by | Aug 18, 2023 6:43 pm | Comments (11)
Secretary of State's Office: This new ward map didn't make the deadline.
Less than two weeks after the Board of Alders put new ward boundaries into effect, the state office in charge of elections has determined that the old ward lines must stay in place for the upcoming primary and general elections.
Continue reading ‘State: Upcoming Elections Must Follow Old Ward Lines’
by | Aug 18, 2023 4:20 pm | Comments (6)
Zola, on Court Street with her dog Teddy: "It seems like they made it almost impossible to get onto the ballot."
Seven petitioning alder candidates in six different wards have qualified to make it onto September’s Democratic primary election ballot, while two — Dixwell’s Fred Christmas and Wooster Square’s Andrea Zola — didn’t make the cut.
Continue reading ‘6 Alder Primaries On Tap; Zola, Christmas Petitions Rejected’
by | Aug 18, 2023 4:14 pm | Comments (0)
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Kimbrough's supporters include her grandson Warren Kimbrough, local business owner Jesse Crespo (of ADT Auto-Body), her niece Sonya Scott-Campbell, Hamdenite Sonia Powell, and Newhallville resident Brother Born.
“I want a stop sign right there by that school,” said Lossie Gorham. “And a speed bump.” She pointed at Lincoln-Bassett Community School, which stands across the street from where she’s lived for two decades.
Addie Kimbrough, the alder candidate who had knocked on Gorham’s door, nodded and repeated a refrain she’s often voiced on the campaign trail: “Newhallville is being neglected.”
Continue reading ‘Bassett Street Speeding Bumps Into Alder Race’
by | Aug 18, 2023 2:09 pm | Comments (50)
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Abdussabur: "The extraordinary rejection rate for the candidates of color raises a 'red flag' as to whether uniform standards were applied to all petitioners."
Mayoral challenger Shafiq Abdussabur has filed a lawsuit in state court seeking to get his name on the Sept. 12 Democratic primary ballot — claiming that he did in fact gather enough petition signatures to qualify, contrary to the findings of the city’s registrar of voters.
Continue reading ‘Abdussabur Sues For Primary Ballot Access’
by | Aug 18, 2023 11:46 am | Comments (15)
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Prez Walker-Myers, with Mayor Elicker: "You probably never thought I'd be here doing this ... But today is your day."
Mayor Justin Elicker and Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers traded words of praise — and even a hug — as the two city leaders stood side by side, to their own surprise, and encouraged local labor advocates to help keep the same “team” in office for the next two years.
Continue reading ‘Elicker, Walker-Myers Embrace Unexpected Alliance’
by | Aug 17, 2023 2:20 pm | Comments (21)
Thomas Breen photos
Liam Brennan (right) with Keith and Yolanda Harper talking through ...
... fewer empty lots, more housing, on Starr Street.
Keith Harper can still remember the three-family house that stood a few doors down from his own family’s Starr Street home. It’s now a vacant city-owned lot.
Mayoral challenger Liam Brennan visited Harper’s Newhallville block to make his pitch for why a house should be standing there again today — and what rules need to be changed to make that denser land-use vision a reality.
by | Aug 16, 2023 5:19 pm | Comments (37)
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Democratic Registrar of Voters Shannel Evans (right) drops off certified petitions with Deputy City/Town Clerk May Gardner.
Brennan, with campaign staffers Abdul Osmanu and Michael Morris, after clinching primary ballot access.
Liam Brennan became the only mayoral challenger to make his way onto September’s Democratic primary ballot Wednesday — after the registrar of voters office certified his campaign’s petition, and rejected dozens of pages of signatures submitted by fellow mayoral hopefuls Shafiq Abdussabur and Tom Goldenberg.
Continue reading ‘Brennan Makes Ballot; Abdussabur, Goldenberg Come Up Short’
by | Aug 15, 2023 2:09 pm | Comments (5)
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DeLauro (center) endorsing Elicker in 2021.
New Haven’s longtime congresswoman has thrown her support behind Mayor Justin Elicker in his bid for a third two-year term in local office, citing city government’s budget surpluses and investments in “our most vulnerable communities” during his tenure as reasons for her endorsement.
by | Aug 11, 2023 12:52 pm | Comments (13)
George Crawford Manor was previously in Ward 7 (left) and is now in Ward 3 (right); September polling place unclear.
