Newcomers Spark 7 Tuesday Primaries

A Kenyan refugee, a theater critic, and a rapper-turned-street outreach worker hit the Dwight neighborhood seeking votes for the first time as an influx of new blood continues to reinvigorate the Democratic Party.

The first two candidates — Jane Kinity, whose family escaped a death threat in Kenya some 12 years ago, and Christopher Arnott, a longtime New Haven arts writer (pictured, at right and left, in top photo) — are running as team in a primary election Tuesday. They’re up against another first-time candidate, Anita Morales, who has been building on lessons from the streets to reach young people in trouble.

The three newcomers are taking part in one of seven primaries Tuesday for the position of Democratic ward co-chair. Sixty co-chairs, two from each aldermanic ward, comprise the Democratic Town Committee (DTC), the official party structure that makes endorsements and works on campaigns. (Most wards don’t have contests for the seats.) Scroll to the bottom to see who’s running and where to vote in the seven neighborhoods with contested seats. Polls open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.; registered Democrats in the wards with races are eligible to vote.

The unorthodox candidacies in Dwight come as a jolt of democracy that hit the city in the fall carries over to a new set of political contests. After a labor-backed coalition upset 14 City Hall-backed candidates in spirited Democratic Party aldermanic primaries last year, then went on to achieve a majority on the Board of Aldermen, more new faces got involved in the race to be part of the official party structure.

The 60 members of the DTC are elected every two years. They help shape the political landscape by giving endorsements for aldermanic and mayoral candidates. They can develop active organizations of neighbors to work on local and statewide campaigns and address other neighborhood issues, if they choose.

New Haven’s DTC currently meets only a few times per year to endorse candidates. In one-party New Haven, winning Democratic primaries or endorsements is often tantamount to winning office. The city last elected a Republican mayor in 1951. All 30 members of the Board of Aldermen are Democrats; no Republicans ran even token campaigns against any of them this past fall. As of Monday, the city had 45,555 registered Democrats, 2,456 Republicans, 15,946 unaffiliated voters and 341 ​“other” voters.

New DTC members will decide whether the party should become independent of Mayor John DeStefano on public policy matters and at the polls. They will choose a new party chair, as well.

In some wards, opposing sides agreed to work together in recent months rather than have contested elections. In some cases incumbents stepped down to make way for newcomers. Most of Tuesday’s competitive races popped up in wards where a union-backed candidate toppled a City Hall-backed contender for alderman and has now endorsed co-chairs to support his or her efforts from within the party.

Time To ​“Go Outside”

Arnott and Kinity are a perfect example of that. Neither has run for office before. They got involved in politics through the campaign of Frank Douglass, Jr., a Yale union leader who became alderman in January.

Kinity, who’s 55, lives with her husband and three of her seven kids on Elm Street. She and her family moved to New Haven 12 years ago as new U.S. citizens after fleeing a death threat in Kenya; click here to read a 2006 story about their struggles.

Kinity said she spent most of the first 12 years of her time in the U.S. afraid to go outside. In her first two years in New Haven, one of her sons was sitting on the porch when a man came by to shoot someone. He told her son to go inside.

“In five minutes, they shooting in the street,” she recalled.

“Since that day, I never go out onto my porch to sit outside.”

Last year, she said, she had a realization: ​“Now it’s 12 years I never go outside. … How long am I going to be inside?”

When Douglass’ campaign knocked on her door last year during the campaign, she got a chance to air her concerns about the neighborhood — and agreed to get involved.

“I don’t want to go inside anymore,” she told Douglass. ​“I want to go outside with you.”

Kinity said she took a recent trip to a Kenyan refugee camp, by herself, bringing food to feed 500. When she came back, she decided, ​“now I want to help my neighbors here.”

She has begun to do that, in part by referring teens she meets in the neighborhood to a jobs training program at the Hospital of St. Raphael, where she works as a CNA. Some have them have already landed jobs in medical transport, she said.

For the past five weeks, she has teamed up with Arnott to knock on doors for the campaign. In addition to his endorsement, Douglass (pictured) has been introducing them at the doors.

