Logan Dinkins, Contributing Photographer

New Haven’s fledgling Independent Party backed five candidates in alder races across the city this election. 

Despite their efforts to disrupt the status quo, all five lost. Come 2026, the Board of Alders will be composed exclusively of Democrats, as it has been since 2012.

“I thought this was a year of change because I thought we had a shot,” Anthony Acri, who ran on the Independent and Republican lines for alder in East Shore’s Ward 18, said in a phone interview. 

Jason Bartlett, a longtime local political organizer and the Independent Party’s founder and executive director, said he was unsurprised by Tuesday’s results.

“I didn’t have a high expectation that we were going to win,” he said in a phone interview. “It’s a new party and part of the strategy is just to start.” 

Independent candidates around the Elm City performed unevenly at the polls.

Most successful was businessman Miguel Pittman, who challenged half-term incumbent Angel Hubbard, a Democrat, for the Hill’s Ward 3 alder seat. He previously lost to Hubbard in a tight 2024 special election and in this year’s Democratic primary. This cycle, running on the Independent and Republican lines in a race marred by allegations of misconduct, he won 303 votes to Hubbard’s 347, according to data from New Haven’s Registrar of Voters. 

Pittman led by a wide margin in early voting, however. Bartlett speculated that once it became clear Ward 3’s race would be the most competitive, “the machine — I mean the Democratic Party, the alders, New Haven Rising and UNITE HERE” put its resources behind Hubbard.

Acri, who has previously run as a Republican twice for city clerk and twice for state representative, also nabbed a significant share of the vote in the Ward 18 race, winning 37 percent.

“We did not get the Republicans to turn out as I had hoped that they would,” Acri said. “I did not get the number of Independent votes that I expected either.” Ward 18 saw a higher share of its residents vote for President Donald Trump last fall than any other ward.

Still, Acri fared better than some of his fellow Independents. 

In Quinnipiac Meadows’ Ward 12, Robert Vitello, who also ran on the Republican line, won just over 25 percent of the vote.

In Fair Haven’s Ward 16, Rafael Fuentes won 16.7 percent of the vote.

And in Fair Haven Heights’ Ward 13, Luis Jimenez won 6.3 percent. 

“Quite frankly,” Bartlett said, some of the candidates “didn’t put in a hundred percent.”

Indeed, Vitello said that he only decided to run for alder because he had heard, mistakenly, that one-term incumbent Teresa Morant was not seeking reelection. 

“I would have never went against her,” he said, adding that they became friends while standing outside of the ward’s polling location Tuesday.

Fuentes, meanwhile, said that he only ran to unseat 10-term incumbent Jose Crespo. But when Crespo dropped out of the Democratic primary in August, Fuentes’ name was already on the ballot. He ended up squaring off against teacher Madga Natal, whom he referred to as “a good woman.”

“I didn’t do all that crazy legwork,” Fuentes said, adding that he did not particularly want to win. “I didn’t go knocking door to door. I didn’t call people at their house.”

He said that immediately after the results of his race were called, he congratulated Natal and then drove in his RV from the polls to Maryland to participate in the Haltech World Cup Finals, a drag racing competition.

Many of the Independent candidates who ran this cycle have colorful histories.

Acri was sentenced in 2016 to five years in prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud, while Vitello was once a mob enforcer, he told the News, and was arrested in 2000 for kidnapping. Fuentes has been accused of organizing drag races by Crespo, the incumbent alder, allegations he denies.

In Bartlett’s eyes, the only way for the Independent Party to gain a foothold on the Board of Alders is to run a larger slate of competitive candidates, which would prevent the Democratic party from concentrating its resources on a single race.

“We understand what it’s going to take,” Bartlett said. “Now that I have a party, I can start recruiting today, tomorrow, and we can build, and we can fundraise and actually have the financial capacity and the infrastructure to actually help people across the finish line.”

Bartlett is now focused on finding “more Miguels — more candidates that truly want to win and serve and make a difference in the community,” he said, referring to Pittman.

Ultimately, Bartlett places some of the blame for his candidates’ losses on factors far beyond New Haven. 

Voters, he said, “weren’t thinking local issues. They were like, ‘Okay, we got to go in there and show that we’re not for Trump. We’re for the Democrats.’ And they just voted straight Democrat.”

Bartlett said that local races in Connecticut became part of “a national referendum” on the Trump administration. 

Indeed, Democrats flipped open seats and ousted Republican incumbents in cities and towns across the state, with Sen. Chris Murphy calling the shift “seismic” and “possibly unprecedented” in a Tuesday night X post.

Anti-Trump sentiment made it “a lot tougher than it should have been” for non-Democrats to win in New Haven, Bartlett said. 

He added that the apparent unpopularity of Steve Orosco — who ran against incumbent Mayor Justin Elicker on the Republican and Independent lines and won a smaller vote share than Elicker’s 2023 challenger, Tom Goldenberg, did — might have also discouraged New Haveners from voting for Independents down the ballot.

“Politics in New Haven have gotten too comfortable,” Jimenez said. “I think that people might be scared of change.” 

Elicker won reelection by around 69 points.