Haitian-born attorney  challenges longtime congressional rep in Connecticut

Ruth Fortune arrived in the United States from Haiti at 12, spent much of her adolescence without legal immigration status and eventually became an attorney and member of the Hartford Board of Education.

On Tuesday, she is asking Democratic voters in Connecticut to send her to Congress.

Fortune, 38, is one of three challengers trying to unseat Rep. John B. Larson in the Democratic primary for Connecticut’s 1st Congressional District, a Hartford-centered seat Larson has represented for nearly three decades.

Former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin and state Rep. Jillian Gilchrest of West Hartford are also on the ballot, making the contest an unusual four-way test for a veteran incumbent. 

Polls are open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday.

“I think we would be a stronger Democratic Party if more of our leadership recognized that part of leadership is knowing when it’s time to pass the torch,” Bronin said during a July 29 debate.

Larson has pushed back against the criticism surrounding his long time in office, saying experience is a virtue and leaning on his willingness to fight against President Donald Trump.

“I’ve called for his impeachment because of his violation for the rule of law, this president ignores the rule of law,” Larson said during the July 29 debate.

For Fortune, the campaign has centered partly on an argument that her own path through the American immigration system gives her a perspective rarely represented in Congress.

“I came to the United States as a child and spent a decade (ages 12 to 21) living as an undocumented immigrant,” Fortune says on her campaign site. “When I first arrived from Haiti, eight of us shared one bedroom in my aunt’s house in New York.”

Fortune says Temporary Protected Status (TPS) granted to Haitians after Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake transformed her life, allowing her to work legally and live without the constant threat of deportation.

Her candidacy brings a distinctly Haitian immigrant story into one of Connecticut’s most closely watched Democratic contests — a race largely framed around whether voters want to retain Larson’s seniority or choose a new generation of political leadership. Larson, 78, has represented the district since 1999 and is seeking another term. 

Fortune moved to the United States from Haiti as a child, graduated from the University of Connecticut School of Law and now works as an attorney. She has lived in Hartford since 2012 and serves on the city’s Board of Education. 

Her campaign has emphasized economic inequality, public education, immigration reform and expanding the social safety net. Her platform calls for universal health care, universal child care and early learning, free college and trade school, strengthening Social Security and abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

On immigration, Fortune proposes a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who have established lives in the United States. Her campaign argues that immigration enforcement should be treated primarily as a civil matter and that the federal government can enforce immigration law without ICE, which was created in 2003.

Her campaign biography describes her experience as an undocumented child as central to her political outlook. Fortune has also publicly testified before Connecticut lawmakers about that experience, telling a legislative committee this year that her family moved from Haiti when she was 12 and that she remained undocumented until she was 21.

An unconventional path onto the ballot

Fortune’s presence in Tuesday’s primary is itself unusual.

Unlike Larson, Bronin and Gilchrest, Fortune did not qualify through the Democratic nominating convention. She instead mounted a petition drive across the district’s 27 municipalities, ultimately gathering enough valid signatures to secure a place on the ballot.

The campaign said it collected roughly twice the 3,743 signatures required to qualify. The petition effort made Fortune the first candidate to qualify through petitioning for a Connecticut congressional primary against an incumbent, according to CT Mirror. Her campaign has used that experience to criticize the state’s ballot-access requirements.

The four candidates have since spent months competing for voters in a district where the Democratic nominee is heavily favored in November.

Bronin won the Democratic Party endorsement at its May convention, while Larson is campaigning on nearly three decades of experience in Washington and his longstanding work on Social Security. Gilchrest, a social worker and state legislator, has emphasized campaign finance reform and reducing the influence of wealthy donors in politics. The contest is the first Democratic primary involving a sitting member of Congress in the district in 28 years.

Fortune and Gilchrest have relied heavily on door-to-door campaigning as Larson and Bronin have drawn more attention and outside spending.

In the final weekend before the vote, Fortune canvassed, visited churches and made a campaign stop at Blue Back Square in West Hartford, where she again spoke about leaving Haiti as a child and her years without legal immigration status.

“I think it shows you we are at a bit of a breaking point in our democracy where things are so broken that we feel like we need to do things differently,” Fortune told CT Mirror after the appearance.

Her policy agenda extends well beyond immigration. Fortune has made economic inequality a central theme, arguing that government spending should prioritize health care, child care, elder care, housing and education. She supports raising the federal minimum wage and has presented her legal career, including her work with estates, as shaping her understanding of the gulf between families struggling to build financial security and those accumulating significant wealth.

That approach puts Fortune firmly in the progressive wing of the four-person field, while her personal history has allowed her to make a broader argument about the role government can play in creating, or restricting, opportunity.

Whether that message can overcome Larson’s longstanding relationship with the district, Bronin’s institutional support and Gilchrest’s own grassroots campaign will be decided by Democratic voters Tuesday.

Additional reporting contributed by the Associated Press.

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