Politics & Government
Making the case for hard-working immigrants
Fortune says Congress should more reflect America's gender, racial profile
By Scott Benjamin
WEST HARTFORD – In sixth grade she was living in a tropical climate and attending a private Catholic school.
Not only that, she was studying five difference languages.
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However, her mother worked at the Canadian embassy in Haiti and although she didn’t have “a crystal ball,” she was confident that the United States offered more “economic opportunity.”
Ruth Fortune, 37, of Hartford, who is seeking the Democratic nomination in the First Congressional District, says Haiti, a third world country, was then, and still is, “in economic crisis.”
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She has a sister now living there. Gangs control the capital city.
Commented Fortune, “It is hard to travel through that area.”
Fortune remarked, “My mother thought that we could achieve so much more” if we moved to the United States.
So, her father gave up his part-time business and they landed, undocumented, in Westbury, Long Island, where Fortune made the transition, “surprisingly very easily.”
She arrived as seventh-grader and by eighth grade she was moved from English As A Second Language classes to the mainstream offerings.
“That part of Long Island is more like Fairfield Couty with the housing prices and not very much like Hartford County,” Fortune explained. “Long Island has really high property taxes. Westbury is predominantly a black and brown school district. I had early buses, if I wanted to do piano lessons before school. I had a late bus. My parents never had to get me from my sports. There was an etiquette class with a five-course meal in which you had to learn proper etiquette.”
Through federal funds, she earned six credits at Syracuse University.
“I had so much support,” Fortune recalled. “I would not be where I am if I didn’t have that support.”
She graduated cum laude at Baruch College, majoring in Corporate Finance.
“Even then I lived with a constant fear of deportation,” Fortune recalled.
In January 2010 when Haiti was devastated by an earthquake, Democratic President Barack Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, granted temporary protective status to native Haitians, a step that led to Fortune acquiring “legal status.” in the United States.
Two years later while transitioning from one corporate job to another, she decided as “a thank you” to her “favorite American president” she would volunteer as a field organizer for six weeks. That led to four months on paid staff in Des Moines Iowa.
Ten years ago, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote: “Imagine if Barack and Michelle Obama joined the board of a charity you’re involved in. You’d be happy to have such people in your community.”
Remarked Fortune, “I think the Obamas are the prime example of what it’s like to do everything the right way and not cut on corners and follow all of the rules.”
In a 2021 C-SPAN Historians Survey, Obama ranks third – behind Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson – in the category of seeking equal justice for all.
In contrast, Fortune said Republican President Donald Trump has imposed immigration policies that “have been the cruellest. We could have secured the border without the cruelty that Trump has engaged in. We could have made communities safer without masked ICE [Immigration & Customs Enforcement] authorities in people’s homes tearing families apart when there already is an infrastructure of municipal police to address crime. It is not making us safer. They’re not going after the most violent people.”
Fortune supports a “pathway to citizenship for hardworking undocumented immigrants who have contributed to their communities and our economy. Work permits are not enough. For example, undocumented Haitians with TPS [temporary protected status) have work permits through their temporary status which the Trump Administration will terminate, along with their TPS, next month. Work permits alone create a class of indentured servants.”
“The people who self-select about going into a country are the most driven people,” Fortune exclaimed.
“Immigrants are more likely to start small business,” Fortune asserted. “They are less likely to commit violent crime.”
In their 2022 book, “Streets of Gold, economists Leah Boustan and Ran Abramitzky wrote: “Children of immigrants from nearly every country, especially those of poor immigrants, do better economically than children of U.S.-born residents – a pattern that has held for more than a century.”
Fortune exclaimed, “My mother is the most hard-working person. She works harder here than she did in Haiti. And it was just to put food on the table and support her children.”
Fortune graduated the University of Connecticut Law School. Shortly after launching her campaign last July she went from full-time to part-time at a Hartford law firm, where she specializes in estate planning. She also handles pro bono probate court cases for immigrant children.
Her husband, Dave, is a former Wall Street Journal reporter who now is an insurance actuary. They have lived in the Capitol City for 14 years and have had their house since 2018.
Commented Fortune, “My closest friends for the first time in my life are my neighbors.” Fortune and her husband have a nine-year-old, a six-year-old and a three-year-old, who attend the same schools as other children from the neighborhood.
She said that Hartford is more affordable than Brooklyn, where they each had lived before they were married, and other parts of Connecticut.
“Connecticut has so much to offer, but it is unaffordable for a lot of people,” Fortune remarked. “A house my size in Greenwich would probably be 10 times the price.”
After being active with the Parent Teacher Association, Mayor Arunan Arulampalam appointed her last year to the Hartford Board of Education.
