AG Tong: “I don’t have to guess what the Larson campaign is about… it’s about the people who fight for every inch, every single day.”
The Hartford Courant yesterday highlighted Congressman Larson’s hard-fought journey from an East Hartford federal housing project where he grew up as one of eight kids, to his career of public service fighting for working families. The piece details how Larson’s working-class roots continue to inform his staunch progressive, pro-union, pro-worker stance and his fight against Trump and the billionaire class.
Larson’s upbringing in a working-class family and roots in the First District stand in sharp contrast to Luke Bronin, the centrist, corporate lawyer from Greenwich with an anti-labor record who is backed by a dark money network of billionaires who want to replace progressives with corporate Democrats.
Key Highlights:
- “Imagine raising eight kids, having a part-time job at The Travelers, being an elected member of the East Hartford town council, and an active member of the Democratic Party,” Larson said of his mother, Pauline. “She still read to us at night, got us off to school in the morning and kept the house running. My father worked three jobs — for a house that I often remind my children is smaller than our garage in East Hartford.”
- “I’m not running for office because I’m trying to hold onto a spot,” Larson said. “I’m running for office because the people I grew up with desperately need the benefits of Social Security that haven’t been enhanced in over 50 years. Now, my opponents say that’s all I talk about. Well, you’re damn right that’s what I talk about. It’s not all I talk about, but I talk about it because for 40% of all people in this country, that’s the only benefit they have,” he said. “Think about that. Could you live on only Social Security? That’s the only benefit they have because Congress hasn’t acted in over 54 years.”
- “It is a federal housing project, but we wore that as a badge of honor and pride,” Larson said earlier this year. “To this day, the proudest thing anyone will ever say from East Hartford is I grew up in Mayberry Village. It was a badge of honor. Not only that, for all the rest of the town, they wanted to come through here. … They wondered what held us all together. It was community and a sense of pride about where we grew up.”
- [Attorney General] Tong added, “So I don’t have to guess what John Larson is about, and I don’t have to guess what this campaign is about. It’s about the people that live here. It’s about the people who fight for every inch, every single day — people who are paying way too much right now for food, utilities, school supplies and gas. He’s fighting for people who come to Mayberry Village. He’s fighting for immigrants like my parents who walk around with a target on their backs every single day. That’s why I’m supporting John Larson.” He added, “John Larson knows how the federal government works because he’s been there. He’s been in the trenches for years and years and years and we need him right now.”
- As he wrapped up his remarks at the Lois Nolan Larson Community Center, Larson thought about his mother, who died in 2012 at the age of 87 and was known to everyone as Pauline. “Thanks for allowing me a little sentiment as I stand here,” Larson told the crowd. “We were blessed. We had a fortunate life and parents who cared deeply about their community. They had just come through the Great Depression and saved the world, fought a war on two fronts and came back with veterans getting first options on these homes here in Mayberry Village.”
Read the full piece in the Hartford Courant