When alders sat down for their August full board meeting on Monday night, Downtown Alder Eli Sabin represented the residents of the Dwight public housing complex George Crawford Manor.
By the time the alders rose from their seats at the meeting’s close less than an hour later, those hundred-plus George Crawford Manor tenants had a new representative: Hill Alder Ron Hurt.
That sudden change has left the secretary of the state’s office stumped so far as to whether or not new ward maps can legally apply when voters cast their ballots in September’s primary.
Continue reading ‘Ward Maps Changed; Voters Shuffled; Election Impact Unclear’
by | Aug 9, 2023 5:46 pm | Comments (15)
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Mayoral challenger petition drop off day: Shafiq Abdussabur and campaign manager Gage Frank ...
Thomas Breen Photo
... Liam Brennan (center) and campaign staffer Abdul Osmanu ...
... and Tom Goldenberg and campaign staffer Jayuan Carter, all paying their respective visits to Democratic Registrar of Voters Shannel Evans.
All three mayoral challengers seeking to unseat incumbent Justin Elicker in September’s Democratic primary got their petition paperwork in before Wednesday’s 4 p.m. deadline — leaving it up to the registrar’s office to comb through hundreds of pages containing thousands of signatures to determine which candidates’ names will make it onto the ballot.
Continue reading ‘Mayoral Challengers Submit Petitions On Time’
by | Aug 9, 2023 12:53 pm | Comments (18)
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Mayor Elicker speaking to a voter through a Ring camera intercom in the Hill.
Marisol Pagan and Jose Lugo stood on the sidewalk beside Trowbridge Square’s wrought iron fence as they urged Mayor Justin Elicker to do something about the marked increase in homeless people staying, and publicly urinating, in the Hill public park.
On the other side of that fence, Greg Abraham took a break from sipping on a can of paper bag-held beer to pace out for the mayor just how small his last apartment was — and to explain how he couldn’t afford the room’s rising rent, and is now spending his nights at a Grand Avenue shelter.
Continue reading ‘Trowbridge Campaign Talk: Homelessness, & Homelessness’
by | Aug 9, 2023 11:28 am | Comments (27)
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Mayor Elicker knocking doors, and shaking hands, with Hill Alders Kampton Singh, Ron Hurt, and Carmen Rodriguez.
Two-year terms result in too many elections — which push municipal leaders too frequently from governance to campaigning, and create “fatigue” among voters.
So argued Mayor Justin Elicker as he articulated his support for a newly finalized ballot question that, if approved in November, would bump up mayor and alder terms in office from two to four years each.
Continue reading ‘Elicker: Mayor & Alders Should Serve 4-Year Terms’
by | Aug 7, 2023 8:28 am | Comments (16)
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Valerie Morrison, pasta salad ingredients in tow, signs Brennan's mayoral petition.
The high costs of housing — as close as downtown and as far as Austin, Tex. — were at the top of mind for Stop & Shoppers, as mayoral challenger and pro-development-zoning-reformer Liam Brennan brought his primary ballot petition to the Whalley Avenue grocery store.
by | Aug 3, 2023 3:06 pm | Comments (38)
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Anthony Geritano, Jr. and Hari Venu: "I wish you and I had met a few years ago."
Dixwell alder-hopeful Anthony Geritano, Jr. didn’t get Hari Venu to sign his petition to appear on the Democratic primary ballot this September.
But the recent Yale graduate with papers in hand did get a crash course from the recent Yale PhD who answered the door on just how persistent the town-gown divide remains — and got the chance to make his own pitch on what to do about it.
Continue reading ‘Challenger Finds Yale Quandary At Dixwell Doors’
by | Aug 2, 2023 2:01 pm | Comments (10)
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Shafiq Abdussabur dropping off Democratic primary petition signatures at the registrar's office Wednesday.
Fair Haven Democrats will get to pick between two different candidates for Ward 15 alder this September, now that incumbent Ernie Santiago and challenger Frankie Redente have both successfully petitioned their ways onto the primary ballot.
And two of the three Democratic mayoral hopefuls seeking to unseat party-endorsed incumbent Mayor Justin Elicker have begun submitting signatures to the Registrar of Voters office in their own respective bids to give primary voters a choice.
by | Jul 28, 2023 3:28 pm | Comments (10)
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Liam Brennan and Juancarlos Soto in the Pride Center.
