CT voters head to polls Tuesday for high-profile contests. What to know

Hartford Courant – Sunday, August 9, 2026
By Christopher Keating

After months of political attacks and sharp clashes, voters will head to the polls Tuesday in a series of primaries in high-stakes, big-money races across the state.

The biggest statewide race is the clash between Gov. Ned Lamont and state Rep. Josh Elliott, a liberal Democrat who is running against Lamont from the left.

Both candidates have been broadcasting blistering television commercials that attack the other in the final days of the campaign. Lamont and his supporters have repeatedly blasted Elliott for missing 240 votes as a state legislator, but Elliott responds that the criticism is “a deceptive attack” and “a distraction from a desperate billionaire” because the total was over a 10-year period and included committee votes as well as decisions on the floor of the state House of Representatives.

Lamont is spending at least $9 million of his own money on the primary, while Elliott received $3.75 million in public financing in mid-July. With a late start on receiving the money, he is essentially spending that amount in one month with a constant flow of TV commercials.

The candidates have been crisscrossing the state at a breakneck pace with Lamont going from Greenwich to New London to Granby in days often split between gubernatorial duties and campaign stops. Elliott maintains a similar schedule.

“It’s a minimum of 12 hours a day, every day, for the last 13 months,” Elliott told The Courant. “I’ve taken, I think, three weekends off in that entire time. But I knew what I was getting into. We’re almost there. No complaints.”

Both sides are saying the other is desperate as the heat increases with negative ads in the final days.

“Wow. Josh Elliott claimed he was going to campaign on issues, but as he gets more desperate, boy has he strayed from that path,” said Matthew Brokman, Lamont’s campaign chairman and one of his closest aides.

Congress

Among three primaries for Congress, the most competitive is the four-way race in Greater Hartford as 14-term U.S. Rep. John B. Larson seeks his 15th term against former Hartford mayor Luke Bronin, state Rep. Jillian Gilchrest of West Hartford and Hartford school board member Ruth Fortune. Bronin upset Larson in a stunning victory to win the party convention’s endorsement and capture the top line on the primary ballot.

The race has intensified in the final 10 days as outside, third-party groups are pouring millions of dollars into the race. A group called the Vote Vets PAC announced it is spending nearly $1 million on behalf of Bronin, a U.S. Navy Reserve veteran who served in Afghanistan. At the same time, a group called “Defend The Vote” broadcast an anti-Bronin commercial three times in less than 30 minutes last week on the nightly news on WTNH Channel 8 that criticized Bronin’s campaign contributions.

Among the biggest issues in the race is Social Security. Larson says he will become the new chairman of the Social Security subcommittee if the Democrats regain control of the U.S. House of Representatives in November. But Bronin has criticized Larson for not passing the major Social Security bill even when the Democrats controlled the House, the U.S. Senate, and the White House for two years under President Barack Obama and two years under President Joe Biden.

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who served as the national Social Security commissioner under Biden, traveled to Connecticut to endorse Larson and predict that the bill would eventually pass if the Democrats regain control. If the bill reaches the House floor, O’Malley said that Republicans would be under pressure to vote in favor on a bipartisan basis to save Social Security, one of the most popular programs in the nation. The same bipartisan support would develop in the U.S. Senate, he said.

“I don’t believe that Donald Trump will veto it,” O’Malley told The Courant in an interview. “It would be very harmful to him politically to veto it. … I believe the timing has never been better to get this done.”

Besides the marquee 1st District race, Republicans also have two Congressional primaries that have received less attention and far fewer commercials.

In the 4th District in Fairfield County, Greenwich resident Michael Goldstein is facing Daniel Miressi of Norwalk for the right to face longtime incumbent U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, who defeated U.S. Rep. Chris Shays in 2008 and has held the seat ever since.

In the 5th District, convention-endorsed candidate Chris Shea of Cheshire is running against challenger Jonathan DeBarros of Terryville. A longtime Navy SEAL, Shea captured the endorsement during the state convention at the Mohegan Sun casino to run against incumbent U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, a Wolcott Democrat.

Shea’s victory was the most dramatic at the convention as Republicans suddenly discovered that they had a controversy when 218 delegates voted in the first round of balloting — but only 207 delegates had been registered on the roll, officials said. Following multiple delays, the delegates voted to amend the roll to 215 eligible voters.

The candidates have been clashing over the personal history of DeBarros, who served 19 years in prison for a shooting in Waterbury at the age of 18 in 1996 before he was later pardoned by the state’s board of pardons and paroles. DeBarros now says he’s a MAGA patriot, backer of police and gun rights and has spent his time since being released from prison as a community leader, mentoring youth.

DeBarros has been a controversial figure in the Republican Party, but he still won 22% of the convention delegates.

In two-sided, color mailers sent to voters in the 5th District, Shea describes himself as a “Trump conservative” who spent 33 years as a Navy SEAL before becoming a firefighter in North Haven.

In his acceptance speech at the party convention, Shea told the crowd of a helicopter crash that killed 31 U.S. service members when he was serving as a SEAL in 2011 in Afghanistan.

“Had the timelines switched, I was supposed to be on that helicopter,” Shea told the delegates. “I’ve often wondered like hey, I guess I’ve got something to do in the world that I have not done yet. … I figured, why not? Let’s throw this into the mix as well.”

