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Elliott, Pascarella at WNHH.
One candidate wants tolls to return to Connecticut highways. The other’s open to the idea, but wants to look closer at the financial impact first.
Both candidates agree when it comes to boosting the minimum wage — and making sure it keeps rising.
The two candidates are James Pascarella and Joshua Elliott of Hamden. They’re competing in an Aug. 9 Democratic primary for the open 88th General Assembly District seat being vacated by House Speaker Brendan Sharkey. (The two square off in a debate Tuesday night at the Hamden Middle School beginning at 7 p.m.)
The race is being watched beyond Hamden’s borders because the races for open seats will determine the balance of power at the state legislature next term; because a powerful Democrat is vacating the seat; and because Elliott’s campaign will test how much of an impact Bernie Sanders’ presidential quest might have long-term on grassroots Connecticut politics.
Elliott, the manager of Hamden’s Thyme & Season natural foods store (owned by his mom) and the owner of Shelton’s Common Bond Market, worked hard on Sanders’ Democratic primary campaign. So did Sarah Ganong, who’s now running Elliott’s state representative campaign> They said they’ve assembled a team of about 10 Sanders workers to try to help Elliott win.
Elliott, who hasn’t held elective office before, faces an experienced opponent in Pascarella, who has served for 11 years on Hamden’s Town Council. Pascarella is currently president of the council. He also served temporarily as Hamden’s mayor after Scott Jackson left to take a job with the state. Pascarella found himself thrust into the controversy over Quinnipiac University’s campus housing shortage and neighbors riled about rowdy off-campus parties. If elected state representative, he said, would consider seeking to revisit the university’s tax exemptions if it fails to improve its relationship with the town, in part by building more campus housing and creating its own police force.
The two candidates told their stories in back-to-back appearances this week on WNHH radio’s “Dateline New Haven” program.
If elected, Elliott said, he would push for raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and tying it to the Consumer Price Index beyond that to make sure wages keep pace with inflation.
“It’s been decades since we’ve had the buying power of the 1970s for the working class,” he said.
Pascarella said he supports both ideas.
Elliott said high school-aged employees at his store start at the $9.60 minimum, which rises to $10.10 next year. He said he’d like to pay them more, but that would prevent him from being able to compete because prices would have to rise.
“As a natural food store that sells gourmet products, we price people out. Not because we want to,” but because healthful food costs more, he said. “If we raised our payroll, that would be good morally. The problem is that would be really bad on a business level. If we can do this across the board, if we make sure every employee gets $15 an hour … this all equals out. We’ll get way more business from people who are priced out. …Millionaires can only eat so much food.”
He added that higher wages will enable consumers to support more businesses: “We have a demand problem in Connecticut. That’s why our economy is sluggish. We’re not paying our workers enough. If we don’t have people who can afford to buy products,” then businesses suffer.
Pascarella, who owns an insurance agency, said he pays all his workers, including entry-level staff, “well beyond” the minimum wage.
The two candidates differed somewhat on two other issues: tolls and taxing the rich.
Elliott called for returning toll stations to highway entrances at the New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island borders. The other states already collect toll money from drivers on those roads, he noted. Connecticut could use the money.
Pascarella said he supports that idea in principle. But before he can commit to it, he said, he’d want to examine the fine print —particularly how much federal highway dollars the state might lose as a result of re-instituting tolls. “I want to see a cost analysis first,” he said.
He had a similar response to Elliott’s call for increased taxes on wealth to help close the state’s budget gap. Elliott called for raising the top rate of 6.99 percent to 7.3 percent on annual income above $500,000 and 7.7 percent on income above $1 million. Pascarella said he likes the general concept. But he said he worries that the state already has encountered continual budget crises over lower-than-expected tax revenues from wealthy Fairfield County dwellers. He noted that the state had to patch an unexpected deficit of close to $1 billion this past session, and faces an estimated gap of as high as $1.9 billion next year. Given that, “I want to know what the heck is going on” with state finances at large before committing to piecemeal proposals that may or may not close the gap.
Click on or download the above sound file to listen to the full interview with Pascarella on WNHH radio’s “Dateline New Haven” program.
Click on or download the above sound file to listen to an interview with Elliott and campaign manager Sarah Ganong on a previous edition of WNHH’s “Dateline New Haven,” about their work with the Bernie Sanders campaign as well as this state legislative race.
Wednesday’s episode of “Dateline New Haven” was supported in part by Yale-New Haven Hospital.