Tag Archive: Mayoral Race

  1. The Heir to King John?

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    John DeStefano Jr. was elected as the 49th mayor of New Haven in January 1994 and has held this office for 10 consecutive terms. In January of this year, however, he announced that his time in office would be over: He would not seek re-election.

    In the wake of DeStefano’s announcement, several contenders stepped up to fill his shoes, but after the results of September’s primary, two candidates have risen to the fore: Toni Harp ARC ’78 and Justin Elicker FES ’10 SOM ’10.

    Of the two candidates Harp is most often seen as DeStefano’s successor, both by her critics and champions. But after 20 years under one mayor, would a Harp administration mean more of the same?

    According to her campaign, Harp’s platform rests on economic development, education reform and improving public safety.

    For those looking for change, Harp promises to increase coordination between the mayor’s office and the Board of Aldermen and increase community involvement in public safety — both of which were not DeStefano’s top priorities, at least according to the senator’s camp.

    But even within these issues, there are similarities in the rhetoric used by Harp and the mayor. Though their proposed ways of accomplishing them differ, Harp and DeStefano advocate for the same goals, and in almost the same language.

    But in response to the criticism that she and DeStefano are similar politicians, Harp pointed out that change isn’t necessarily good for its own sake.

    “I hope that when I’m mayor that people feel that same sense of stability,” she said.

    Harp promises to be able to continue many of the mayor’s emphases, especially in areas such as education reform and public safety. According to Harp’s campaign, Harp has a lot of support from local politicians, especially the Board of Aldermen, because she knows the city just as well as the mayor does. But while this means that Harp, if elected, would have much of the support that ensured DeStefano’s longevity, for better or for worse, it also means that the city’s priorities wouldn’t be likely to change.

     

    The Early Days

    Harp first became active in New Haven politics when DeStefano was in office. She came to New Haven as an architecture graduate student almost 40 years ago and was elected as Ward 2 alderwoman in 1992. In 1993, she became state senator of Connecticut’s 10th district.

    But Harp was not always perceived as DeStefano’s successor, or necessarily his ally.

    Harp campaign manager Patrick Scully said the two were able to collaborate on some legislative goals when she first arrived, and resisted calling the two politicians rivals during the rest of DeStefano’s term because they’ve occupied different political spheres: Harp as senator and DeStefano as city mayor.

    But during New Haven’s 2011 mayoral campaign, Harp made the bold decision to endorse Clifton Graves, who ran against DeStefano. In her endorsement speech, Harp advocated for a better solution to reducing violence in the city, citing the 23 homicides that had been committed already that year.

    During that same election, Harp’s popularity was compared to DeStefano’s even though she was not running for mayor. A survey commissioned by DeStefano’s reelection campaign in 2011 analyzing voter preference between DeStefano and Harp ranked the state senator over the mayor.

     

    Two Thumbs Up

    Still, over time Harp has found support from many of the same people as DeStefano. And the most prominent of these have been the local unions.

    Local 34 and Local 35, which represent Yale’s workers, endorsed her in June of this year, but she has also received support from over 10 other unions, including the New Haven Federation of Teachers, and the New Haven Firefighters.

    These endorsements have become a major selling point for Harp, earning her an endorsement from the New Haven Register, which specifically cited her connections to the Board of Aldermen and to the unions.

    DeStefano has stared down union demands in the past. In February of 2011, he fired 16 New Haven firefighters, a situation that led to a union protest and eventually escalated into a prominent court case: Ricci v. DeStefano. But even in the face of legal opposition, DeStefano continued to act independently.

    President of “Yale for Elicker” Drew Morrison ’14 questioned whether Harp would do the same. He explained that many view Harp as beholden to special interests, given how much she has relied on union connections during the campaign process.

    “[If Harp is elected] a lot of the ideas and decisions are not going to come from the mayor,” Morrison said. He argued that Harp is running from a “bully pulpit.”

    But others see Harp’s connections differently: as a way for her to work more efficiently.

    Scully emphasized that Harp would not be afraid to stand up to her supporters if she disagreed with them.

    “She isn’t beholden to them by any means,” he said in reference to her union connections.

    And Harp doesn’t just rely on unions. She has the endorsement of most New Haven Aldermen. Members of the board are happy to see a mayoral candidate who is on the same page as them, especially since DeStefano’s policies weren’t always coordinated with theirs.

