William Tong

William Morten Tong (Chinese: 湯偉麟; pinyin: Tāng Wěilín, born May 2, 1973) is an American lawyer and progressive politician who is the 25th and current Attorney General of Connecticut. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Tong attended Brown University and the University of Chicago Law School. He began his career as an attorney with the law firms Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and Finn Dixon & Herling. In 2006, Tong entered politics upon winning election to the Connecticut House of Representatives to represent the 147th district, which includes most of North Stamford. He served six terms in the House from 2007 to 2019. During this period, Tong chaired the banking committee from 2011 to 2015 and the judiciary committee from 2015 to 2019.

In 2018, Tong was elected attorney general of Connecticut. He took office on January 9, 2019, as the first Asian Pacific-American attorney general and constitutional officer elected statewide in Connecticut's history.

William Tong grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut. His father, Ady, left China for Hong Kong during the Chinese Civil War, and his mother, Nancy, was a Taiwanese American who immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan in the 1960s.

Tong graduated from the elite boarding school, Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. He received an undergraduate degree in classics with honors from Brown University in 1995. He earned a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 2000.

Before his election as attorney general, Tong practiced law for 18 years as a litigator in both state and federal courts, first at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in New York City and then at Finn Dixon & Herling LLP in Stamford.

In late 2017, Tong formed an exploratory committee to seek the Democratic nomination for Connecticut Attorney General in the 2018 election after incumbent George Jepsen announced he would not seek reelection.^{[citation needed]}

Tong won the first contested Democratic convention for attorney general on May 20, 2018, with 63.3% of the vote, defeating three other candidates. He went on to win the first contested Democratic primary for attorney general on August 14, beating two other candidates with 57.3% of the vote.^{[citation needed]}

Tong defeated Republican nominee Sue Hatfield in the general election by 78,394 votes, 6% of the total. According to the attorney general's office, he became the first elected Asian-American statewide official in Connecticut upon taking office.