Politics is personal for Ruth Fortune — very personal.

As a 12-year-old girl, she moved with her family from Haiti to the United States in 2000 and suddenly became undocumented. After a years-long journey in search of the American dream, she eventually received her law degree, bought a home at the age of 30, and is now raising three children with her husband in Hartford’s West End.

Today, at 38, Fortune is running for Congress in the Aug. 11 primary in part because she is concerned about President Donald Trump’s treatment of immigrants like her who are facing their own major struggles in America.

“I was forced to have that realization early in life because I came here at 12 years old,” Fortune told The Courant in an interview. “In Haiti, we were comfortable, and I went to private schools. My family was comfortable in the sense that my mother worked for the Canadian ambassador as their main cook. She worked six days a week, nine or 10 hours a day. She only had Sundays off. But she felt there wasn’t a future, and that precipitated us moving to the U.S.”

The definition of “comfortable” in Haiti is vastly different than in the United States — meaning simply that Fortune had a better situation than some of her friends whose parents did not have steady jobs and often lacked food.

“We lived in a house without running water,” Fortune recalled. “The bathroom was really kind of a hole in the ground. We never even had a house phone in Haiti. If you wanted to call family here in the U.S., you went to some other house where they had a phone, and you paid to make a phone call. My parents never owned a car, so that was middle class for us.”

But her family’s decision to come to the United States 26 years ago has now landed Fortune in a four-way primary for Congress against U.S. Rep. John B. Larson, former Hartford mayor Luke Bronin, and state Rep. Jillian Gilchrest of West Hartford. As a newcomer against three well-known rivals, Fortune was overlooked and received only 1.9% of the delegates at the party convention in May in the 27-town district that covers Greater Hartford and stretches to the Massachusetts border in some areas.

She was dismissed again when she declared that she would collect more than 3,900 verified signatures to ensure a spot on the Democratic primary ballot through a complicated, painstaking process that has defeated other candidates.

But Fortune, who serves on the Hartford school board, surprised some insiders by collecting the signatures in a theme that has endured for years for her and others as women of color.

“For people from some communities, that is the story of our life: being underestimated and having to prove over and over and over again not to just get a seat at the table, but proving your worth,” Fortune said. “I am an attorney running for the U.S. Congress. I work for a pretty prestigious law firm. But what it took for some people was me getting those signatures. … I simply know this fight is too important, particularly for people like me, for me to sit this out.”

Fortune conceded that she is the least-known candidate in a high-profile, big-money race, up against three candidates who have all held key public offices for years. Her résumé includes a variety of jobs after she graduated from Baruch College in 2010 with a business degree and the University of Connecticut in 2018 with a law degree.

After serving as a field organizer in Des Moines, Iowa, for President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012, Fortune worked for five years as a financial adviser for Merrill Lynch and then nearly four years as an eldercare attorney for Czepiga Daly Pope and Perri. She has spent the past four years as a trust and estate attorney at Wiggin and Dana, a well-known firm with offices in Hartford and several states.

A long way from Haiti, she is raising her family in Hartford with her husband, Dave, an English major who now serves as an actuary after working as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal.

“My husband and I are self-made,” Fortune said. “We did not inherit any money. For me, at 38 with three children, to be able to step away from the full-time practice of law and forgo my salary for about a year to do this, it took a lot of planning. It’s not happenstance.”

The issues

Far beyond immigration, Fortune has a long list of progressive goals, including boosting the minimum wage to $25 per hour and tying it to inflation, funding public schools, ensuring that healthcare is a right, investing in multifamily housing, and helping young people to buy their first home.

On Larson’s signature issue of Social Security, Fortune says the best move would be to eliminate the cap on payments into the system. Currently, a person who earns $184,500 per year pays the same amount in annual Social Security taxes as a person who earns $5 million per year. The reason is that the cap is set at $184,500, and those above that level no longer are required to pay. If the cap is eliminated, an additional $3.4 trillion would be generated for Social Security over a decade, according to estimates. Unlike Social Security, Medicare taxes are paid on a person’s entire earned income, rather than being capped.

