Challengers Tap Outrage; DeStefano Stays Cool

Jeffrey Kerekes came to an NAACP-sponsored mayoral debate with a line geared to the black community: ​“If we had 21 murders in Westville,” he declared, ​“there’d be not only the National Guard, but the Marines here.”

Kerekes, one of three Democrats challenging Mayor John DeStefano in a Sept. 13 primary, made the declaration Wednesday night at the second and final scheduled debate of the campaign, at Hillhouse High School .

His remark — - followed by a call to return to more walking patrols as in the early days of community policing — elicited cheers and an ​“amen” from amid the hundreds of people attending the lively two-hour debate.

Unlike in another mayoral debate last week, Kerekes’ persistent attacks on DeStefano’s stewardship of the city did not elicit winces or angry responses from DeStefano himself. Most of the night DeStefano ignored criticisms from his opponents and addressed the audience up close, TV style, walking to the edge of the stage of the Hillhouse auditorium.

But DeStefano did respond to Kerekes’ Westville comment. He used it as a chance to seek to portray Kerekes — and thus the notion of expressing outrage toward or criticism of his administration — as divisive.

“It’s important as a leader not to call out one section of the city against another,” DeStefano said. ​“This isn’t a Westville problem or a Newhallville problem. It’s a city problem.”

The exchange mirrored the two strategies on display in the debate, and in the mayoral campaign, the most heated such contest in a decade. DeStefano sought to run as a proud incumbent with new ideas, as the most knowledgeable and experienced person to tackle tough challenges in tough times, emphasizing positive steps he’s taking to build the tax base and rebuild the public schools. Meanwhile his three challengers — the most crowded field he’s ever faced — sought to tap into the frustration much of New Haven has felt about a record-pace-setting murder rate and overall violent crime, about the city’s budget problems, about long-underperforming public schools and about anti-democratic single-party government. All of which is taking place amid a moment of general anti-incumbent sentiment nationwide.

The NAACP’s debate featured DeStefano, Kerekes, Anthony Dawson, and Clifton Graves — and questions about education, jobs, health care, and public safety.

The Independent live-blogged the debate, offering play-play accounts of the questions and answers and some instant analysis. Scroll down to read that detailed account. (Click here to read about (and watch) the previous debate.)

On substance, the debate mirrored last week’s encounter. DeStefano’s challengers sought to pin the city’s high murder rate and violence in poor neighborhoods — as well as economic pressures and school shortcomings — to DeStefano’s 18 years in office. DeStefano sought to highlight the successes of his administration — job growth, increased tax base, an ambitious new school reform drive — while acknowledging the pain people are feeling in town.

Stylistically, a week made a big difference. Kerekes largely avoided reading directly from notes, for instance. Graves showed the most difference: Last week he waited until the closing remarks portion of the debate to offer a forceful, dramatic pitch. This time he came out swinging from the start with crafted, energetic responses, a combination of measured outrage at DeStefano’s performance and declarations that he can unite the city. DeStefano, for his part, took apparent advice to avoid responding to opponents’ attacks with anger or visible frustration: he stuck to his script, and addressed the audience most directly, while largely ignoring his opponents. One of the exceptions: He defended the city’s position in the ultimately unsuccessful Ricci firefighter case, apparently appealing to his hosts — the NAACP — whose interpretation of civil-rights law he shared in that episode.

Dawson produced the night’s biggest surprise: He called for the removal of Reggie Mayo as school superintendent. That’s unusual because a black organization was hosting the debate, Dawson himself is African-American, and Mayo is the city’s most visible and influential African-American public figure. DeStefano called New Haven ​“blessed” to have Mayo as schools chief.

As in last week’s debate, Kerekes emerged as the mayor’s most forceful critic, hammering him throughout the evening on his record. This time he did inject some remarks to introduce himself to the public, stressing his working-class roots and his experience as a social worker.

All the challengers came out for a ​“hybrid” Board of Education — half appointed by the mayor, half elected. DeStefano defended the current mayorally appointed board.

Live Blog

6:39 p.m. The candidates are here! Taking their positions on the stage. I’m looking to see Mayor DeStefano’s facial reaction once he notices that Gary Highsmith (a longtime vocal critic) is seated at the questioners’ panel.

