Paul Bass Photos
Harp with state Rep. Pat Dillon Sunday.
Elicker politics amid produce.
Amid Westvilleans hunting for farm-fresh veggies, Justin Elicker fielded an urban pioneer’s pained questions about pre‑K admissions while Toni Harp picked up local tomatoes — and, with some effort, uttered the word “I.”
Those moments occurred Sunday afternoon at the busy weekly CitySeed farmers market in Edgewood Park.
The moments reflected some of the reasons Democrats Harp and Elicker have so far mounted strong campaigns to succeed retiring 20-year incumbent Mayor John DeStefano. The moments also pointed to the thresholds they need to cross to seize the prize.
The heart of Westville — which along with East Rock and Morris Cove tends to produce the highest voter turnouts in town — has proved fertile campaigning ground for Elicker. He has found far more campaign contributors there than have the other three Democratic mayoral candidates. He popped up as a surprise second place to Harp in a Democratic 25th Ward Committee endorsement vote. He has performed well in initial private polls. The front-running Harp campaign has concluded, at least for now, that Elicker presents the main opposition in the race, a development many political observers did not predict at the outset.
What explains Elicker’s rise, beyond a savvy campaign approach?
Kale, perhaps, in part.
Elicker came to New Haven just six years ago; he has served as an alderman for four.
Over that time, many newcomers have moved to New Haven, particularly in places like East Rock, Westville, Wooster Square, and downtown. CitySeed farmers markets have exploded in town, especially popular in neighborhoods like Westville and Wooster Square. The cycling community has become a potent political force. Those constituencies tend to have less attachment to older political organizations in town like the Democratic Town Committee or labor unions or the public schools bureaucracy or generation-old crusades like the 1989 John Daniels mayoral campaign — constituencies largely supporting Toni Harp this year and for the most part over her 26-year career in elected office. Many newcomers have registered as unaffiliated voters rather than align with a party; New Haven now has 18,377 unaffiliated voters as of the most recent count, compared to 2,540 registered GOP voters and 48,140 registered Democrats. An independent with no name recognition or elected political experience and practically no money captured 45 percent of the vote in the last mayoral election. (Elicker is running this year in both the Democratic primary and the general election.)
Elicker has tapped into those newer constituencies and championed their pet issues such as clean government (unlike Harp, he participates in the public-financing Democracy Fund), “safe streets” traffic-calming, healthful food, and overhauling the byzantine, nail-biting public school admissions process.
That dynamic was on display when Elicker ran into Joann Ali (pictured above) and Derek Daigle and their 1 1/2‑year-old daughter Zalayhar (pictured at left) at Sunday’s Edgewood Park farmers market.
Daigle and Ali, who carried the couple’s newly purchased bioregional Pleasant Cow cheddar cheese in a reusable “it’s all about saving green” bag, are classic new New Haveners. They moved to Westville from Guilford — by choice. Daigle was in grad school at Yale; Ali was working as a public-school teacher elsewhere in Connecticut. They wanted the feel of an urban neighborhood; they look forward to buying apple turnovers from the Sono Bakery stand when they walk to the farmers market every Sunday. They also moved to Westville because they wanted their child to attend Edgewood School.
They have since learned that they may or may not be able to land Zalayhar a slot at Edgewood. They’ll have an especially hard time getting her into a pre‑K program in the public schools, or at least one near their home.
“It doesn’t sit well with us that our friends outside the city” can get into New Haven magnet pre‑K programs over city families, Ali said. She noted that many of those families drop out of the schools and enroll in their own towns’ elementary schools once their kids reach kindergarten.
Elicker was familiar with the topic — because he has taken a visible, leading role in pushing the Board of Ed to make both pre‑K and kindergarten admissions at popular schools more transparent, at the least. He explained to Ali how the city has to maintain those suburban slots as a condition of the original state money it received to build those schools. But he also suggested increasing the neighborhood preference in the admissions process.
Daigle spoke of growing up in Maine, where kids attended their neighborhood schools. Putting his kids on a bus to go to a less desired school across town makes no sense, he said. Elicker commiserated: “It’s wastefully financially. It’s wastefully environmentally.”
“We bought in Westville” partly because of Edgewood School, Ali said. “But to be forced to send her to some place we’re not comfortable with after living here 10 years is atrocious.”
Elicker and she agreed that the long-term solution lies in improving all the public schools so people in every neighborhood feel they have a viable option nearby for their children.