As the youngest candidate in the race, Fortune is battling against the 47-year-old Bronin and the 44-year-old Gilchrest.

“I’m not challenging Larson because he’s 77 years old,” Fortune said. “My mother is 73, and she’s the healthiest 73-year-old I know. I am challenging him because, after 14 terms in Congress, you lose sight of what it’s like to struggle like the rest of us. We need fresh eyes and fresh energy to the same fight.”

Politically, Larson has welcomed Fortune to the race as some of his supporters believe he has a better chance in a four-way race than in a one-on-one against Bronin. If the other three candidates slice up the vote in multiple ways, Larson would have a path to victory as Bronin’s vote-count would be lowered, they said. In addition, Larson delegates at the convention threw their support to Gilchrest to ensure that she had the minimum of 15% to qualify for the ballot.

Strategically, the primary ballot will include Bronin on Line A with an asterisk to show he is the convention-endorsed candidate, Fortune on line B, Gilchrest on Line C, and Larson on Line D, officials said.

During an interview earlier this year at the popular Mo’s Midtown diner in Hartford, Fortune was sitting in a small booth and was suddenly interrupted by a man who had been sitting nearby in another booth.

“I wanted to see who was talking because I agree with you totally,” the man said.

“Thank you. I’m running for Congress,” she responded. “I’m Ruth Fortune, and I hope I can gain your support.”

“Running against who?” the man asked.

“John Larson. As a Democrat,” Fortune responded. “I’m an immigrant. This is deeply personal to me.”

“Me, too,” the man responded.

Fortune has been written off by some politicians because she is far behind in the money-raising race against Bronin and Larson. While money is being raised and spent daily, one recent report showed Bronin with about $1.8 million in cash on hand, compared to $1.1 million for Larson. Fortune lagged far behind at $32,000, while Gilchrest was at $20,000. Fortune said she had originally hoped to raise $250,000 overall but says the total will likely be closer to $100,000.

Gary Rose, a longtime political science professor at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, said it is difficult to tell how Fortune will impact the race.

“Realistically, it’s between Larson and Bronin in a big way, but nevertheless Gilchrest and Ruth Fortune could be spoilers.” Rose told The Courant. “Larson versus Bronin is not ideological, but it’s age related. I don’t know exactly who she is drawing from. It’s possible they could draw from Larson, too. This could maybe cut both ways.”

Larson had clearly wanted both Gilchrest and Fortune in the race, saying “the more, the merrier” in a crowded primary.

“The last thing that Larson wanted to do was go one-on-one with Bronin,” Rose said.

Trump

Fortune is not a fan of Trump at any level.

She says Trump’s administration has conducted “an all-out assault on democracy and on immigrants, particularly Haitian immigrants, and I am one.” Trump previously referred to Haiti and other countries as “hellholes,” along with other derogatory terms.

Instead of seeking an office like the state House of Representatives or state Senate as a new candidate, Fortune set her sights higher.

“When Trump got reelected (in 2024), knowing both professionally and from lived experience what was coming down the pipeline, I knew at that time that federal office was the place,” Fortune said. “The cruelty is stemming out of Washington, D.C., not Hartford. … So the place where the problem can be solved is also the place where they’re not hearing from people like me.”

She added, “In my ideal world, I would like to see Trump held accountable, and I would like him to die broke. No estate to settle — as the estate planning attorney.”

As a person who has been underestimated for decades, Fortune said she may be underestimated yet again on Aug. 11.

“Primaries are unpredictable, particularly in this district because we haven’t had this primary in 28 years,” Fortune said. “I’m in this to win it. The time that we are in right now, this is fight versus flight. And when you’re fighting this fight, you want the right fighters in place — people for whom this fight is personal, people who get why they’re fighting because they have skin in the game. … We fight the fight because it’s the right thing to do. We are on the right side of history.”

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