New Slate Targets Labor ​“Machine”

The insurgents of 2011 — the Yale union-backed candidates who toppled the City Hall-backed ​“machine” — became the targets of a new anti-“machine” insurgency Sunday evening.

The new insurgents carry the banner ​“Take Back New Haven.” So far they have six Democratic candidates running for alderman on a platform to return ​“transparency” and the ​“people’s” voice to a ​“machine”-dominated city government marked by ​“backroom deals” and ​“pay-to-play politics.” They held a supper-hour coming-out event in Pitkin Plaza.

Their target: Yale union-backed Democrats who won a supermajority on the Board of Aldermen two years ago and then won control of the Democratic Party Town Committee in 2012. Those Democrats made the same promises two years ago. And they say they’ve kept them.

Let the campaign for New Haven voters’ hearts and minds begin.

“It feels like New Haven Spring!” declared Downtown Alderman Doug Hausladen as he greeted the 70 supporters gathered in Pitkin Plaza Sunday night, referring to the flowering of democracy in the city this campaign season. Hausladen formally began his campaign for a second term at the event. He also introduced five aldermanic running mates, all fellow Democrats, on the ​“Take Back New Haven” slate. He invited other ​“freethinkers” to run for alderman on the slate. He urged supporters to make donations to campaigns (by calling 203 – 654-9648 or visiting this website, which he said should be active by Monday morning). Hausladen said that the group will not act as a political action committee, funding campaigns. Rather, supporters will be directed to specific candidates’ campaigns to make contributions.

Other Democratic candidates on the slate include former Dwight Alderman Greg Smith, running to regain the Ward 2 seat; block watch captain and theater director Peter Webster in Wooster Square’s Ward 8; parent activist Anna Festa (pictured) in East Rock’s Ward 10 (which also includes Cedar Hill and part of Fair Haven); retired city social worker Patricia DePalma in Bella Vista’s Ward 11; attorney Michael Stratton in East Rock’s Ward 19 (which also includes parts of Newhallville).

Before the event started, Hausladen kept his remarks diplomatic in referring to his colleagues on the Board of Aldermen.

“What the unions did in 2011 is exactly the way you win an election. You knock on doors and you listen to people. Whether or not you deliver is how you win reelection,” Hausladen said.

“Myself and the five people I’m running with have a different vision” of a local government with more open debate and differing opinions and an agenda of ​“putting New Haven interests in front of your own.”

Fellow ​“Take Back” Democrat Stratton was blunter when he addressed the crowd.

“I am not anti-union,” Stratton began, noting that as an attorney he defended workers injured in the 2010 Middletown gas plant explosion.

But ​“UNITE HERE” — the parent of Yale Locals 34 and 35 — ​“has abused their leadership” while not doing ​“anything of value for this city. … We’re here to take back New Haven. Not so another group can control New Haven.”

In an interview before his speech, Stratton accused Yale union leaders of ​“abusing their membership” and ​“improperly using members’ dues” in order to ​“use their control of the Board of Aldermen as a bargaining chip against Yale in negotiations.”

A similar theme resonated earlier Sunday from the pulpit of New Trinity Temple Church of God In Christ on Dixwell Avenue, where Democratic mayoral candidate Kermit Carolina addressed the weekly worship service. He closed with a reference to the Yale unions: ​“Watch out for the suburban leadership that’s going be here in two weeks. They’re going to bring busloads into our community to try to take us to the polls to vote for those who represent their interests, not yours.” Bob Proto, president of UNITE HERE Local 35 and of New Haven’s Central Labor Council (which has endorsed one of Carolina’s mayoral opponents, Toni Harp), lives in East Haven.

Who You Calling A ​“Machine”?

Underlying Sunday’s critiques is an ongoing debate about the roles of ​“machines” in politics — and how to define them.

Machine is a loaded term.

On a basic level, it describes vote-pulling organizations that candidates, especially at the citywide level and beyond, need to assemble to win elections. Candidates need to find people who have a similar set of interests or positions on issues, then organize grassroots door-knocking and voter-identification and election day get-out-the-vote operations. No machine, no victory. No ability to carry out an agenda. At one point, mainstream political scientists — inspired by the late Yale professor Robert Dahl’s book Who Governs—saw urban machines as the ultimate democratizing force, enabling waves of immigrants otherwise barred from employment to gain their footholds in the American system by winning government jobs through political support.

Machines good.

The term has taken on a more sinister cast since the mid-20th century, with the rise of urban machines like Chicago’s under Richard Daley and New Haven’s under former Democratic Town Chairman Arthur Barbieri and Mayor Biagio DiLieto. ​“Machine politics” came to describe a way of holding onto power — doling out jobs to ward-level politicians and then contracts to big-dollar donors in the private sector based on continued electoral support rather than good government. Decisions about whom to hire, or whose streets to plow, or how to staff a school, or how to rebuild neighborhoods or tear down buildings, to whom to give government loans or contracts, became based not on the broader public interest, but on the parochial self-interest of the small group of insiders clinging to power. Ethics were flouted daily, and often criminal laws, as well.

Machines bad.