6:43 Hillhouse Principal Kermit Carolina welcomes the crowd. Calls Hillhouse New Haven’s ​“best-kept secret.” The city hasn’t been emphasizing Hillhouse’s experiments when promoting the current school reform drive, but some of the most interesting ideas are being tested here.

6:52 Moderator Castillo explains the format: The NAACP’s questions will focus on health, urban affairs, education, and economics. Hundreds of people have turned out to watch the debate. Unlike at the Independent’s debate — which due to an unfortunate miscommunication lacked amplification — everyone can hear easily here. The microphones are working.

School Change & The Achievement Gap

6:55 Oh wait. I spoke too soon. Graves’ mic isn’t picking up. He’s answering the first question from Highsmith, about whether the candidates support school programs specifically targeting African-American students, who are generally performing poorly (as a group) on standardized tests. Graves talks about the ​“Obama Scholar” program he started in public schools for middle-school males of color. He also backed the idea of single-sex schools; that idea has emerged in recent years as one approach to the specific challenges facing African-American boys in the schools.

6:57 They’re fixing Graves’ mic.

6:58 Kerekes’ mic is working. He says only 40 percent of Cross ninth-graders ended up graduating this past year. ​“The kids that are dying today … grew up under this mayor. They were completely under control of this mayor.” He’s seeking to peg New Haven’s problems to DeStefano’s tenure. He’s also mentioning Harlem charter-school celeb Geoffrey Canada as one example of a star principal. Then he names Fair Haven School’s Kim Johnsky. He doesn’t mention that she was promoted under DeStefano’s tenure. ​“It’s my way or the highway” is how the city runs, Kerekes says. It’s going to be interesting to see if unlike in the last debate Kerekes and the other challengers offer positive reasons to vote for them in addition to making the case for booting the incumbent. After criticism for reading off note cards in the last debate, Kerekes does have a printed out sheet, but he’s speaking mostly looking out at the audience.

7:01 Dawson is speaking of how African-American males have become an ​“endangered species.” He’s reprising a phrase he used as an alderman. Dawson too is making the point about the incumbent’s ​“hand prints” being all over failures in town. And he criticizes ​“high salaries” for administrators. (He makes a point of saying Carolina does ​“earn” his salary.)

7:03 DeStefano’s turn: ​“These are really hard times for families not just in New Haven,” but nationally. ​“No one from Washington. No one from the state capital in Hartford is going to solve our problems.” We have to. Ever since the mayor came off as too optimistic about New Haven’s current condition in his campaign kick-off this spring, he has since sought to find a balance between trumpeting successes (construction continuing despite the recession, school reform, grand list growth) with the real pain people are feeling over crime and unemployment. He picks up a theme Castillo mentioned in his introductory remarks: the role of immigrants. He turns to school reform: ​“Tenure is no longer a protection for teachers who can’t teach.” He notes that later this month the schools will release info on how many teachers had to leave the system because of low rankings made possible under school reform. To Highsmith’s question, he answers: Yes, if principals want to. We have to give principals latitude to experiment.

What Will You Do About Crime?

7:07 Kerekes gets cheers and an ​“amen” when he says this: ​“If we had 21 murders in Westville, there’d be not only the National Guard, but the Marines here.” ​“The mayor’s been through six police chiefs since he’s been mayor. We now have an absentee police chief.” He compares that to an ​“absentee landlord.” He calls for more walking beats in neighborhoods; that’s been a popular cry in crime-weary neighborhoods, a call for a return to more foot patrols like in the early, successful days of community policing. DeStefano has held back from embracing the call for more walking patrols, at one point saying new ways of policing and changing times have called for new tactics. Kerekes is coming out with guns blazing tonight.

7:10 Dawson mentions that he has worked the last 28 years on Yale-New Haven Hospital’s constabulary force. He argues that morale on the police force is low because the city hires chiefs from out of town rather than promoting from within. ​“I want a chief who lives next door to me permanently” rather than traveling back home to Chicago. ​“After that last debate we went out and solved some murder cases,” Dawson noted. (Police have announced arrests in two separate homicide cases in the past two days.)