Rachel Taylor of Hartford, a former teacher, said Fortune has been “a leader in the board’s decision to push the City Council and the mayor to increase its contribution to the schools.”
Obama’s Education cabinet secretaries – Arne Duncan and John King - both supported more public funding for charter schools. King had helped open a charter school near Boston in 1999.
Fortune exclaimed, “I am not an advocate of charter schools. Any system that takes away funding for our public schools into another system where the you get to select your students is not to the benefit of every child. It creates two unequal systems.”
The First District has been consecutively represented by Democrats since about the time that Paul Anka had his first number-one hit. The last three Democrats to hold the seat – dating to Bill Cotter of Hartford, who was elected in 1970 – have each served on the powerful House Ways & Means Committee, which has a huge influence on the 18 insurance companies that have a presence in the district.
In a 1998 interview with The Brookfield Journal, Barbara Kennelly, who was departing the seat as she was the Democrat candidate for governor, said, “The insurance companies in my district have always tried to get more than they deserved and I have sought to get them a fair deal.”
Kennelly was succeeded by Democrat John Larson of East Hartford, the current incumbent, who had been President Pro-Tempore of the state Senate and a gubernatorial candidate before winning the seat. Now 77, Larson is a senior member of the Ways & Means Committee and has the second longest tenure in U.S. House in Connecticut history.,
Former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, 46, is considered the other front-runner in the race for the Democratic nod – which likely be determined in an August primary. His portfolio includes work for Obama and former Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy and ability to raise money fast.
Also running is state Rep. Jillian Gilchrest, 43, (D-18) of West Hartford, who has been a leader on child care issues in the General Assembly.
Fortune has received scant news coverage.
On November 22 Annie Karni of The New York Times wrote an overview piece on the campaign without mentioning her. On December 3 Christopher Keating of the Hartford Courant had a story on the battle between Larson and Bronin for town committee endorsements in the 27-municipality district, which takes in most of metro Hartford and a northern tier of Litchfield County.
It is as though the unnamed sources – the ones who live across the street from the dentist office that has a college pennant on the wall for each of its patients, including one for the E. Herman Arnold College of Hygiene and Physical Education – have convinced Democrats that if one of the front runners is elected next November that they will immediately be able to clear the air of smoke, fog, pollution and smog.
Fortune said when speaking to Democratic Town Committees she has underscored the importance of all candidates getting on the primary ballot.
“I don’t think we should make it so hard for someone to do that,” she exclaimed.
To automatically get in the primary, a losing candidate at the convention needs at least 15 percent of the delegate vote. Otherwise, they have to collect petition signatures to qualify.
“Why do they [the town committee-selected delegates] get to nominate a candidate before the larger base gets to vote?” she said.
In effect, she indicated that Connecticut should have a system similar to the presidential elections, where the grassroots vote before a nominating convention is held.
Jack Perry, the former Southington Town Council member who entered the congressional race last summer and then withdrew in December, said, “The door is shut and we’re going to pick and choose who is going to come in.”
Fortune complains that Congress “is not representative of the overall population.” Only 28 percent of the U.S. House members are female. She noted that there are only a small number of people of color or who are immigrants.
“I think there still are unique challenges to run as a person if color, a woman, as a mother of young children,” said Fortune. “It is hard to run as woman – more of your actions, your appearance gets scrutinized.”
Fortune exclaimed, “I’m a strong proponent of affirmative action. What it does is that it tries to level the playing field. The reality is we have had discrimination codified in this country and we have through generations.”
Hartford Board of Education member Cristher Estrada-Perez said, “In a world where a lot of people make a lot of concessions on things we should not be making concessions about, Ruth is willing to make the hard decisions.”
Fortune is running on a progressive platform.
She said that state universities and technical schools should be tuition free. She endorses a $25 minimum wage that is tied to inflation. That is more than $8 an hour higher than Connecticut’s minimum wage, which is one of the highest in the country.
“The estate tax is tied to inflation,” Fortune commented. “It would not be a novel concept in our tax code.”
However, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) has stated that when he initially took office in 2011, two years into the Obama Administration, the national debt was $14 trillion. Now, 15 years later, it is $38 trillion.
Obama, through executive order, established the Alan Simpson-Erskine Bowles Commission to reduce the deficit. The members couldn’t reach a consensus. David Walker, the former Comptroller General and a deficit hawk, has said the proposal would have “more than” addressed the problem.
If you want to considerably boost the minimum wage and offer free higher education, then how do you reduce a deficit that has been escalating?
Fortune said you have a more progressive tax system, spend less money on ICE and trim the defense budget.
In general, she praises Obama’s response to the Great Recession, which featured a $787 billion stimulus package in 2009, a month after he took office.
