Connecticut’s aging congressional delegation draws renewed scrutiny following Senator’s death

CT Examiner – Tuesday, July 14, 2026
By Luke Feeney, Jacques Abou-Rizk

Connecticut’s congressional delegation — the fourth oldest in the nation — is facing renewed scrutiny over the age of its members as lawmakers nationwide confront fresh questions about aging in office following the death of U.S. Sen. Lindsay Graham on Saturday.

Graham, 71, is the sixth member of the 119th Congress to die while serving, joining House Democrats Sylvester Turner, 71, Gerry Connolly, 75, Raul Grijalva, 77, and David Scott, 80, of Texas, Virginia, Arizona and Georgia, as well as Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa, 65, of California.

The average life expectancy for an American-born male is 76.5 years, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The average age among the six lawmakers at the time of their deaths was 73 years.

Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, Graham’s longtime colleague, was hospitalized for nearly a month and treated for pneumonia following a fall that left him briefly unconscious. The lack of communication and appearances from the 84-year-old triggered some to question if the senator was still alive.

McConnell released a statement, along with a photo with his wife Elain Chao, on Sunday in an attempt to address the speculation around his health. McConnell did not provide an exact date for his return to the Senate, but said he wants it to happen “as soon as possible.”

Connecticut’s delegation is, on average, nearly a decade older than Congress as a whole, whose members have an average age of about 59. The deaths and recent health concerns have renewed debate over whether Congress should impose guardrails such as age or term limits to ensure elected officials remain capable of serving.

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., declined to weigh in Monday on age or term limits.

“That’s not a conversation for — the guy died two days ago,” Murphy said.

“I think we should consider maybe term limits,” U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said outside the Senate chamber Monday. Blumenthal, 80, did not respond to questions about age limits.

Paul Herrnson, a political science professor at the University of Connecticut, said Congress has steadily grown older over the past century.

“There’s a lot of reasons for that,” Herrnson said. “Incumbents almost always get reelected, and so they hang around for a long time. And also, many of them are motivated to hang around. They like the prestige, the power, the ability to influence things they care about and being a local celebrity.”

Connecticut’s House members, however, largely dismissed that age alone is a meaningful measure of effectiveness.

“Age, it’s a number,” Democratic U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, 83, said outside the House floor. DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, is serving her 17th term.

If she secures another term in November and her party regains control of the House, she could become chair of the powerful committee responsible for allocating trillions of federal dollars.

“The issue is: What do people do? How do they perform? What are they doing on behalf of the people who put them here? That is the test, and that is what makes a difference,” she added.

Andrew Rice, 37, who unsuccessfully sought to force a primary between him and DeLauro, argued that the state’s current longest-serving member of Connecticut’s delegation fails on her own metrics.

“If seniority was everything, then why are people in Connecticut suffering so much? Why has homelessness doubled in the past few years? Why can’t I, and many of my people my age, afford to buy homes? Why are our wages still stagnant? Why does Connecticut still not have enough funding for major renovations and innovation to our public infrastructure?” Rice told CT Examiner on Tuesday.

Democratic U.S. Rep. John Larson dismissed term limits, citing the need to implement a formal constitutional amendment to alter the qualifications for candidates.

“There is a term limit. Every two years you run,” Larson told CT Examiner outside the House floor Tuesday.

Larson’s three democratic challengers in the August primary — former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, 47, State Rep. Jillian Gilchrest, 44, and 38-year-old Hartford-based attorney Ruth Fortune — agreed the 77-year-old has been in power for too long and has lost touch with issues facing his constituents.

“The issue is that after 28 years in Congress, he has become out of touch with the lives and challenges facing today’s working families. When he says ‘this seat will open up soon enough,’ it reflects a mindset that public office belongs to the officeholder rather than the public,” Fortune wrote in an emailed statement to CT Examiner on Monday.

A 14-term incumbent, Larson said he’s focused on continuing his work on health care and social security, which he argued is under attack by the Trump Administration. He also questioned whether his challengers’ could deliver on their promises.

“What do you have? And what guarantee is that whatever plan you have, you’re going to accomplish that, or are you just running as a stepping stone for another office? I’m not running for any office,” Larson said.

Gilchrest argued that younger leaders bring a greater sense of urgency to issues affecting working families, such as climate change, workers rights, health care and removing money from politics.

“We see our contemporaries struggle to work one job and pay their basic costs, go into debt paying for child care, or delay having kids altogether because of the high cost of living, and be denied healthcare over and over again. These aren’t abstract issues for us,” she wrote in an emailed statement to CT Examiner on Tuesday.

According to Jonathan Wharton, an associate professor of political science and urban affairs at Southern Connecticut State University, Connecticut has a long history of sending members of Congress back to Washington for years.

“This is just something that Connecticut has a tendency to do: keep our lawmakers in office for decades,” Wharton said Monday.

Wharton pointed to Democratic U.S. Rep. Barbara Kennelly, who served from 1981 to 1999, Democratic U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd — who served from 1981 to 2011 and is the longest-serving senator in the state’s history — and U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman who served from 1989 to 2013.

“It’s a pattern that’s well-known, and it does pose challenges because what actual forms of changes are you seeing from within the delegation to address matters not so much for their districts, or the state, but even nationally?” he said.

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