7:14 DeStefano: No ​“magic wands” for solving crime. He resists getting flustered by the attacks by his opponents. (He’s so far succeeding more on that score than at the last debate.) he discusses the facts that the state drops off 125 convicts in New Haven every week upon their release from jail. He notes that they’re not likely to find jobs. Instead they put people in harm’s way again. He strikes an optimistic tone: the new governor (i.e. the first Democrat in 20 years) has a team looking at how to tackle the problem and help the cities. Second point: Narcotics is at the root of a lot of the violence. He’s loosest so far, reflecting his longer experience in political campaigns. He approaches the audience closer from the stage. Now he gives his response to Kerekes’ attack without mentioning Kerekes: ​“It’s important as a leader not to call out one section of the city against another. This isn’t a Westville problem or a Newhallville problem. It’s a city problem.” Underlying this response: DeStefano is seeking to portray his opponents, especially Kerekes, as negative and divisive.

7:18 Graves calls Kerekes ​“my new best friend Jeffrey” for ​“adopting my proposal” for a targeted anti-gang initiative. He repeats a story he’s told often on the campaign trail: How a student in one of his classes said he wants to grow up to be an inventor — but first he wants to ​“make it to 18.” Then he responds to DeStefano’s call for addressing the ​“re-entry” problem: ​“First we have to address the entry problem”: job-training, youth programs. He charges that ​“arrogance and ego got in the way” of a the city accepting a Casey Family Services program to deal with re-entry; he alleges that the city’s re-entry program is not succeeding. Graves is animated; he’s raising his voice and speaking in folksy terms. In the last debate he didn’t do that until he basically woke up with a sermon-like closing statement; he got a lot of feedback since then that he needs to speak that passionately and succinctly at all times. He’s clearly seeking to heed that advice tonight. ​“We need to put a foot under [the] behind” of ​“irresponsible parents,” he says, reprising a proposal he made recently: to fine parents whose kids get arrested and who won’t make use of supportive services.

How To Promote Minority Business & Hiring?

7:23 Dawson criticizes the fire department for not hiring enough African-Americans. Claims the last class had only one African-American and one New Havener.

7:25 DeStefano: The city limits contracts under $150,000 to New Haven-registered small businesses. Bigger construction contacts have a 10 percent set-aside for minority-owned companies with a 25 percent goal. Says the last fire class of 27 firefighters in fact had 10 non-white hires and 10 New Haven residents.

7:29 Graves says we need better contract compliance on minority-hiring rules on construction contracts. Commission on Equal Opportunities needs more staff, he says. Question: Where will money come from? All candidates are calling for further budget cuts, though Graves has emphasized cuts for top earners’ salaries.

7:31 Kerekes responds to DeStefano claiming creation of millions of dollars of business for ​“local” businesses. ​“Are we talking about the Fusco Corporation making hundreds of millions of dollars, or people here? He notes that when officials concluded that the city’s economic development department wasn’t doing well with job retention or attraction, the city helped create a new organization (the quasi-public Economic Development Corporation). He argues that instead, the city staffers should have been fired and better ones hired. At the time of the EDC’s creation, officials made a different argument: The city doesn’t have enough money to hire enough staff for its department; it was able to raise outside money (from Yale, for instance) to create the EDC to help carry out work the city lacked the bodies to carry out. Kerekes brings up the mayor’s recent push poll that claimed he wants to close firehouses; he notes that DeStefano’s administration came under fire for putting an East Rock fire engine out of service as a cost-cutting measure.

Infant Mortality

7:34 NAACP’s Rawlings, a longtime Yale-New Haven official, notes that the infant mortality rate is 20 percent higher for urban African-Americans than for the state at large. (I think that’s compared to the state at large. Not positive. Sorry.) He asks what the city can do about it. (New Haven cut down infant mortality rates dramatically in the late 1980s and early 1990s with a community campaign with the Community Foundation and city government in the lead. The rate has crept back up in recent years, and state funding has languished.)

7:36 One big challenge is connecting people to services, especially moms, DeStefano says. He says city programs are doing that. Meanwhile, he speaks of a program in the high schools that involve talking to boys and girls alike about pregnancy and information about pregnancy prevention resources.

7:38 Graves starts with the code phrase of the day: ​“health disparities.” That means blacks and Latinos get more diabetes, prostate cancer than other groups; have higher infant mortality rates; have less access to care and preventive efforts. ​“These are third-world country figures, and we should be ashamed and embarrassed by it … These are our babies that are dying, in the same manner that they are being shot in the street.” His voice rises as he says that; someone has definitely been coaching Graves on his delivery since last week’s debate. Now he’s repeating DeStefano’s theme: ​“This is not a Newhallville or Dixwell problem”; it’s a citywide problem we should all tackle together.