    According to Alderman Frank Douglass (Ward 2) and Jeanette Morrison (Ward 22), Harp’s hopes for New Haven are in harmony with the Board of Aldermen’s Vision Statement for 2013-2014.

    Douglass has known Harp for a long time, and he believes she’s ready to work with the board. “Its personal between me and her,” he joked.

    Personal might be a good watchword for the Harp campaign, at least according to Scully.

    “DeStefano is more of a top-down type of mayor,” he said “Toni Harp is more of a bring everybody to the table leader.”

     

    Getting Schooled

    After being sworn into office in 1994, John DeStefano set out on the ambitious mission to renovate or rebuild every New Haven public school. Now New Haven schools, newly renovated, boast innovative designs: white concrete and glass at Hill Regional Career High School and curved brick at Truman School, to name a few.

    Like DeStefano, Harp emphasizes education reform as one of her priorities. But where DeStefano emphasized infrastructure, Harp prioritizes reform in the classroom. One of her main emphases has been on expanding curriculum improvements such as tailoring content to the needs of the kids in the class.

    Harp commended DeStefano’s work on public schools, but added that “we have to make sure that inside those beautiful school buildings we have a world-class education that works.”

    Harp has found support for these policies among local politicians, and Douglass specifically commended her for moving in the direction that New Haven’s students need.

    “I think she’ll play a big part in actually making sure that the school systems work as opposed to just having new facilities,” he said.

    Many of those within the education system also seem to agree. As an educator at Gateway Community College, Alderwoman Morrison believes that Harp’s education policy would give more students an education that would prepare them for college-level classes, something that wasn’t the case under DeStefano.

    Perhaps because of this difference, Harp said that she feels a sense of urgency when it comes to education reform. DeStefano’s policies, in school reform as well as construction, have worked so far, but she believes that there is more to be done, and that it needs to come quickly.

    “We can’t afford to take years to create the change that these children need,” Harp said.

     

    5-O on Your Block

    The New Haven of the early 90s, when DeStefano first took office, was much different, and more dangerous, than the New Haven of today. It was the site of widespread violence, much of it caused by drug wars.

    And even as much of that violence has disappeared, DeStefano has kept reduction of crime at the top of his priorities list.

    In 2012, there were 50% fewer homicides and 30% fewer non-fatal shootings than there were in 2011. In 2013 to date, violent crime is down 10%. This change has been due in a large part to DeStefano’s efforts.

    If elected, Harp promises to continue DeStefano’s public safety policies, but to focus on community engagement, specifically through community policing. Many concerned citizens of New Haven, she argues, would like to be more involved in their own security.

    This model of policing relies more on neighborhood watches and officers on walking beats in New Haven’s neighborhoods. It’s good for community involvement, according to Harp’s campaign, but not New Haven’s traditional approach. According to Harp, at the start of DeStefano’s time as mayor, he was a proponent for more community involvement in public safety, but as he moved through police chiefs, the community-policing model fell by the wayside in favor of other priorities, such as targeting violent criminals instead of on-the-block policing.

    Harp was the first to make a strong push for community policing in New Haven when she was the Ward 2 alderman and, while her emphasis isn’t the same as the mayor’s, her approach has local support. Current Police Chief Dean Esserman, according to both Harp and Scully, is on board with a shift in focus.

    “Community policing is the linchpin of [Harp’s] public safety policy,” said Scully.

     

    Two Chefs in the Same Kitchen

    Although many parallels can be drawn between DeStefano and Harp, her supporters see her possible election as one that will bring about a lot of change. Connecticut congresswoman and Harp endorser Rosa DeLauro acknowledged that DeStefano was an “outstanding” mayor who brought a lot of good to the city. But she also said that she looks forward to Harp’s “historic” election. If she wins the vote, she will be the city’s first female mayor.

    “She has a vision and understanding for the city, and the skills to create a great future for New Haven,” DeLauro said.

    But some of Harp’s opponents worry that if elected, her similarities to DeStefano will result in stasis for New Haven. Since they share similar goals and work with the same coalitions, they argue the opportunity for change in New Haven would be limited. They want a new mayor, not another DeStefano.

    But Harp supporters argue that differences do exist — especially in her willingness to try new approaches to old issues.

    Douglass emphasized that, in the end, Harp and DeStefano would work towards the good of the same New Haven, though her proposed approach has a different flavor than the current mayor’s.

    “I don’t see her as anything like DeStefano,” he said. “They wear two different aprons.”

  2. The New Mayor: A Popularity Contest?

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    A meet-and-greet. A master’s tea. A roundtable.  A casual Cross Campus chat.

