Saying New Haven needs a debate over schools, community policing, union givebacks, and relations with the state, Bill Dyson confirmed Tuesday that he may challenge Mayor John DeStefano this fall.
Dyson, who retired from the state legislature this year after 32 years representing the 94th Assembly District, said he’ll decide for sure in coming weeks whether to mount a candidacy. DeStefano, a Democrat in his eighth two-year term, is up for reelection this fall.
Voters deserve an “alternative,” Dyson said.
“There ought to be a healthy debate. There ought to be some ongoing discussion about the things that need to be done,” he said. “I feel they’re not getting that.”
He’s been talking to people around town about a possible candidacy, although he insists he hasn’t initiated most of those contacts and has no idea. In one case he did raise the subject of a potential candidacy, he acknowledged: at an appearance before business leaders at the Regional Leadership Council last month.
Dyson’s possible candidacy has sparked interest because he has 16 winning elections behind him, deep local ties among constituencies he has helped in town, and a statewide reputation on issues like prison overcrowding and reentry of ex-offenders. No other potential challenger to DeStefano has emerged this year with those credentials despite local controversies over taxes and cops and schools.
The mayor Tuesday said he welcomes the debate and Dyson’s challenge.
“I think those are all good things to talk about,” DeStefano said. “Bill is a credible person to talk about all those things. Whether as a mayoral candidate or in some other capacity, I think Bill should be part of those discussions.”
Indeed, whether not Dyson ends up launching the run, that debate began in earnest in interviews with the two possible opponents. On schools, for instance.
Charter Fan
At center of a Dyson run would be the schools. He said they’re failing too many students in New Haven.
DeStefano has publicly clashed with charter school proponents as well as parents seeking changes in how public schools run. Dyson was an early supporter of Amistad Academy. He said Tuesday he backs charters in general and believes they can coexist with traditional public schools.
He also took aim at the showpiece of DeStefano’s education record, the $1.5 billion effort to build and renovate schools all around town. That money hasn’t produced a concomitant improvement in what’s taught inside those buildings, Dyson charged.
“It’s true that there’s a lot of emphasis on school construction. Even our new president has an emphasis on school construction” in the pending economic stimulus plan, DeStefano responded. “I don’t think one is done at the expense of the other.” He cited a recent independent report prepared for the State Board of Education that gave “the school district pretty high marks.”
Dyson scored DeStefano for presiding over a decline in community policing and a politicized atmosphere under which cop scandals have festered and cut into public confidence.
He has a “wait and see” attitude toward DeStefano’s new police chief, James Lewis. But overall “attention has been waning” toward the community policing experiment that brought walking beat cops closer to neighbors in the 1990s and dramatically cut violent crime, Dyson argued.
He dismissed the charge that the city lacks the money to put more officers on walking beats: “You can find money for everything else you wanna do. I don’t see why you wouldn’t find the money to do this.”
New Haven has entered a “post-community policing” era that requires new strategies,
DeStefano responded. He said he’s “pleased” with the police department’s performance.
“Frankly if you look at the program of traffic stops and engaging street-level crime, it’s exactly what citizens are appreciating under Chief Lewis. I’ve been very pleased with directions we’ve seen in recent months about guns being taken off the street and civil enforcement in the neighborhood,” he said. He added that the city’s district managers, like Fair Haven’s Luiz Casanova, the Hill’s Joe Streeto, Dwight’s Ray Hassett, “interact a lot with residents.”
But, he added, “I don’t think we’re going to be doing policing like we did 10 or 15 years ago. It’s a different time. The challenges are different. We’re beginning to see the reorganization of street gangs in the city. It’s something we’re acutely paying attention to right now. That said, narcotics dealing lies at the root of a lot of what we face. I do agree frankly we need and we’re moving toward more robust narcotics enforcement.
Programs outside of the police department, like the street outreach workers effort and a brewing City Hall initiative aimed at ex-offenders returning to town, are just as important to combating crime, he said.
Labor’s Role
As a legislator, Dyson has parted from fellow Democrats in speaking out against unions or voting against them. He has been particularly outspoken for decades about teachers unions, which he has accused of putting self-interest above students’ interests.