Ali said she hasn’t yet made up her mind whom to vote for. Safe to say, Elicker will need the support of voters like her to ascend to the mayor’s office, to match the long-established constituencies in town working hard for Harp.
Elicker was asked about the new voters in his general age bracket who have gravitated to New Haven over the past decade.
“You see the trend around the country,” he said. “People are moving back to cities because they’re looking for a better lifestyle. They recognize that cities like New Haven can offer … walkability, bikability, community. … Farmer’s markets are community-friendly. You can walk down the street and meet your neighbors and buy healthier foods” while helping the environment.
After signing Toni Harp’s petition to have her name placed on the Sept. 10 primary ballot, Elicker asked her and Pat Dillon Sunday to sign his. They obliged.
A half-hour into Elicker’s petitioning at the farmers market, candidate Toni Harp arrived with campaign supporters in tow. She came for an official press event. She announced a set of “nutrition and food policy initiatives.” They include expanded CSAs (community-supported agriculture coops) and linking them to school programs; and helping more healthful local produce get sold at “community foods stores,” a new “permanent indoor/outdoor marketplace,” and “mobile food vending.”
As usual, her planned presentation — unlike the typical presentation of other office-seekers — did not include much focus on her accomplishments as an elected official in supporting nutritional food policies. She has spent a lot of time on those issues as a city alderwoman and then as a state senator for 20 years. She hasn’t spent a lot of time talking about that on the trail, hasn’t spent a lot of time speaking of specific legislation or other actions she has promoted in the state from her powerful perch as co-chair of the legislature’s Appropriations Committee. When she does list issues she has worked on, such as in her Democratic convention endorsement acceptance speech Tuesday night, she speaks in general terms. And she speaks of “we” — she and her Democratic colleagues or other community institutions — rather than “I.” The groups in town she has helped are aware of what she’s done for them. Among newer New Haveners, or among others who don’t follow state politics much, you often hear the question this campaign year: What has Toni Harp done for the past 20 years in Hartford? Her opponents have suggested: not much.
Harp usually runs unopposed for her Senate seat. Now she has three serious opponents in the mayoral race. Her challenge, in order to broaden her base, is to explain her record to undecided voters rather than allow her opponents to define it. In Westville, for instance, Elicker has drawn support from neighbors active in a “village renaissance” that has taken off over the past decade, fueled in part by new, young families. Harp has helped that movement gain money in Hartford for improvements to the neighborhood’s main commercial district.
Harp was asked upon her arrival in Edgewood Park Sunday if she had anything to do with the rise of CitySeed markets in New Haven and the larger focus on good nutrition.
She paused. She thought for a moment. That wasn’t in the script.
In fact, Harp said, she had.
“We helped CitySeed get EBT,” or the ability to process electronic benefit transfers so people on food stamps could buy fruits and veggies at the markets, she said.
We?
“Me. The legislature.”
Anything else?
“When the farmers markets started, I help them get started. Every year I championed the elderly WIC vouchers” seniors can use at the markets, she said.
“Every year the Department of Agriculture thinks they’re more trouble than they’re worth. Almost every year I have to fight to get it back in the budget,” she said.
“This year … I … you know, everything requires support” to get done in politics, she said.
As a city alderwoman, she led the effort to require universal free breakfast in city schools — and others helped make it happen too, she said. At the state legislature, she pushed successfully to require that any school system that wants to follow suit can get money to do so, she added.
New Haven state Rep. Pat Dillon was standing nearby. She started rattling off other Harp achievements. She mentioned a state ban on the sale of sugary soft drinks in public schools that passed into law in 2006, a year after then-Gov. Jodi Rell vetoed an earlier version. “[Senate President] Don Williams and Toni Harp did that,” Dillon said. And Harp regularly “plays defense” behind the scenes to block efforts to cut back, say, money for farmers markets or anti-obesity or other nutritional programs.
Then Dillon made a point about “I” versus “we” in politics and government.
“If you’re too full of yourself” and get used to taking personal credit all the time, Dillon said, “people can ambush what you want to get done. You need to know how to build a team. That’s how Toni gets things done.”
Harp followed by speaking about overweight kids eating “too much processed food. They don’t have access to fresh foods and vegetables. It’s going to shorten their life span.” Then, the press event complete, she moved on to checking out the local tomatoes.