7:41 Kerekes speaks of working as a social worker, sitting in the hospital who lost her baby. Earlier he emphasized his parents’ working-class backgrounds and the fact that he started delivering newspapers at 9 years old; he’s both trying to introduce himself amid the critiques of City Hall and seeking to emphasize blue-collar roots rather than the fact that he grew up in Trumbull, a vulnerability he faces in this race, more so in the Democratic primary than in the general election. He’s not reading from his notes at all at this point.

7:43 Dawson would form a task force. ​“The whole thing is to be transparent” and make ​“people feel like part of the process.” He’s not addressing infant mortality.

Board Of Ed

7:44 Highsmith asks: Would you support an elected school board, or half-elected, half-appointed ​“hybrid” board? The unspoken point: DeStefano controls the school board too much. The board votes on contracts without reading them; it gets budgets on a Friday afternoon and approves them with limited discussion the following Monday. New Haven has the state’s only school board that’s fully appointed by the mayor.

7:45 Graves comes out in favor of either the hybrid or the elected.

7:46 Kerekes supports a hybrid board, but with more of a tilt toward an appointed board. He says we have to ​“think beyond” DeStefano, not make this about whether you like how he runs the city, but rather what structurally works best. He worries about a fully elected board being held ​“hostage to politics”; mayors need the ability to advance a vision, he says. On the other hand, there needs to be some public input, too, which is why he supports a mix of appointments and popular election.

7;49 Dawson supports a hybrid board if voters approve it during a referendum as part of charter revision. Then he does something unusual for a black candidate: He calls for ending Reggie Mayo’s tenure as schools chief. (Mayo is the leading African-American public figure in town.)

7:50 DeStefano defends his choices; he notes that he has appointed educators with different points of views to the board. He mentions that he appointed a former outspoken critic of the New Haven’s schools, Alex Johnston, to the board. (You don’t hear those different points expressed much at meetings.) ​“Fundamentally this is about kids’ academic achievements. … The schools are not to be organized for the adults.” He notes that Bridgeport’s elected school board last month voted to have the state take it over, following in the footsteps of Hartford’s elected board. ​“Ultimately it’s not the school board. It’s the superintendent of schools.” DeStefano says we are ​“blessed” to have Mayo as superintendent and mentions his two boys went through the public schools.

Coping With Recession

7:55 New Haven has become ​“unaffordable for people to live here,” Kerekes says. Says the city itself has initiated 429 foreclosure procedures. Talks about the lack of ​“professionalism” at the tax collector’s office. ​“This has become a mean city under this mayor. He has hired mean people, whether it’s the tax assessor or his friend the marshal.” That gets applause. ​“We’re on the brink of bankruptcy.”

7:57 Dawson calls for an urban homesteading program. Those were popular in the 1970s; local governments sold abandoned homes to people for $1; people would fix them up. Dawson was the youngest New Havener ever to buy one of those dollar houses; he was 16. He helped revitalize Ann Street in the Hill, where he still lives. He mentions he agrees with ​“Mr. Kah-ROCK-us” in his criticisms of the mayor.

7:59 A reminder that New Haven is different from Tea Party red-state America: DeStefano talks about how well federal economic stimulus programs helped us in the recession. He calls for a return to an emphasis on stimulus rather than debt reduction in D.C. He says foreclosures have slowed down. He mentions his program that freezes taxes for lower-income seniors. He says he had to make ​“necessary” ​“belt-tightening” decisions for local government. ​“Even in those hard times, we do need to make investments,” he continues — mentioning school reform. He comes out for six assistant principals at Hillhouse. ​“They’re needed here.” (Critics have zeroes in on the large number of six-figure assistant principals in the system.) DeStefano continues to walk near the edge of the edge of the stage to address the audience more closely. He’s staying composed tonight; Kerekes hasn’t flustered him yet, unlike in last week’s debate.

8:02 Graves repeats his call for a ​“blue-ribbon” task force to study the city’s financial situation to discover where ​“bodies are buried.” John Daniels did that when he became mayor. (The task force’s report ended up sitting on a shelf.) Repeats his call for 10 percent pay cut for all city managers earning over $100,000 ​“including the mayor.” He notes that 133 administrators earn over $100,000 a year. ​“Most of them deserve that” — but should still get the cut in a spirit of ​“shared sacrifice” that avoids layoffs, he says.

