MAJORITY LEADER OF THE STATE SENATE
Senator Bob Duff represents Connecticut’s 25th Senate District, which includes Norwalk and Darien. Re-elected again in 2024, Bob was chosen by his colleagues in 2015, 2017, 2019, 2021, 2023 and 2025 to serve as Senate Majority Leader. Prior to his election to the Senate in 2004, Bob represented Norwalk’s 137th Assembly District in the House of Representatives for three years.
In 2025, Bob’s colleagues from across the country elected him Vice President of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), the nonpartisan organization that represents all 50 state legislatures. Under NCSL’s rotating leadership, Bob is on track to serve as the organization’s President in 2027, giving Connecticut a national voice at a time when the decisions made in state capitols matter more than ever.
Bob’s Norwalk family ties go back five generations. His passion for public service began at the age of eight, when Bob voiced his concerns for the future of Duffy Field to then-mayor William Collins. Today, we still have Duffy Field, now renamed Veterans Park.
As Senate Majority Leader, Bob is most proud of his role in leading the 2017 rewrite of the state’s decades-old education funding formula (“ECS”) to better support children in our urban centers and those living in poverty.
In addition, Bob and the Senate Democratic caucus have achieved numerous other legislative victories, including instituting one of the largest tax cuts in Connecticut history in 2023 and finally beginning to pay down seven decades of built-up pension debt. Bob and the Senate Democratic caucus have passed other major legislation, such as creating Paid Family Medical Leave, expanding sick days, making higher education more affordable, and supporting data privacy, health care access, increased gun safety, LGBTQ rights, equal pay for equal work, and children’s mental health.
In recent sessions, Bob has led the Senate’s push to make Connecticut more affordable for working-class and middle-class families. He championed a state budget with new investments in local school aid and affordable child care, a new tax credit for family members caring for elderly or disabled loved ones, tax relief on school supplies, and an expanded back-to-school sales tax holiday. From electricity bills to health care, he has worked to bring down the everyday costs that families feel most.
As Majority Leader, Bob has also led Connecticut’s response to a period of rapid change in Washington. While the federal government has pulled back in key areas, Bob and the Senate Democratic caucus have stepped up: creating a state-backed graduate student loan program after the elimination of the federal GradPLUS program, advancing landmark legislation to regulate artificial intelligence and protect residents’ data and privacy, safeguarding the personal information of Connecticut voters, expanding access to the ballot through no-excuse absentee voting, and strengthening accountability and constitutional protections for people across the state. Bob was also a driving force behind Connecticut’s landmark 2026 law holding ICE and law enforcement accountable for constitutional violations, one of his most important priorities of the session. The law gives residents the power to sue officials who violate their rights and bars immigration arrests in schools, hospitals and houses of worship.
Since joining the legislature, Bob has been a tireless advocate for housing in Connecticut. He served as one of the lead architects of Connecticut’s landmark 2025 statewide housing law. Passed in a special session and signed by Governor Lamont, the law is one of the most significant efforts in a generation to expand the supply of housing that working families can afford. As former Chair of the legislature’s Housing Committee, Bob created the state’s first Housing Trust Fund to build more affordable housing in Connecticut. As former Chair of the Banking Committee, Bob worked to safeguard Connecticut homeowners from the ravages of predatory lending by creating a package of first-in-the-nation reforms to reduce the number of home foreclosures in the state; included in that legislation was the foreclosure mediation program, the Mortgage Crisis Job Training Program to help those unemployed or underemployed avoid foreclosure, and a law that provides tools to municipalities ensuring lenders maintain their vacant properties.
At the same time, Bob has been a fierce advocate in promoting the needs of the people in the 25th Senate District by securing funding to assist in the rebuilding of Norwalk’s downtown, supporting school upgrades, bridges, sidewalks, streetscapes, train stations, traffic roundabouts, health centers, rehabilitating affordable housing, passionately supporting arts organizations, and more. In recent years, that work has included major state investments in CT State Norwalk, the Maritime Aquarium, South Norwalk streetscapes, and new affordable and senior housing.
After graduating from Norwalk’s public schools, Bob earned his bachelor’s degree in political science from Lynchburg College, now the University of Lynchburg, in Virginia. There, he honed his political skills as a student senator, campus leader and intern for U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT).
Bob has been a real estate professional with William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty for more than three decades. Bob, his wife, Tracey, and their two children live in Norwalk with their rescue dog, Molly.
