Amber Webster was a Democrat.
Then the pandemic happened, and the 32-year-old mother from Colchester grew frustrated with how it was handled. She said she and others started questioning “a party that we were loyal to for a long time” and made the switch.
Webster isn’t the only relatively young person looking to the Republican Party for an ideological home. She was among several dozen people who attended the Connecticut Young Republicans’ first social meeting of the year in late October.
“Our generation has seen so many struggles that our parents didn’t — the cost of homes going up, things being unaffordable and unattainable financially. So I think that’s why most of us are getting involved — just to try to change the future, keep Connecticut affordable, safe and things like that,” Webster said.
That was a popular sentiment of the group, whose membership ranges from 18 to 40 years old: the high cost of living in states like Connecticut are putting things out of reach that were commonplace for older generations.
For much of the past two years, the Connecticut Young Republicans was relatively inactive. But the group has been building its ranks in recent months. It comes as the party actively courts younger generations to get involved — and even as Connecticut turned bluer in the recent municipal elections.
Republicans aren’t quite facing the same reckoning as Democrats, with calls for generational change forcing Democratic primaries in Connecticut and beyond. But the group’s chairman, Patrick Burland, 26, sees a noticeable shift since he tried to secure a spot on a Republican Town Committee seven years ago.
“For the first time in many years, Republican Town Committees are not just tolerating younger Republicans but seeking them out,” Burland said. “The entire attitude has changed toward younger people."
A new generation of GOP politics
On a rainy evening the day before Halloween, a restaurant in the Plantsville neighborhood of Southington filled up with a broad cross section of Republicans in the state ranging from candidates running for local offices to newcomers who had never gotten involved in politics before.
There were a lot of commonalities: concerns about safety, political rhetoric, government dependence and costs of living.
And yet how they got involved in GOP politics varied widely.
After Webster’s political evolution, she worked to get Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Connecticut’s ballot as an independent in the 2024 election. She considers herself to be a “MAHA mom,” a reference to the slogan “Make America Healthy Again.” Kennedy ultimately endorsed President Donald Trump after ending his bid and now serves as head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Sine then, Webster got more involved in local Republican Party politics. She’s fresh off of managing Republican Steve Orosco’s campaign against New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker as well as running her own race for Colchester Board of Finance. Both Webster and Orosco lost their respective elections last month.
Others who attended the meeting are even newer to politics and Connecticut.
Ryan J. Wells is a 20-year-old intel specialist in the Marine Corps Reserve who currently resides in Naugatuck after living in North Carolina a year ago. He said he wanted to get involved after conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s fatal shooting and now wants to go into policymaking. Kirk gained a big following of young conservatives after mobilizing students on high school and college campuses.
Wells said he’s concerned with homeownership in a state struggling with a housing shortage and high prices. It’s likely to become a top issue in the 2026 governor’s race, especially after the General Assembly passed a renegotiated version of a sweeping housing bill in the special session.
Federal nutrition assistance also came up during the meeting, as the state was in the throes of figuring out whether to fund benefits with federal funding in limbo. At the event, House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, spotlighted it as an issue that both parties in the state got behind during the government shutdown.
Wells said he didn’t want to see benefits immediately removed, but argued it’s a larger policy failure of a social services program because 10% of Connecticut’s population relies on federally funded benefits to help them afford groceries.
“That’s a travesty and we need to evaluate every single politician and we need to evaluate the history of this,” Wells said. “That is a greater systematic failure of policy."
Maintaining momentum
Connecticut’s Young Republicans chapter expanded significantly since the new board of officers took over in recent months.
The group ramped up from three dues-paying members to 60 active members — 20 of whom signed up because of the October event. That’s on top of the associate members who have given contributions but are over the age of 40.
They have local chapters in the town of Winchester as well as Hartford and New Haven counties and want to help with door-knocking and phone-banking for the 2026 elections. They recently chartered new groups in Litchfield and Fairfield counties and plan to establish an additional group in New London County.