    These events share a goal: They seek to engage Yalies politically. But beyond variations in the cookies served and questions asked, they seem like nothing more than slightly different shades of schmooze.

    Elicker. Fernandez. Harp. Carolina. In the all-Democratic New Haven mayoral race, the differences among the four candidates have less to do with policy than personality, so distinct campaigning styles count for a lot. And with a relatively small electorate at play in next Tuesday’s Democratic primary, the hundreds of votes candidates could win from Yale’s campus are nothing to sneeze at.

    On Yale’s campus — where few students follow New Haven politics, let alone have strong opinions on local issues, simply because they don’t see the city as crucial for their everyday services — the candidates often find themselves expounding upon abstract “visions” for the city rather than the details of constituents’ concerns.

    But those visions are not so different. Each campaign stresses the holy trinity of jobs, education and public safety, and all hope to unify a city divided by race and class.

    Jason Bartlett, campaign manager for Toni Harp ARC ’78: “Toni Harp’s message to bring the city together is universal. Her emphasis on education, jobs and the economy is universal.”

    Emma Janger ’15, a Henry Fernandez LAW ’94 supporter who runs her candidate’s campaign on campus: “I think from the conversations I’ve seen Henry have with students, his vision still centers on jobs and education and public safety.”

    Rafi Bildner ’16, fundraising consultant for the Justin Elicker FES ’10 SOM ’10 campaign: “The issues are education, safety and developing New Haven as a 21st century city.”

    Kristin Horneffer ’14, volunteer for Kermit Carolina: “It’s all about ending the cycle of poverty, which by extension ends crime.”

    Each campaign rep said they think their candidate can best tackle those issues.

    So with the campaigns stressing skills over substance, whether a candidate chooses to talk to students at a meet-and-greet, a master’s tea, a roundtable or while hanging around on Cross Campus can tell us something about the personalities in this race — and what really separates them.

    * * *

    Drew Morrison ’14, president of “Yale for Elicker,” thinks word-of-mouth is the best way to sell his candidate around campus. “We have a pretty good contingent of about 20 people in the operation. Having them ask their friends — that’s the most effective conversations.” Morrison sees the ground zero of the campaign as the few Yale students who’ve made some intimate acquaintance with the city, whether through volunteering or because they are local. Their enthusiasm infects others.

    “People who have friends who are involved and who see the passion in their friends: that’s the basis of our campaign,” Morrison said.

    To the skeptic, Morrison’s analysis might seem to betray a hands-off complacency in Elicker’s campaign strategy. While three of the four mayoral candidates are Yale alumni, Elicker is the most recent graduate. His five-year career as a Foreign Service Officer in the State Department is the kind of experience many Yalies would love to boast at 37. He is the only white candidate in the race. And because Elicker is the alderman for East Rock — a relatively affluent ward home to many Yale graduate students and professors — some suspect that he assumes implicit backing from the privileged institution in the center of, but in sharp contrast to, this poverty-plagued city.

    Bildner puts a different spin on his candidate’s natural connection to Yalies. Like them, Bilder said, Elicker is a bit of a nerd.

    “I think Yale students respond well to Justin not because of what he looks like, but because when they ask him a question, he gives them a real policy-based response based in facts and figures,” Bildner said. And responding to questions about how Elicker’s privilege may endear him to Yalies, Morrison said he thinks Yale students are the voters most willing to confront Elicker about issues of race and class. “Yale students are willing to ask him, ‘Hey, you’re a middle class white person from a wealthy neighborhood,” he said.

    Elicker has the most visible undergraduate campaign operation of all the candidates. Even a likely Fernandez voter like Zunaira Arshad ’17 conceded that the people who signed her up to vote were associated with the Elicker campaign.

    That’s something the campaign likes to tout. Bildner said that both at last Saturday’s meet-and-greet in Dwight Hall, and at Elicker’s appearance at Bagel Brunch at the Slifka Center, many students told him Elicker was the first candidate they had seen.

    Elicker’s campus campaign strategy is a one-two punch of visibility and chatter that embodies what Bildner pegs as the alderman’s central promise: “a transparent and open style of government” epitomized by the responsiveness Elicker claims to have demonstrated as alderman and the way he delegates responsibilities on the campaign trail. Bildner, who has worked on previous Democratic campaigns including President Obama’s, said the Elicker campaign was the first time he found himself in a room of volunteers where “each one is working almost as a senior campaign staffer.”

