Council member Jack Perry. and state Rep. Jillian Gilchrest of West Hartford.
State Democratic Party Secretary Audrey Blondin of Goshen said that she supported Larson in 1994 when he ran for governor. Larson won the convention nomination but lost in the primary to then-state Comptroller Bill Curry. She said that she has appreciated his service in the U.S. House, where he has the second longest tenure in Connecticut history.
Blondin added, “I don’t know in the race who is supporting Luke aside from myself, I am only speaking for myself personally. But potential-wise, Luke is second to none.”
Larry Lazor of West Hartford, who was the Republican nominee against Larson in 2022, said, “You may disagree with his politics, but Luke Bronin is a bright guy.”
A high-profile race for a Democratic U.S. House nomination in Connecticut happens about as often as an American wins the gold medal in the Olympic marathon.
Commented Lazor, said, “This could be one of the most exciting races in the country.”
After his first official day in the race, Bronin had raised more money than the Beatles had grossed at their 1965 Bill Shea Stadium concert. Days later the fund-raising thermometer had risen to $800,000.
Will there be much difference between them on the issues?
Said Lazor. “I don’t think that their platforms will be drastically different. But Larson has been there too long.”
Larson of East Hartford is 77 years old. Younger than U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-3) of New Haven and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Greenwich). He would turn 80 before the end of a 15th term, if he is re-elected in November 2026.
Curry, now a journalist, said he is “eternally grateful” that after he defeated Larson in the 1994 Democratic gubernatorial primary, Larson was one of the few establishment Democrats that actively supported him in the November election.
Curry has written for Salon about the generation battles in the Democratic Party, and said, “For almost no one, the generic age and biological age are the same. In politics there are a lot of other considerations. There are considerations on influence and the constituents in their district.”
He remarked, “I’m struck and saddened by these party challengers who are running just on, ‘I’m younger and it’s time for a change.’ “
“It is not enough that you have better hair and more energy,” Curry commented.
“I was struck by how much they sounded like the people they are seeking to replace,” he exclaimed.
Curry said the 2020 U.S. Senate Democratic primary in Massachusetts between then 74-year-old incumbent Ed Markey and then-U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy is a “paradigm of what has happened since and what is happening right now. Markey, like [Larson], is an old-style defender of working people, of unions, of senior citizens and the marginalized. Joe Kennedy was an affluent candidate. The Democratic primary electorate in Massachusetts, which is a lot like the Democratic primary electorate in Connecticut, said: We like each other now.”
He added, “I think it is important for older candidates to show energy. The important thing Markey showed was what he was for and the contrast between his own vision and his challenger. This is what this race [in the First District] will come down to.”
Curry said Bronin “has money. He is a bright person and will be a formidable challenger.”
Lazor said Laron’s seniority – he is a high-ranking member on the powerful House Ways & Means Committee, “will resonate with some voters. I think that is the one thing that John has over Luke.”
Curry remarked, “I don’t think you do yourself any favors running as an institutionalist. At the same time, you should let people know that you have seniority on a committee with jurisdiction over the preservation of Social Security after Trump already took a pound of flesh out of Medicaid.”
“I would not give up that representation lightly,” he commented.
The Democrats dominate Connecticut. For example, at the federal level, they hold both U.S. Senate seats and all five U.S. House seats. No Republican has won a congressional race since 2006.
Lazor said he is not planning on running in 2026 and, to date, he said he is not aware of a candidate who has stepped forward to seek the Republican nomination in the First District.
The Democrats have had the seat in the First District – which encompasses 27 municipalities in the metro-Hartford area – since Pat Summerall was kicking extra points for the New York Giants.
However, nationally a recent Wall Street Journal poll shows that “63% of voters hold an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party—the highest share in Journal polls dating to 1990.”
The national Democrats are spending $20 million over two years to find out how to generate more support from young men.
In response to the Speaking with American Men project, author Scott Johnston wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal that the answer is an 18-year-old drinking age.
In an interview with Patch.com, Bronin commented, “I think that is kind of offensive to young male voters. I think young male voters want to see an economy where they can build the kind of life that they want.”
William Galston of the Brookings Institute recently told The New York Times to take back Washington, the Democrats have to address “government overspending,” since the public believes it spurred inflation under Democratic former President Joe Biden.
Some point at the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Act that was signed by Democratic former President Joe Biden in early 2021.
Bronin exclaimed, “The American Rescue Act was a response to a pandemic that risked putting out country into a second Great Depression.”
