Underdog challenger Moses Nelson didn’t find out who would be voting on his candidacy Monday night until he walked into the room.
Then he saw the faces of the Ward 21 Democratic committee members who would raise their hands against him by a margin of 15 to 8, throwing their endorsement to incumbent Alderwoman Katrina Jones.
“I had no idea who was on the list” of voting members, protested Nelson. Half of the list was not finalized until Saturday, leaving Nelson in the dark.
That complaint has been heard all over town on both sides of the political divide about lack of transparency in the Democratic Party.
As candidates have been endorsed for the Board of Aldermen, candidates have objected that they couldn’t find out vital information about the activities and membership of the Democratic party ward committees, which are putatively the gateway to political involvement in one-party New Haven.
In light of the complaints, a review by the Independent showed that 90 percent of the city’s Democratic ward committees have not made their membership lists public. Knowing who’s on the ward committee is a crucial step for a candidate to snag the their party’s endorsement: The ward committee’s endorsement often leads to the party’s endorsement, which gives a candidate a huge advantage in ballot access and resources for the Democratic primary.
The Democratic Town Committee is set to meet tonight to endorse a slate of candidates based on the just-completed wave of ward committee votes.
Long before the nominating process begins, ward committee co-chairs have the option of filing the membership lists publicly at the town clerk’s office. There’s a folder there in a file cabinet designated just for those lists. A check on Friday revealed that out of 30 wards, only three ward committees had filed membership lists for 2009: Ward 8 in Wooster Square, Ward 17 in the East Shore, and Ward 10 in East Rock. The rest had not.
“Do I have to?” said Patty DePalma, a co-chair in the Ward 11. “The alderman and [Democratic Town Chairwoman] Susie Voigt never said anything to me about it.”
It turns out that she doesn’t have to, according to local Democratic Party bylaws. The rules call for ward committee co-chairs to establish their membership within 30 days of taking office — yet no rules require the lists to be publicly filed.
Lisa Hopkins, a candidate in Dixwell’s Ward 22 who encountered her own obstacles last week in the nominating process, said the bylaws need to be reformed.
“If we’re really trying to practice a true democracy, information like that should be readily available to everyone,” she said. “It shouldn’t be a cloak and dagger adventure to find out who’s on the committee.”
She said co-chairs should be required to file their membership lists with the town clerk, and that the Democratic Party should post the lists on a public website.
Eli Greer, a Ward 24 co-chair, agreed.
“The whole thing is not a transparent system,” said Greer. He said some ward lists are thrown together at the last minute, and others are so outdated that they contain people who’ve left the ward or died.
In answer to grumblings about the availability of his ward’s lists last week, he said he did send the list to Democratic Town Committee Chairwoman Voigt. He suggested that the DTC post them publicly.
“The votes should be online and the membership should be online,” Greer said. He said co-chairs need to be encouraged to compile and distribute their lists right after they’re elected. Indeed: Local party bylaws call for the co-chairs to appoint the ward committee, up to 50 people, within 30 days of their being elected. Those elections took place in March 2008.
Last-Minute Scramble
In Newhallville’s Ward 21, where Nelson and Jones faced off Monday, a last-minute resignation left Democrats scrambling to throw together a nominating event on the last possible day before the DTC convention. The problem in that ward was that one co-chair, Lois Tyson, stepped down at the last minute. Voigt chose Gwen Newton, Katrina Jones’s mom, to take over as co-chair last Tuesday. Each co-chair gets to appoint up to 25 members of the committee.
“This came to me at the last minute,” said Newton (at right in photo). She said she hustled to compile her list of committee members, but it wasn’t finalized until Saturday. Then she turned to her co-chair, Willie Greene (at left in photo). She contended that she had trouble getting his list. Greene said he dutifully emailed the list of names to a young woman named Audrey who was volunteering with the DTC.
“She’s had it for over a week!” Greene replied. Greene said he also made his list available to Nelson — and even let Nelson choose five people to fill in vacant spots. Greene said the deciding moment came at the ward committee meeting, where both candidates made short, five-minute speeches to the room, before incumbent Jones won the endorsement.
“The bottom line is that Katrina gave the best presentation,” he said. Jones, the majority leader of the board, gave a focused speech on what she’s done in office for the past three terms. Nelson admitted to the room that he hadn’t prepared his remarks. Through a show of hands, committee members voted 15 to 8 in Jones’s favor.
“If my man had given the best presentation,” Greene said, the vote “would have gone for him.”
Still, Greene agreed that making the lists public would level the playing field for new candidates.
A Public Record
Voigt, the DTC chair, welcomed the call for reform.
“It would be great to have people look at the bylaws and think about how we make these endorsements,” said Voigt. The bylaws have not changed since the 1970s, she said. She tried to reform them a few years ago, but was voted down by fellow Democrats. She said she’d like to see another effort for reform, with the aim of getting more Democrats involved in the process.
Would she welcome a requirement that the membership lists be made public?
“I would be perfectly supportive of that,” said Voigt, though she said she thinks the lists should be filed with the DTC, not with the Town Clerk. Her rationale: membership lists are a party issue, not a city issue, she said.
Ward 8 Co-Chair Chris Randall, one of the few Democrats across the city who did file his membership list publicly with the town clerk, said that doing so has several merits.
“Actually having it properly documented is important,” said Randall. Filing the list with the town clerk “adds transparency in the process” and creates a public record, he said. “I believe it should be mandatory.”
He said the lists should be filed at the Hall of Records, not with the DTC, because “the town clerk’s office is more of an objective entity.”
Voigt said she tried hard to reach out to co-chairs for their lists so that she can distribute them to any candidate who asks. But, she conceded, she’s still missing lists from at least a quarter of the city’s wards.
Despite the complaints about the process, Voigt said she is proud to see so many people participating in the nominations for aldermen.
“Five hundred people engaged in this process over the last two weeks,” she said, “however flawed it might have been.”
The DTC holds its nominating convention tonight at 6 p.m. at the Barnard Environmental Studies Magnet School at 170 Derby Ave.
Past stories on complaints about lack of transparency in the local Democratic Party:
• Ward Committee Backs McCormack
• Another Endorsement. Another Closed Door?
• Sandman Wins Ward Committee Nod