    But it looks like there is an inverse formula in this race between political experience in the city and grassroots campaigning. Elicker is young compared to his chief rivals; he has spent fewer years as an elected official. So folksy as it might seem, his being accessible to students exposes Elicker’s limited political currency on the New Haven scene.

    * * *

    But if Elicker is the new kid on the block and acts that way, his tactics are very different from those of the establishment candidate: Harp. Experience is her catchword — and campus engagement far from a priority.

    A 20-year veteran of the Connecticut state legislature who spent 10 years as chairman of the state senate appropriations committee, Harp has won powerful endorsements (like that of Democratic Senator Chris Murphy) and leads the pack in fundraising. Arguing that her work at the state level has qualified her to manage the crumbling city budget, Harp presents herself to Democratic voters as a major-league player. But coupled with her unmatched union support, that state-level experience has painted Harp as a classic machine politician.

    At Yale, that’s how Harp is understood. Her marginal contact with university students — largely limited to work with Students Unite Now, an undergraduate ally of the Unite Here unions — is defined by a high-priestly manner students may not find relatable. Though Harp leads Elicker and Fernandez in almost every other institutional aspect, her campaign has no official student presence.

    David Steiner ’16, who attended a Labor Day lunch at Timothy Dwight college with Harp and aldermanic candidates Ella Wood ’15, Jeannette Morrison and Sarah Eidelson ’12, said Harp’s appearance with those three aldermanic candidates — along with their four-way endorsement at the event — underscored her SUN and union associations. Steiner said he found Harp detached.

    “While her lengthy resume is worth highlighting, she didn’t relate that experience to the audience members’ interests,” he said. Steiner, an undecided voter, said that instead of discussing Yale-related matters, Harp focused on youth issues, including the closure of the Q House in Dixwell.

    Just as the candidate did at the Timothy Dwight luncheon, Harp’s campaign tries to win Yalies over by linking her to aldermanic candidates who do — or seek to — represent Yalies. That tactic reeks of chummy establishment politics — something the other three candidates say Harp is guilty of. Renita Heng ’16, a Silliman resident, recalled canvassers coming to her room to first talk up alderwoman Morrison and then Harp. “Experience kept on coming up,” Heng said.

    It may be that Harp simply finds Yale’s institutional hulk less intimidating than the other candidates do. She is not as worried about causing offense. While Steiner recalled Harp talking about working with Yale’s president to secure funds for the city, her campaign manager, Bartlett, does not mince his words when speaking about the University. On balancing union concerns with Yale’s, a key issue given Harp’s union backing and what she could gain from Yale votes, Bartlett said, “I don’t know what kind of balancing act Yale expects. Harp’s been pretty clear that Yale has to do more, that we support New Haven Works and we expect Yale to participate in that program. We think that more New Haven residents should get jobs at Yale, both at the university and the hospital.”

    * * *

    Henry Fernandez has some good friends at Yale. The former economic development administrator for the city and Law School grad was once an associate fellow at Ezra Stiles college. As of Wednesday, he has been hosted at two Master’s teas there. Janger, who founded “Yale for Fernandez” earlier this semester, explained that Ezra Stiles master Stephen Pitti ’91 and his wife, American studies and ethnicity, race and migration professor Alicia Camacho, are good friends with Fernandez and his wife, Kica Matos. Janger said the two couples have worked together at Junta for Progressive Action, a New Haven organization that focuses on immigrant rights where Matos was formerly the executive director.

    Pitti said that Ezra Stiles footed the bill for the most recent Fernandez event, which he estimated to be $70. This raises questions about whether that financial cost was an implicit endorsement of Fernandez and then whether Yale and its administrators must remain impartial in New Haven elections. When Elicker hosted his meet-and-greet in Dwight Hall, his supporters distributed flyers noting that the campaign had rented out the space. But in an email to the News, Pitti argued that “as one of the strong candidates for mayor, [Fernandez] deserves the attention of students and others.”

    Fernandez has said that the master’s tea was Pitti’s initiative. Regardless of whose plan it was, Fernandez gained a chance to address scores of students.

    Fernandez is also rumored to draw support from his alma mater: the law school.

    Perhaps those institutional ties explain why Fernandez’s effort on campus has less to do with student-led grassroots organizing than Elicker’s. Instead, Fernandez has made a number of formal appearances on campus, including the two master’s teas and an event last week with actor Danny Glover at the Afro-American Cultural House.