Wall Street Journal economics commentator Greg Ip differs.
In a 2023 column, he wrote that by the time Biden took office in January 2021, “The economic crisis brought on by Covid-19 was largely over, even if the health crisis wasn’t. As lockdowns were lifted and vaccines approved, businesses were furiously rehiring. Payroll growth averaged 800,000 a month over the last six months of 2020, in percentage terms the strongest such streak preceding a new president’s inauguration since 1952.”
Bronin defended the plan, saying that, “The economic recovery that followed was ahead of most countries in the world.”
However, Bronin acknowledged, “Many economists and the Democratic Party were too slow to recognize the speed of inflation and the pain that it caused.”
Inflation soared to 9.1 percent in June 2022.
Bronin countered, “The Republicans are doing some of the most fiscally irresponsible practices our country has ever seen. The recent Trump-led ‘Big’ bill exploded our deficits to unprecedented levels while giving tax breaks to those who need them the least.”
The annual payment on the debt exceeds the entire Department of Defense budget, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Bronin commented that the Republicans have “taken off all guardrails to fiscal discipline.”
“Democrats for quite some time have been more fiscally responsible than the Republican Party has,” he declared. “They are fueling inflation in a way that is very easy to predict.”
“I think right now we should be focused on bringing deficits to a sustainable level,” Bronin said.
Bronin worked in the Treasury Department under Democratic former President Barack Obama.
When Congress wouldn’t establish a commission on deficit reduction, in 2010, Obama appointed the Alan Simpson-Erskine Bowles Commission. Its recommendations were not adopted, but David Walker, the former Comptroller General, who used to live in Bridgeport, said in 2012 that Simpson-Bowles “would have more than gotten the job done” regarding deficit reduction.
Last year U.S. Rep. Jim Himes (D-4) of Greenwich, who was one of just 38 members to support a version of Simpson-Bowles in the House in 2012, said he would support appointing another commission to tackle deficit reduction.
In May 2024, he told Patch.com that, “The virtue of a commission is that they can step back and do something that is just [appropriate] for the American people. A commission can step in and say, ‘here is a just proposal’ as opposed to legislators trying to preserve their pet programs.”
Would Bronin support a commission similar to Simpson-Bowles?
“With the dysfunction in Congress, it’s naive to think that something like the Simpson Bowles commission would make a difference right now,” Bronin exclaimed.
What about the Pay As You Go budget controls that Congress approved in 1990 as part of the budget agreement when Republican former President George H.W. Bush increased taxes?
“I’m not sure what you mean,” said Bronin regarding Pay As You Go.
If Congress increases spending, then it has to increase taxes to pay for it or cut other parts of the budget to offset that spending. Former U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-East Haddam) had endorsed it as far back as 1982.
“We’re far away from that,” Bronin said. “Right now, first let us establish a principle that we need a tax code that is fair and allows us to be fiscally sustainable and at the same time providing the basic government resources that Americans deserve.”
On the tax code, Obama campaigned in 2008 on having those earning $250,000 or more pay an additional Social Security tax.
“I’m not going to get into a specific number,” said Bronin. ”I would have to review that proposal. We need a plan to protect and preserve Social Security. A plan that those that earn the most pay into the system in a fair way.”
He applauds Obama for rebuilding the American economy following the 2008 Great Recession.
“It is really easy in retrospect to forget just how perilous a moment that was for our country and how close we came to complete financial collapse,” remarked Bronin.
Former Washington Post economics columnist Robert Samuelson wrote in 2012, “Recall that in the first half of 2009, the economy was losing almost 650,000 jobs a month. By March, the Dow was down 25 percent from year-end 2008. You could (and I did) quarrel with details of the stimulus, the auto bailout, the bank "stress test" and the Troubled Asset Relief Program. But these policies, some started under President Bush, were needed. Acting with the Fed, Obama's responses and confident manner helped stabilize the economy. If this hadn't happened, who knows where we'd be.”
However, Bronin added, “At the same time, I wish the Obama Administration had done far more in the wake of that financial crisis to make sure the recovery was shared by more Americans.”
“I wish we had begun tackling fairness in the tax code so that it would be simpler and less burdensome for those who are making less and asking more of those who earn the most,” he remarked. “I wish we had been able to do even more to focus on access to housing of all kinds that people could afford.”