“Unbundle Large Contracts Into Small Chunks”?

8:06 Dawson said city did that when he was an alderman. He brings up Fusco again as an example of a big corporation that gets lots of city business, as a contrast to small businesses. ​“I would try to keep it small but also have the larger corporations help them out.”

8:07 ​“Supply contracts” are part of the city’s set-aside program to give local minority-owned businesses a10 to 25 percent of big government contracts — the idea being to ​“partner” smaller businesses with larger established businesses ready to handle the biggest contracts, DeStefano says.

8:08 Graves talks of ​“moral leadership” and ​“visionary leadership” to ​“bring people around the table” — meaning telling larger businesses that they must ​“reach out” to minority- and female-owned small businesses in dividing up contracts. He calls the $1.5 billion citywide school rebuilding program a ​“lost opportunity” for getting business for minority- and women-owned contracts and apprenticeship opportunities for kids on street corners. He’s getting fired up about, and people are applauding, as he promises, finger darting into the air, that will ​“never! happen again if he’s elected.

8:11 ​“We need to make sure the jobs are for people who live here,” Kerekes says. He too calls the school rebuilding program a missed chance to turn local young people into ​“masons, carpenters, sheetrockers, plumbers.”

Zoning & Health Care

Rawlings asks how mayors can use zoning to keep the minority community healthier.

8:14 DeStefano speaks of his administration’s fight to keep problem bars out of business. On obesity (which Rawlings mentioned), DeStefano says the public schools are the biggest provider of meals for kids — and mentions ​“Chef Tim”‘s nationally acclaimed healthful food programs. he notes the city’s solar and fuel cell additions to keep the air cleaner. (Rawlings mentioned asthma.)

8:18 Graves talks about our ​“poor” dietary, eating, and purchasing habits. He agrees that government should take action against ​“environmental racism,” but also emphasizes the need for people to take more responsibility for personal decisions that affect their health.

8:20 Kerekes: Our asthma rates are two to three times the state average. African-American obesity rate over 75 percent. 50 percent in Latino community. He argues that one contributing factor is financial stress, repeating that it’s unaffordable for many people to live in New Haven. ​“The mayor is sending flyers to everybody’s home every 48 hours [saying] he’s a mayor ​‘who listens.’ He shouldn’t need to send [the flyers] every 48 hours” to do that. Then he talks about the failures of Community Action Agency; he says patronage and politics killed it.

8:22 Castillo the the rescue! Dawson’s mic temporarily malfunctions; Castillo brings over his mic. They’re doing a great job running this debate; it’s all orderly, easy to follow, civil; the questions hit the main themes of concern to people in town; the sound system is working, and in moments when it doesn’t, the problem is fixed fast. And they’re about to move a ​“lightning round” with questions submitted by the audience — something else we should have done when we organized last week’s debate. Finally, the canddiates are not sitting behind a table. They are standing up to respond. It’s helping the candidates project well and energetically. Lessons learned tonight.

8:23 Dawson agrees zoning is important: He notes that a package store sits across the street from John C. Daniels school. He suggests that firefighters trained as paramedics to come into schools to talk about health.

Lightning Round

8:33 Dawson criticizes DeStefano for the $5 million New Haven had to pay to settle the firefighters reverse-discrimination hiring case. (DeStefano was following a position held by the NAACP in interpreting Title VII of the federal civil rights act when it made the decisions that led to that suit; Dawson has been an active member of the NAACP and advocate of its positions.) Dawson also criticizes DeStefano for hiring a union leader with no supervisory experience, Pat Egan, to become an assistant fire chief.

8:35 DeStefano is noting that the city was following ​“established law” in the firefighter case. The Supreme Court case New Haven lost actually involved a conservative majority rewriting the interpretation of the law. DeStefano says New Haven should be ​“proud” that it fought a noble fight.

8:38 Juan Castillo asks the candidates ​“yes or no” — would you commit not to raise taxes? DeStefano says, ​“Don’t know.” The others all say ​“no.” I believe, based on previous statements, that they mean ​“yes.” Although it’s possible they just changed their positions?

8:42 Kerekes reverts to reading from a printed statement, head down, for final statement.

8:47 Graves ends with a flourish. ​“Our children are perishing New Haven!” he yells to the crowd. ​“We need a new direction!”