State legislature

Besides the contests for governor and three for Congress, there are battles for 12 legislative seats and two local races for probate judge in Manchester and Bridgeport.

A high-profile race in New Haven centers around state Rep. Patricia Dillon, a 42-year incumbent who first won election in 1984. If she wins, she will become the longest-serving member of the state House of Representatives because the current dean, Rep. Mary Mushinsky of Wallingford, is not seeking reelection.

Dillon, 78, is facing Eli Sabin, a recent Yale Law School graduate, and Justin Farmer, a former member of the Hamden legislative council who later moved to New Haven. Sabin, a New Haven native and former member of the Board of Alders for six years in Ward 7 before moving to his current district, has been endorsed by Mayor Justin Elicker in the high-stakes race.

In an unusual move, Mushinsky, deputy Speaker Pro Tempore Robert Godfrey of Danbury, and deputy majority leader Susan Johnson of Willimantic issued a statement that “it is important to correct the record” that Sabin “did not run the Progressive Caucus” as had been stated in his campaign material. Sabin was a paid staff member who handled administrative and support duties for the caucus, but only the legislators “collectively determine the caucus priorities, policy positions, and legislative agenda,” the lawmakers said.

The contest covers the 25th ward in the city’s Westville section, which is the highest single voting district in all of New Haven. The highly engaged Democrats have been closely following the race that pits one of the longest-running lawmakers against two younger challengers who are seeking to make their mark in politics.

Supreme Court cases

Two state legislators will be facing primaries after the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that their challengers had the right to be on the ballot after errors by the Secretary of the State’s office. Stephanie Thomas, the state’s top elections official, admitted that her office made mistakes and the legislature’s top leaders have called for a hearing on what went wrong.

“Our office has acknowledged two human errors that affected this petitioning cycle: incorrect language on the petition form and an election calendar that did not clearly distinguish the petition date for single-town legislative districts,” Thomas said after the court’s ruling. “We have already corrected the form, revised the calendar, and strengthened our internal review, tracking, and training procedures.”

State Rep. Julio Concepcion, a four-term incumbent, will face off Tuesday against challenger Venice Sotomayor in Hartford’s 4th District. Sotomayor had won an initial court ruling that she had qualified for the primary, but Concepcion filed an appeal to block her appearance on the ballot that was rejected by the high court.

In a second case, state Rep. John Santanella will be battling against longtime Enfield attorney Thomas Tyler, but that special primary has been postponed until Sept. 1 because Tyler had been taken off the printed ballot for Tuesday’s primary.

Tyler supporters are concerned about the potential additional costs of about $40,000 to the town, adding that students will need to make up another day at the end of the year because schools will be closed in Enfield. The town will be paying for two primaries: one on Tuesday for the governor’s race and then another in September as a result of the errors and Supreme Court decision.

Santanella has asked for the state to reimburse Enfield for its expenses, but the issue remains unresolved. A spokesman for Thomas said the office is reviewing the request, but no final decisions have been made.

Attorney John Kennelly, a longtime lawyer who represented the incumbent House Democrats in both cases, said his view is the Supreme Court believes that “the Secretary of the State produced such defective forms that they’re not going to punish people who collected signatures for the errors of the office of the Secretary of the State.”

In another contest for the state legislature, longtime Sen. Doug McCrory of Hartford is locked in a three-way battle against Windsor residents state Rep. Maryam Khan and Ayana Taylor. Khan won the Democratic convention endorsement in the three-town district that also includes Bloomfield.

Both House and Senate Republicans have raised questions about McCrory, a Hartford Democrat who has been under investigation by the FBI regarding state grants that he lobbied for that were awarded to Greater Hartford nonprofits, including the now-defunct Blue Hills Civic Association. Blue Hills funneled more than $1 million to a nonprofit known as SHEBA that is run by McCrory’s friend, Sonserae Cicero-Hamlin.

A forensic audit was ordered last year after state officials were stunned when the Blue Hills Civic Association reported that $300,000 in state money was apparently sent to scammers in a fraudulent bank transfer. Workers at the nonprofit were laid off after the money went missing and the organization eventually ceased operating.

McCrory, who served in the House for 12 years before succeeding Democrat Eric Coleman in the Senate in 2017, says he has “engaged in no wrongdoing.”

In the state’s “Quiet Corner” covering Pomfret and six other towns, the Republicans have been waging a bitter primary to defeat Jadon E. MacCormack, an outspoken conservative Republican who generated a firestorm of controversy after strong comments that he made about the gay and transgender communities.

Republicans helped gather enough signatures to support Anthony J. Emilio of Pomfret, a Republican small business owner who has run previously for the board of selectmen, school board, and board of assessment appeals over the past 15 years. His wife, Martha, is currently serving a four-year term on the town’s board of selectmen.

The comments by MacCormack, a young religious homeschooler, prompted the entire top tier of the Republican establishment, including state party chairman Ben Proto, Senate Republican leader Stephen Harding, and the party’s nominee for governor, Sen. Ryan Fazio, to call on MacCormack to drop out of the race after he said on Facebook that he would “stand firmly against the Transgender and LGBT movement that has for far too long corrupted our families, undermined parental authority, and eroded the foundational values of our society.”

MacCormack refused to step down and doubled down on comments against party leaders, prompting the Republicans to support Emilio.

The voters will decide the controversial matter on Tuesday.

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