“But it is very important to remember that after the first two years of the Obama Administration, he had to deal with a Republican Congress,” Bronin exclaimed. “The shortcomings of the Obama Administration are mostly related to a Republican Congress that didn’t want him to succeed.”
He endorsed the “Abundance” platform that was outlined in the recent book by Derek Thompson of the Atlantic and Ezra Klein of The New York Times. They have called for such items as more modular housing and fewer regulations that curtail economic development.
Exclaimed Bronin, “I feel very strongly that we have to make it easier to build the things that will make a difference in people’s lives. That includes everything from housing to modern transportation infrastructure to a green electric grid to storm-drain infrastructure that will help us address the accelerating climate crisis.”
“As a country we have made it far too hard and far too costly and far too slow to build the kind of things that make a difference in people’s lives,” he added.
Why is that the case?
“It is due in part to regulations,” Bronin remarked. “It is due in part to government procurement procedures from the federal level down to the state level down to the local level.”
He said he opposes the state capitalism being practiced by Republican President Donald Trump – a hybrid between socialism and capitalism in which the state guides decisions by private enterprises – such as the chip sales by Advanced Micro Devices that will be shared with Washington.
Commented Bronin, “It appears that he is not responding to a crisis that we saw in 2008. But he is rather looking for the government to play a direct role in state ownership of the private sector over the long term. I don’t think that that is the right way either to grow the U.S. economy or ensure a fair distribution of the winnings.”
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal that the inspector general to the Federal Reserve Board should not be appointed by its chairman, but instead be nominated by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Bronin commented, “The core issue with the Fed, is ensuring that the Federal Reserve remains independent of political pressure and intimidation that the Trump Administration is trying to wield.”
Trump has been critical of Jerome Powell, whose term as Fed Chairman ends next year.
Blondin said that part of support for Bronin is based on the need to address the gridlock in Congress.
“It’s time for change,” she said. “I feel that the current Congress is broken on both sides. “
Former U.S. Rep. John Delaney (D-MD.) wrote in his 2018 memoir that congressmen spend too little time in Washington gaining expertise on issues because they have sold “this myth” to their constituents that they should be like the mayors and attend every ribbon-cutting and carnival.
Delaney, who sought the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, wrote that if being in session more weeks from Monday at 9 a.m. to Friday at 5 p.m. would produce more money for education and infrastructure, the voters would approve of it.
Bronin declared, “With the current Republican leadership of Congress, more weeks in Washington would just as likely result in bigger tax cuts for the richest Americans and bigger health care cuts for most Americans.”
What if the Democrats control the U.S. House after the 2026 midterms?
“I don’t think that the problem now is how many weeks members of Congress are spending in Washington,” Bronin remarked. “The problem right now is the current leadership in Congress that is pushing our country down a very dangerous path.”
Regarding the economy in the First District, in 2019 the late Oz Griebel, the former gubernatorial candidate, told Patch.com that under defense contractor Raytheon, which merged in 2019 with United Technologies Corporation, he feared that much of the future expansion will not be at the Francis Pratt and Amos Whtiney facility in East Hartford, but instead in North Carolina and Florida where the company has divisions of its Collins Aerospace operation.
Bronin said, “I don’t know if I could answer that.”
He added, “I fear Connecticut has not seen a lot of growth and expansion or a long time. We have a very strong and vitally competent advanced manufacturing sector and supply chain. But much of the growth has been happening elsewhere in the country.”
Bronin said, “I strongly support federal policies that promote collective bargaining” so that “workers in Connecticut could earn a living wage.”
Eighteen insurance companies have a presence in the metro- Hartford area.
Will that industry continue to thrive in the First District?
Bronin commented, “I think there is a depth of talent here that is rare and unusual in the country.”
Resources:
Interview with Luke Bronin, Patch.com, on Thursday, August 21, 2025.
E-mail interview with Luke Bronin, Patch.com, on Monday, August 25, 2025.
Phone interview with Audrey Blondin, Patch.com, on Tuesday, August 19, 2025.
Phone interview with Larry Lazor, Patch.com, on Wednesday, August 20.
Phone interview with Bill Curry, Patch.com, on Monday, August 18, 2025.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://apnews.com/article/fac...
https://www.wsj.com/politics/e...
https://patch.com/connecticut/brookfield/himes-running-ninth-term
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Commission_on_Fiscal_Responsibility_and_Reform
David Walker comments, No Labels forum, Danbury Library, April, 2012.
https://www.amazon.com/Abundan...
