Manchester fiasco. Larson retreats…and retreats again…over false claim of Lamont support for his primary challenge of party-endorsed Bronin. East Hartford Democrat criticizes the rich in politics.

‘Representative John Larson continues to struggle with the 21st century content creation. On Saturday his re-election campaign needed three tries to describe accurately deceptively edited comments by Governor Ned Lamont about Larson at an event sponsored by Manchester Democrats.

The City of Village Charm Democrats insisted on including Larson in the primary rally intended to boost the two-term governor. Lamont, with Larson standing nearby, acknowledged the East Hartford Democrat’s long tenure, 28 years, in the House and noted he shows up for work every day, though politely omitted the number of days the House is in session. Larson and his campaign took the courteous Lamont’s words and twisted them into what looked like an endorsement—-where there has been none.

The Lamont campaign became aware of the deceptive editing of their candidate’s comments and sought corrections. Over an hour, a Larson social media post began with a claim that Lamont joined forces with the 78 year old challenger to party-endorsed candidate Luke Bronin to a claim that Lamont supports Larson. Finally, Larson conjured a third post thanking Larson for his kind words. In each post, Larson criticized the role of the rich in politics, a head-scratching note to hit when associating himself with the Greenwich self-funding his fifth statewide campaign.

Larson has made disdain for billionaires a theme of his disjointed campaign while receiving assistance from billionaire George Soros.

Manchester was an appropriate spot for a convoluted late nomination campaign event. Larson made a distasteful deal to deliver the town’s 30 pliable delegates to Jillian Gilchrest, a West Hartford Democrat, at the end of the May nominating convention’s first ballot, to qualify the state representative for the primary ballot in exchange for her support on the second ballot. In exchange, Gilchrest was to deliver enough of her 27 delegates to Larson. She failed and a majority of her delegates supported Bronin and left Gilchrest’s claims as the candidate of rectitude in tatters.

The Manchester Democrats pride themselves on supporting party-endorsed candidates and discouraging challenges. Their support for Larson will make it difficult to extinguish the democratic instincts of some of its members in the future.

Early voting ends today. The primary campaign concludes Tuesday.

Published August 9th.