Unions are traditionally key vote-pullers in New Haven elections. And they have traditionally backed DeStefano’s campaigns.
Dyson argued that he could earn support from municipal unions in a mayoral race this year because the mayor has demanded givebacks. DeStefano has said that the current economic crisis has made givebacks necessary to avoid more city layoffs.
The mayor has been “using” the unions, Dyson charged. He struck generous contracts with them when he ran for governor, and won their endorsements in 2006. “Now he wants it back. He had to know back then” that the contracts were unsupportable.
Dyson is correct that he’d have a shot at union endorsements, said Larry Amendola, president of AFSCME Local 3144, which represents city government management employees.
“Knowing Bill the way I do know him, he would make an excellent mayor,” Amendola said. “A lot of people would support him, not because the present mayor’s not doing a good job, but Bill is well-liked and the city is having major problems. I think it would be a good battle between the two of them.”
DeStefano dismissed Dyson’s argument about “using” the unions as a “stretch.” He cited a controversial new teachers contract in Branford as an example of how municipal teacher contracts can be controversial no matter who’s striking them.
“Look. I respect Bill. I respect work we’ve done together in the past,” he continued. “He has a lot to say.”
Soured Relationship
Indeed, Dyson and DeStefano are former allies. When DeStefano faced the biggest crisis of his mayoralty — a 1998 ethics scandal — he turned to Dyson to find a new chief for and serve on a panel to resuscitate City Hall’s tattered Livable City Initiative (LCI). Dyson supported DeStefano’s reelection campaigns until four years ago, when Dyson sought to become speaker of the state House of Representatives, and lost. He felt that DeStefano failed to convince other New Haven state legislators to support the bid. The two have had a falling out since. In 2007 Dyson supported a challenger to DeStefano, Jim Newton, and issued this stinging critique of the administration’s policies.
On Tuesday Dyson maintained that his candidacy is not about settling scores.
“To talk about how I might feel about something he might have done some time ago [in the House speaker race] — yeah I feel that. Absolutely I do,” Dyson said. “That’s when things began to turn sour [between City Hall and state legislators and the governor’s office]. Not because of some actions I took, but some actions that he took.”
He suggested that DeStefano pursued a personal agenda in Hartford — a candidacy for governor — above the interests of the city, dividing the delegation and alienating key legislative Democrats and the Republican governor’s office. Instead of a “working relationship” with Gov. Rell and legislative leaders, New Haven under DeStefano has engaged in “a borderline pissing match” that jeopardizes the quest for state money for the city, Dyson charged.
DeStefano sees the history differently. He said that he did support Dyson’s quest for House speaker against Milford Jim Amann, but that some New Haven state legislators were supporting Amann for their own reasons and he couldn’t change their mind. It was Dyson’s quest, not any actions by DeStefano, that “split the delegation,” DeStefano argued.
“It was true that I didn’t always have a warm relationship with [former Republican Gov.] John Rowland. Bill did,” DeStefano added. “We had different points of view about John Rowland. I think it’s a stretch to say that that was a defining aspect of what happened in the state of Connecticut in the years since.”
Independent Streak
A candidacy would bring Dyson out of retirement. He’s starting a not-for-profit group to advocate for opportunities for ex-prisoners, but on a volunteer basis.
He acknowledged that since he’s 68, age is “obviously a factor” in deciding whether to run. (DeStefano is 53.)
A lifelong Democrat with a maverick streak, Dyson said he’s leaning toward seeking a spot on the November ballot as an independent rather than challenge DeStefano in a party primary if he does end up running.
“To go through a primary, you are operating in an arena in which it might not be the most advantageous place for you to operate,” he said. “It is an issue around party structure, what party structure exists, and who controls that, and where the patronage lies, where the loyalty.”
Dyson is also unsure about whether he’d pursue matching dollars under the city’s new voluntary public financing campaign system, which DeStefano supported. He called public financing a “troubling” concept: “The notion is that you’re going to allow for a greater degree of participation on the part of the public. I haven’t been convinced that that is the case. I think it provides public money to carry on with a political process.”