Dahl himself developed doubts late in his career. Lincoln Steffens exposed an earlier incarnation of urban machines as early as the 1904. The definitive modern primer on machine politics (and the most fun to read, over and over again) is this book.

Organizers affiliated with Yale’s Locals 34 and 35 and a think tank called the Center for A New Economy spent years seeking to develop an alternative to the Democratic Party machine. They formed a vote-pulling operation that rivaled, then in 2011 exceeded, the party establishment’s. They developed new candidates in neighborhoods across the city from the ranks of activists in various area unions. They surveyed thousands of neighbors and held conferences to draw up a ​“people’s” agenda. They demanded more democracy and openness in government. In 2011 they ran a slate of aldermanic candidates calling for a return to community policing in New Haven, a new ​“pipeline” to local jobs for local unemployed and underemployed people, and a focus on rec centers for youth. They clobbered the party establishment in those elections, claiming control first of the Board of Aldermen, then the party itself. They became the new power in town. Soon after the 2011 elections, Mayor John DeStefano acknowledged that because he heard the results at the polls, he brought in a new police chief who brought back walking beats and an ambitious new community-policing plan.

Click here, here and here to read a three-part series on the labor-backed majority’s first full year in office as well as the developing critique of its performance. Click here for a story about the opening of New Haven Works, the result of the ​“jobs pipeline” effort.

The question for voters in 2013 is whether the new group in power has listened to popular demands for change, and delivered; or whether it has become self-serving and a closed club like its predecessors.

Laurie Kennington, president of Local 34, argued Sunday that the labor-backed aldermen have injected more democracy into New Haven politics, not less. She called the emergence of Hausladen’s new slate part of that democratic resurgence.

“I think it’s great to have more candidates in the race and to have competitive elections. It’s exciting to see so much action in the city. I think the whole thing is really great for our city in the long term,” Kennington said. ​“Knocking on doors, pulling votes, talking to people is only going to make for better policy, better government in the long run.”

She noted the cornucopia of candidates for different offices this year: Five Democrats still in the running for mayor. Three for city/town clerk. New people seeking to become aldermen. ​“The last few years we’ve seen more participation and more democracy in this city than in the previous 20 years combined. We’re very excited to be a part of that,” Kennington said.

Kennington, who lives in Fair Haven, also contested the depiction of UNITE HERE as ​“suburban-led.” A clear majority of the executive boards of Locals 34 and 35 lives in the city, she said, as do a majority of the locals’ members.

“The board is more democratic than it has been in the last 11 years,” argued Hill Alderwoman and Democratic Town Chairwoman Jackie James. She cited the extensive public hearings by the committee drawing up proposed charter revisions, the moving of annual budget hearings into the neighborhoods, and a general rise in the number of citizens testifying at public hearings.

Aldermanic President Jorge Perez argued that the board’s top priorities — jobs for New Haveners, more youth centers, reducing violence through a return to community policing — mirror those of the voters. He said the board will continue to ​“work with anyone who wants to work with us” on those priorities. Perez chaired the jobs pipeline working group, which included leaders from the Chamber of Commerce, Yale-New Haven Hospital, and other private-sector groups.

Streets For Sale

One issue arose repeatedly in the ​“Take Back New Haven” speeches and conversation in Pitkin Plaza as the touchstone for the complaints against the Yale labor-backed majority: The approval of the sale of portions of High and Wall streets to Yale for $3 million.

“I don’t want the unions running the city. They’re in cahoots with Yale. I’m not happy with that,” said Eliza Lopez (at right in photo, with Ann Diamond.)

“We’re selling New Haven away. The streets. It’s like a conspiracy going on,” said City/Town Clerk Ron Smith (at center in photo), who said he supports the new Take Back New Haven group.

“This is not something I would have ever done,” said Dwight aldermanic candidate Greg Smith (at right in photo alongside former Dixwell Alderman Greg Morehead, who lost his seat to a labor-backed candidate in 2011).

As it turns out, some of the labor-backed aldermen voted against the Yale streets deal; others voted for it. The majority argued that it wasn’t a one-time asset sale, because Yale also agreed to make permanent its annual voluntary payments to the city and its fire-service payments that were part of the original, temporary streets deal struck in 1992.

Read more about the larger debate here and here.

Meanwhile, even before it gains traction, the new anti-machine insurgents already found themselves accused of ​“machine” tactics of their own Sunday night.

That accusation came from Wooster Square’s Andy Ross. Ross is running for alderman in Ward 8—as a Republican. He was told he couldn’t include his candidacy in the Take Back New Haven slate, which is backing Democrat Peter Webster. And which is a purely Democratic slate.

“While this may be a movement, it is a politically charged movement,” Ross wrote in an email message to the Independent following the event, which he attended. ​“While Doug [Hausladen]’s message may be to rid New Haven from the so-called political machine, all he is really doing with his slate of candidates is building a new machine, and no machine is a good machine. Politics needs to be open and not suffer the influence of any organized contingent.”

​“I appreciate anyone willing to espouse our values and principles,” Hausladen responded. ​“But we’re talking about Democrats in New Haven. Peter Webster is our Democrat in Ward 8.”