Connecticut’s top three GOP leaders view them as one of the keys to success in a state currently dominated by Democrats. They have their eyes on next year’s highly anticipated governor’s race, which could see a younger Republican take on a 71-year-old incumbent.
“This is a really important segue into what’s going to be a very important and consequential election in 2026,” Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding of Brookfield, a young Republican himself, told the group in October. “It starts Tuesday and it moves right forward into a 2026 election cycle where it’s going to be exclusively devoted towards protecting our state … The Democratic Party has controlled this state for a generation now. Their level of arrogance has grown beyond words.”
But five days later, Connecticut Democrats had an electoral romp. They flipped control of 28 cities and towns that were once held by Republicans. After Democrats had a tough presidential cycle a year earlier, they now feel openly optimistic about 2026.
Still, the objective for Republicans remains the same. How do they rebuff the leftward pull of an already blue state as they head into a consequential election year?
One of their answers is to build up a pipeline of younger Republicans willing to engage in local politics either through grassroots organizing or running for their local town committees. It’s a long-term goal that’ll take time, with the hopes of starting to reap those rewards as early as 2026.
Connecticut Republican Party chairman Ben Proto offered a blunt directive to those in the room that night: Get involved locally and encourage their peers to vote — something he said younger generations don’t do.
“The reality of the situation is you have so much to offer us that sometimes we don’t know enough to ask for it. We can help do this, but it’s not our future. It’s your future,” Proto said. “You need to be in the present so that your future is better. Because if you wait for the future, folks, it’s going to pass you by and the Democrats are going to control it.”
Even with tough losses in the local elections, there were some bright spots: 14 of the Connecticut Young Republicans’ endorsed candidates won their municipal races.
One of those was Amybeth Laroche, who won her race for Newtown Board of Finance. She attended the Connecticut Young Republicans’ meeting and got involved after seeing a post about the group on Instagram. She said it’s incumbent on her party to do more for younger generations, especially those with young families.
Laroche said she’s heard from other mothers and parents about the difficulty of making local meetings because they are at inconvenient times that don’t work with raising young kids.
“We’re supposed to be the party of families, but we’re making it impossible, so we should be thinking that should we do more” to accommodate those with young families, Laroche said. “Whether it’s Democrat or Republican, those small things are so important to keep the future stuff moving forward, and we’re just not thinking like that.”
Republicans argue that the focus on identity politics by some in the Democratic Party has overshadowed bigger issues that are consuming younger generations.
“Those sort of identity politics … are starting to backfire, and I think that’s brought that generation I would say toward the Republican Party,” Candelora said. “What I see from my children, especially the males, they’re just kind of fed up with, not just with authority and with all the labels that they’re being told, but also with the fact that this is probably the first generation that might not be as well off as the next."
Moving past the texting scandal
The Connecticut group was just starting back up again in earnest when a leaked texting controversy rocked the national Young Republicans organization and a few chapters in other states.
The chat was the behind-the-scenes push of an insurgent campaign looking to lead the Young Republican National Federation. The messages used racist, homophobic and other explicit language.
The months-long chat came from one wing of the group, the Restore YR campaign, led by New York State Young Republicans Chairman Peter Giunta. He was challenging the incumbent chairman, Hayden Padgett, during the elections held over the summer. In addition to New York, others involved in the chat were affiliated with chapters in Kansas, Arizona and Vermont.
Some of the texts embraced Adolf Hitler and joked that people who don’t vote for Restore YR are “going to the gas chamber.” That prompted some state affiliates involved to disband and specific members involved in the chat to lose their leadership roles and, in some cases, even their day jobs.
The Connecticut chapter was not involved in the Telegram group chat and didn’t support the slate of candidates at the center of the controversy. The state group backed the current chairman, Padgett, who ended up winning another term.