In 2014, Conor Lynch wrote in Salon that, “Today, the overwhelming majority of economists agree that the stimulus rescued the nosediving economy and prevented another great depression.”
Fortune commented, “I think his handling of the financial crisis was based on a lot of research and best practices from the Great Depression. They did a great job to save the overall economy.”
However, she added, “I read some criticism in retrospect. I think perhaps there is more that could have been done to directly benefit consumers and less on the financial institutions. I think at the individual level, the people who were foreclosed upon; a lot of those families turned out to be families of color and low-income families. I think they still suffered the brunt of the impact. Their suffering could have been better eliminated.”
The Pentagon budget is important in the First District. Defense contractor Francis Pratt & Amos Whitney, a division of RTX, employs a combined 11,000 people in East Hartford and Middletown, according to CT Insider.
“There are really good studies that our defense spending is very inefficient,” Fortune said. “We’re spending on weapons systems that are not needed.”
Policy experts William Hartung and Ben Freeman wrote in t heir recent book, “The Trillion Dollar War Machine,” that no president since Dwight Eisenhower has “prioritized diplomacy over war.” They stated that 54 percent of the military budget goes to Pentagon contractors.
Fortune declared that Trump’s proposal to extend mortgages from 30 years to 50 years is “is a stupid idea.” She said that the current median age for first-time home buyers is 38, which would mean that they would be paying on mortgages until they were 88 years old.
“That is passing generational debt,” Fortune exclaimed. “Most people don’t work 50 years.”
She said Trump has raised health care expenses for 22 million by not including the Obama Affordable Care Act Subsidies in the One Big Beautiful Bill that he signed last summer. Those subsidies lapsed at the end of 2025.
Social Security has not been reformed since 1983.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported: “Recent projections pegged late 2032 as the moment when Social Security’s reserves and incoming tax revenue won’t yield enough money to pay full benefits.”
During his 2008 campaign, Obama proposed raising the cap on income subject to Social Security taxes to $250,000, which Fortune supports.
Now, 18 years later, the cap is $176,100.
Fortune said she supports raising the cap.
“Social Security will not be viable if we don’t change the design of it,” she commented.
“We should have a more diversified fund for Social Security benefits,” Fortune remarked. “Some T-Bills [Treasury], some higher yields.”
Former U.S. Rep. Jim Maloney (D-5) of Danbury made a similar recommendation in 1998 when Democratic President Bill Clinton was holding town meetings to get input to ensure the long-term solvency of Social Security.
Norah O’Donnell reported for CBS’ 60 Minutes in 2016 on the extensive hours that many congressmen devote to the national party call centers near Capitol Hill.
Fortune supports public financing of congressional campaigns.
“It has worked to some extent in Connecticut,” Fortune said of the Citizen Election Program, which has been in place since 2008 where candidates can receive state-funded campaign grants if they raise a sufficient amount of money in small contributions.
However, former U.S. Rep. Bill Ratchford (D-5) of Danbury made public financing a component of his 1978 platform when he was initially elected. It hasn’t become law.
Fortune said that congressmen should not be devoting “half their time” to calling potential campaign contributors.
“That is time that they’re not advocating for their constituents,” she exclaimed. “Most voters are not aware of that.”
Former U.S. Rep. David Jolly (R-FL) had proposed the Stop Act, which would prohibit congressmen from making phone calls for contributions – that would have to be done by campaign staffers and consultants - but would allow them to appear at fund-raising events.
Fortune commented, “That doesn’t address the issues. They’ll just go to more events. It is not about them not making the phone calls. It is about that they are chasing the money.”
Resources:
Ruth Fortune, interview, Patch.com, on Saturday, December 20, 2025
Ruth Fortune, phone interview, Patch.com, on Wednesday, December 24, 2026.
Ruth Fortune, phone interview, Patch.com, on Tuesday, December 30, 2025.
Jason Riley, “The Affirmative Action Myth, Basic Books, 2025.
Ben Freeman, William D. Hartung, “The Trillion Dollar War Machine, Bold Type Books, 2025.
Beasley Reece, The Newtown Bee, January 1992.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/22/us/politics/john-larson-connecticut-congress-election.html
Jack Perry, phone interview, Patch.com, on Friday, December 19, 2025.
Jack Perry phone interview, Patch.com, on Saturday, January 3, 2026.
Barbara Kennelly, Brookfield Journal, September. 1998.
Phone interview with Cristher Estrada-Perez, Patch.com, on Saturday, January 10, 2026.
Phone interview with Rachel Taylor, Patch.com, on Saturday, January 10, 2026.
Leah Boustan and Ran Abramitzky “Streets of Gold,” PublicAffairs, 2022.