A ballot petition in hand, Liam Brennan waited for the buzzer outside 84 Orange St., walked through the lobby of an architecture firm, and descended the elevator to the basement home of the New Haven Pride Center.
He emerged three hours later one signature closer to his goal of getting onto September’s Democratic mayoral primary ballot — and a clearer picture of the community center’s efforts to move above ground at a time marked by rampant transphobic legislation across the country.
Continue reading ‘Petitioning Brennan Hears Pride Center Pitch’
by | Jul 26, 2023 4:17 pm | Comments (23)
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Harp (right) signs Abdussabur's mayoral primary petition.
Former Mayor Toni Harp was the first to sign mayoral hopeful Shafiq Abdussabur’s petition to get on the Democratic primary ballot, the day after the city’s Democratic Party officially endorsed the now-incumbent who ended her tenure in the city’s top elected office nearly four years ago.
Continue reading ‘Harp Endorses Abdussabur, Kicks Off Petition’
by | Jul 26, 2023 12:49 pm | Comments (34)
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Tom Goldenberg, with Dave Agosta: "I believe that there is enough that holds together and that we share in common than what separates us."
Democratic mayoral challenger Tom Goldenberg will be listed on the Republican Party line on November’s general election ballot, now that he has accepted the local GOP’s endorsement for the city’s top elected office.
by | Jul 26, 2023 12:06 pm | Comments (5)
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Andrea Downer with fellow Ward 27 co-chair Judy Sparer on Tuesday night.
Andrea Downer won the local Democratic Party’s endorsement in her challenger bid to serve on the city’s Board of Education, as two-term incumbent Darnell Goldson opted not to be nominated at the convention — and now must petition his way onto the primary ballot.
by | Jul 26, 2023 11:21 am | Comments (7)
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Incumbent Fair Haven Alder Ernie Santiago at Tuesday's convention: "I have work to do communicating with the leaders of my community."
Thomas Breen photo
Challenger Frankie Redente, Jr. picking up Democratic primary ballot petition from 200 Orange St. on Wednesday.
In one competitive Fair Haven alder race, the local Democratic Party did not endorse any candidate — meaning that both incumbent Ernie Santiago and challenger Frank Redente Jr. will have to gather signatures to make it onto the primary ballot.
by , and | Jul 25, 2023 7:21 pm | Comments (14)
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Mayor Elicker (right) before winning 47 of 54 votes cast at Tuesday's convention.
Mayor Justin Elicker won the local Democratic Party’s official support in a landslide on Tuesday evening in his bid for another term in the city’s top elected office — while his three intraparty challengers geared up to petition their way onto September’s Democratic primary ballot.
by | Jul 25, 2023 3:45 pm | Comments (12)
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Hana and Eva Feldman, both ready for college.
Hana Feldman plans to return to school once her firstborn is old enough for daycare — and hopes that two-week-old Eva will have an easier time following in her footsteps with state money newly set aside for college tuition.
by | Jul 25, 2023 3:02 pm | Comments (12)
Thomas Breen file photo
Closed school, future black box theater, on Valley St?
Maya McFadden photo
Smith dreams of black box theatre and second community center for Ward 30.
If it was up to West Rock/West Hills Alder Honda Smith, her ward would put two now-vacant former public school buildings — including the recently shuttered ex-Clarence Rogers School on Wilmot Road — back to use by creating a black box theater for family-friendly programming, a rental space, a second community center, and an all-boys charter school.
Continue reading ‘What To Do With 2 Closed School Buildings?’
by | Jul 25, 2023 10:16 am | Comments (9)
Laura Glesby file photo
Mayor Justin Elicker.
One of Yale’s politically powerful labor unions has thrown its support behind Mayor Justin Elicker in his bid for another term in office, praising his administration for its support for tenants unions, investment in affordable housing, and successful securing of more money for the city from Yale and the state.
Continue reading ‘Local 34 Endorses Elicker, Alder Incumbents’
by | Jul 24, 2023 6:56 pm | Comments (74)
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Goldenberg: "New Haven should not be an experiment for the state."
The Elicker administration is in the early stages of looking into medically supervised injection and drug consumption sites as a local strategy for combating opioid overdoses — while a mayoral challenger is pushing back against those tentative plans as a tactic for bashing the incumbent.