Progressive Victory Endorses Jillian Gilchrest for Connecticut's First Congressional District
Press for Jillian Gilchrest For Congress
For Immediate Release // May 7, 2026
Progressive Victory Endorses Jillian Gilchrest for Connecticut's First Congressional District
WEST HARTFORD, CT — Progressive Victory today announced its endorsement of Jillian Gilchrest in the race for Connecticut’s First Congressional District, citing her long record of delivering real progressive victories in the state legislature and her uncompromising vision for a Congress that works for everyday people.
"Progressive Victory is proud to endorse Jillian Gilchrest for congress in Connecticut's 1st district,” said Persephone Hoxha, New England Lead for Progressive Victory. “Her steady guidance toward a more progressive future is exactly what we need in Congress!"
Progressive Victory is a national progressive community of activists, creators, and volunteers organizing online to win elections and protect democracy. To date, the group has endorsed 11 federal candidates for the 2026 election, including James Talarico for Senate in Texas, Rep. Mary Peltola for Senate in Alaska, and Analilia Mejia, who recently won a landmark victory in New Jersey’s 11th District.
The endorsement adds to a growing coalition of progressive support for Gilchrest who has also been endorsed by Indivisible CT and named a “Courage Candidate” by Citizens Impeachment.
“For too long, Congress has only worked for the people who can afford to make giant campaign donations or hire an army of lobbyists, while everyone else gets ignored. I’m running to change that,” said Gilchrest. “It’s not good enough to just say the right thing, the people need results. I’m proud of my record of passing progressive laws and proud to have the support of Progressive Victory and so many allies who share that vision.”
Gilchrest has spent four terms in the Connecticut General Assembly building one of the most progressive records in the legislature. She co-founded the Reproductive Freedom Caucus and helped pass the Reproductive Freedom Defense Act — making Connecticut a national model for protecting abortion rights as they remain under assault across the country. She helped deliver paid family and medical leave for Connecticut workers and voted to protect communities from police violence and hold law enforcement accountable under the same laws as everyone else.
She has also raised the minimum wage, led on gun violence prevention, and beaten pharmaceutical companies and insurers to bring down the cost of health care. It is that kind of leadership — with tangible results — that has earned Gilchrest the endorsement of more than twenty of her colleagues in the legislature.
Now she is taking that record to Congress with a platform built on a question most candidates never ask: who should government work for? Gilchrest’s answer is simply everybody.
She has proposed the People’s Election Program for Congress — modeled on Connecticut’s landmark public financing system — to break the grip of big donors on who gets to run and what laws get passed. Her plan would tax Super PACs, dark money groups, and lobbyist-backed campaigns to fund candidates powered by small, local donors. That same focus on equity and fairness drives her economic agenda: raising wages, penalizing extreme CEO-to-worker pay gaps, requiring corporations to reimburse taxpayers when their workers rely on public assistance, and shifting the tax burden off working families and onto the wealthiest Americans.
Her agenda for families is equally bold. Gilchrest has released a plan for universal health care — including banning private equity from owning hospitals, protecting abortion access and gender-affirming care, and guaranteeing comprehensive coverage. Her education platform builds the pipeline from pre-K to tuition-free college, with free school meals along the way and a federal salary floor that finally pays educators what they’re worth. Across every issue, her conviction is the same: government works for us and it needs to act like it.
Gilchrest’s full platform can be viewed at: voteforJillian.com/issues.
The Democratic Nominating Convention for the First Congressional District will be held on May 11.
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About Jillian Gilchrest
Jillian Gilchrest is a state representative from West Hartford and candidate for Congress in Connecticut’s 1st District. As co-chair of the legislature’s Human Services Committee, she has championed access to healthcare, reproductive rights, and support for workers. Jillian is running to bring a new kind of politics to Washington that puts people first. A social worker by trade, she lives in West Hartford with her two children.
Learn more at VoteForJillian.com.
Tyler Van Buren
pr...@voteforjillian.com
Call/text: (860) 712-1781