• Office Sought: Representative, Connecticut (1)
• Birth Date: July 22, 1948
• Occupation: Businessman
• Religion: Catholic
• Web site: http://www.house.gov/larson

Education

Central Connecticut State University, BA

John Larson was born in Hartford and raised in East Hartford, where he still lives. He earned a bachelor's in history at Central Connecticut State University in 1971, and has taken graduate courses in education and in government.

He was an elementary and high school teacher in East Hartford and Farmington, from 1971 to 1977, and then opened the insurance firm Larson & Lysik.

He served six terms in the state Senate four of them as the chamber's president pro tem. After winning the party's endorsement for governor in 1994, he lost a primary to eventual runner-up Bill Curry.

He was named in 1994 a senior fellow at Yale University's Bush Center for Child Development and Social Policy, a role he has kept since.

Larson served as chairman of the statewide initiative to wire public schools to the Internet in 1996.

He was first elected to the U.S. House in 1998.

Larson and his wife, Leslie, have three children.