The Young Republican National Federation said the chat was “vile” and “inexcusable” and called on those members to resign from their positions. But the Connecticut chapter never addressed the revelations about the chat on its public channels and said they didn’t have their own statement beyond the one issued by the national group.
That was a different approach from the one they took after Kirk’s assassination. The young Democratic and Republican groups in Connecticut issued a joint statement denouncing the shooting and political violence.
When asked if there were concerns the chat could hurt the reputation of the Young Republicans, members of the group condemned it, but believed they would move past it and shouldn’t be a blemish on the organization as a whole.
“Those comments were highly inappropriate and very disrespectful and definitely something that should not be tolerated from either side of the aisle,” Webster said. “This chapter is fairly new, so I think the best thing that we can do is just lead with integrity and our own actions and hold ourselves and each other accountable here in Connecticut.”
National v. local politics
There have been glimmers of hope for Connecticut Republicans in recent years.
Trump improved his standing in about 150 towns in 2024, even as he lost the state by a double-digit margin for the third time. And GOP voter registration grew by almost 6% over the course of four years, and that uptick is happening in some of the biggest cities, like Hartford and New Haven.
Yet Republicans saw losses in mayoral and first selectman seats this year, including in redder pockets of the state. The reason for Democrats’ string of victories could be explained by a multitude of reasons: backlash to Trump’s first year in office, a record-long government shutdown, local issues that dwarfed the national narrative, or a strained economy.
“Obviously, there was a lot of underlying concern about the dysfunction in Washington, D.C., the chaos in Washington, D.C., and just a sense that Connecticut is a bit of a safe harbor compared to what’s going on there,” Gov. Ned Lamont said following the state’s municipal elections. “My message to the Democrats is, ‘Just don’t run against Donald Trump. You got to tell people what you are for.'”
One thing Republicans and Democrats can agree on: affordability was and will likely be the main issue driving future elections. They just disagree on the way to solve it.
Connecticut Young Republicans hope to have success at the top of the ticket next year. Sen. Ryan Fazio of Greenwich and former New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart, who are both in their 30s, are vying for the GOP nomination in the governor’s race. Lamont is seeking a third term.
One of the takeaways of the October event was that Connecticut is not Washington, D.C., and there’s a better track record of Democrats and Republicans working together in the state. That was particularly evident after the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.
Candelora offered a less-political message as a lawmaker who has a track record of working with the state’s Democratic majority on some issues and more of a willingness to buck the head of his own party when it conflicts with Connecticut priorities.
“It is about learning how to coexist in a state that traditionally votes for Democrats. And I think it’s important for our youth to recognize that you can have Republican principles and be a Republican in Connecticut and find your space,” Candelora said.
But as Republicans gear up for the 2026 elections, they will once again be presented with the question of how closely to align with Trump in a state that has rejected him in three presidential elections.
“I think there’s plenty of local issues to focus on, and Trump is going to do what Trump is going to do. I would say you definitely have to know your audience and take the good from Trump that you can take from him,” Webster said.
Trump has a track record of being a make-or-break endorsement in Republican primaries. When it comes to the general election, that’s where it can get tricky for Republicans in a blue state like Connecticut.
The state of the economy is likely to play a big role in who’s successful in the 2026 midterms. With high inflation coming out of the pandemic, among other reasons, voters rejected then-President Joe Biden in 2024. And if high prices and cost of living remain the dominant issue next year, that could once again shape elections and the party in power.
“I think love him or hate him, President Trump has sort of driven the Republican Party into a principled message that youth are identifying with,” Candelora said. “And I think it all depends on what happens over the next couple of years, and if the economy doesn’t turn around, that could be an opportunity for the Democrats to step in.”
Correction: A previous version of the story incorrectly stated the Connecticut Young Republicans has a local group in Windham County. The chapter is in the town of Winchester.
The Connecticut Mirror/Connecticut Public Radio federal policy reporter position is made possible, in part, by funding from the Robert and Margaret Patricelli Family Foundation.
This story was originally published by the Connecticut Mirror.