    Fernandez’s decision to host that event is a testament to what Danielle Filson, a senior at the University of Connecticut who serves as Fernandez’s communications director, sees as her candidate’s greatest strength: his diversity. The son of an African-American father and white mother, husband to a Puerto Rican woman and father to a Spanish-speaker, Fernandez is a mosaic of the city’s many communities, his supporters believe. “He embodies New Haven,” Filson said.

    While Elicker has gone to some lengths to emphasize his independence from Yale — he recently opposed the sale of portions of High and Wall streets to the University — Fernandez and his staff are more secure in balancing their candidate’s University links with his New Haven identity. One proposal Filson was quick to tout was a plan to open a school principal training program at the Yale School of Management.

    * * *

    There is one more candidate. Kermit Carolina will not win this election. But Kristin Horneffer ’14, who works for his campaign and said she is the only Yalie she knows to be doing so, does not think victory is the point. Carolina is the champion of those who do not vote, she said. “He’s trying,” Horneffer explained, “to mobilize a group that’s known not to have a voice in New Haven politics — the poorer residents of the city, residents of the inner city, including the blocks surrounding Yale.”

    That group, Horneffer admitted, “is socially, economically and emotionally really separate from Yale students.”

    Yale students are the inverse: New Haven residents who could have a voice but often choose not to. Each campaign must be innovative to win Yale voters who could be valuable to them come Tuesday. “Getting any college student interested in politics on a local level is a challenge,” Harp’s Bartlett said. “I think they’re focused on national politics. To transition to local politics — unless they’re New Haven residents — that takes some work.”

    And while Bartlett conceded that some issues, like gun violence, lay at the intersection of national and local politics, the challenge in attracting student voters lies primarily in the fact that this election is circumscribed to Democrats in a very specific geographic area. The national range of opinions does not translate well to city politics. The extreme partisan rhetoric that dominates national politics will have no bearing on this election. If something national will affect the race, Janger said, it will be immigration reform, an issue where Fernandez stands far to the left of other candidates.

    And while Janger noted that presidential politics do play a role in one way — many students are already registered to vote from last year’s presidential election — there were many during that season of disillusion who did not register for a party, or who do not remember if they registered as Democrats or independents. That means many student will be ineligible to vote in the decisive Democratic primary.

    But Bildner remains optimistic. “Yes,” he admitted, “there’s a small group of students who are really knowledgeable about the issues and are involved in the campaigns, but it’s a very easy pitch in this election because of how important it is … everyone seems to be willing to listen — everyone to whom we say, ‘Listen, this election is huge,’ is willing to at least register.”

    The hard part comes next.

  3. Sixth candidate enters mayoral race

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    And then there were six.

    Connecticut State Senator Toni Harp announced Monday that she will be running for mayor of New Haven. This marks a reversal from her previous statements that she was not running. Long-thought to be the most likely candidate to beat out or succeed longtime Mayor John DeStefano Jr., Harp is poised to shake up a race that has already emerged as the most competitive in decades.

    “I honestly think that I have the ability to bring the city together, to make it a more positive place, where people feel better about being residents of New Haven,” Harp told the New Haven Independent.

    Should she win, Harp would be the first female mayor in New Haven’s history. At 65 years old, she has represented parts of New Haven and West Haven in Hartford since 1993. Harp co-chairs the state legislature’s Appropriations Committee as well as the Mental Health Working Group under the state’s Bipartisan Task Force on Gun Violence Prevention and Children’s Safety.

    Harp’s supporters have plans to hold an organizational meeting for her campaign Monday, the Independent reported. This will coincide with the campaign kickoff event of former New Haven Economic Development Administrator Henry Fernandez LAW ’94. The four other men running are Connecticut Technology Council CEO and President and former president of the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce Matthew Nemerson, Ward 10 Alderman Justin Elicker FES ’10 SOM ’10, Connecticut State Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield and plumber Sundiata Keitazulu.

    Notably, Harp said Monday that she will not be opting into the Democracy Fund, the city’s public campaign financing system that limits individual contributions in exchange for matching funds and a public grant. The issue has already arisen as a sticking point among the candidates, as Elicker, Holder-Winfield and Keitazulu have signed onto the Fund and emphasized the ethical significance of public money. Harp will join Fernandez and Nemerson in abstaining from the Fund, citing her late entry into the race as a justification for her reliance on private fundraising.

    Before her announcement, Harp said she was planning on supporting Holder-Winfield.