Arnott, who’s 51, has lived in New Haven for 25 years. He’s best known for his many years as a theater critic for the New Haven Advocate. He is now freelancing for The Daily Nutmeg cultural website and his own blog, New Haven Theater Jerk. Others may remember his effort to keep alive BookWorld, a 24-hour bookstore on Chapel Street; his six months as a press aide to former Mayor John Daniels; or his stint in City Hall’s Office of Cultural Affairs under former Mayor Biagio DiLieto.

A self-described Dwight Street ​“house dad,” he could be spotted for years pushing his daughters around town in a stroller. His daughters, now 7 and 9, go to Benjamin Jepson School. His wife, Kathleen Rooney, teaches math at Hill Regional Career High School.

Arnott said he never considered running for office himself until Douglass approached him about it. He said leaving the Advocate freed him up to take a more participatory role in politics. Arnott said in his entrance to local politics, ​“there’s no aspirations to do anything City Hall-like,” but rather ​“neighborhood service.”

The new co-chairs will select 25 people each to form a ward committee. Those committees seldom meet, but Arnott said he sees potential: ​“With 50 people in a room, you can accomplish a lot.”

“We can be ground support for the jobs pipeline” that Douglass and others are working on, for instance, he said.

He hit the streets Friday in a black felt hat with a pin showing the letter D.

The D stands for a superhero named Deadman, he said, ​“but for these circumstances” it stands for ​“Democrat, Douglass and Dwight.”

“Raw Realities”

Morales has been working on the ​“outside” for years, with a powerful story to tell. She grew up raised by her grandparents in the Dwight neighborhood. From the age of 12, she started performing spoken word and poetry. She performed for 18 years, singing and rapping in Spanish under the stage name Nita Barnes.

An artist page from her days as a performer tells of ​“growing up young, fast, and alone in the raw realities of the urban streets.” She had her first child at the age of 17, then served four years in federal prison on drug charges.

After her release in August of 2004, Morales (pictured) turned her energy towards helping others avoid the same path. For the past three years, she’s been working for the New Haven Family Alliance’s street outreach worker program. Mayor John DeStefano’s administration came up with the initiative and hired New Haven Family Alliance to run it. Morales patrols her own neighborhood, as well as West River, with the goal of helping 13 to 21-year-olds stay out of trouble. She does case management, crisis intervention, mediation, and responds to the scenes of shootings and homicides. She connects teens to job training and GED programs and offers a listening ear.

“I get calls at all hours of the night,” she said.

She said she’s gotten to know Dwight well. The teens know her through her work as well as through her past life as a performer. Their moms know her as the mother of a Hillhouse High student and a 18-month-old baby. And the grandmothers know her from her eight years as a certified nursing assistant, she said.

Morales got involved in politics through fellow street outreach worker Doug Bethea’s campaign for alderman last September. Through the campaign, she met ex-felons who didn’t know they have the right to vote. She helped 64 of them join the voting rolls.

Morales said aims to continue that work as a co-chair, to ​“inform and empower” voters. She said her focus is not backing a certain candidate, but ​“reuniting the neighborhood” and ​“rebuilding the community,” one voter at a time.

Morales’ running mate, former Alderman Greg Smith, dropped out of the race about 10 days ago, she said. He didn’t return a call for comment for this story. In the three-way race, the top two vote-getters will prevail.

Union Support

Tuesday’s DTC races promise to be quieter than September’s aldermanic primaries/ Contests are taking place in only seven wards, and the position is so obscure that few voters go to the polls unless campaigns recruit them.

Laurie Kennington, president of UNITE HERE Local 34 at Yale, said the union has made endorsements and paid a few thousand dollars, but plans to scale down the money and resources it spent on the primaries in September. UNITE HERE Locals 34 and 35, Yale’s pink-collar and blue-collar unions, provided the organizing muscle and candidate recruitment behind last fall’s aldermanic sweep.

Locals 34 and 35 decided to endorse whomever the alderman in each ward is supporting in Tuesday’s DTC primaries, said Kennington. (Scroll to the bottom of the page to see those endorsements.)

Those endorsees have formed a candidate committee, Democrats Stand Up, in order to raise money together for the campaign. The team is built from allies of union-backed aldermen who took office in January.

The committee comprises union-backed candidates in Wards 2, 11, 20, 22, and 29. Ward 9’s candidates opted to go their own route, and the union is not playing an active role in Ward 26.

UNITE HERE donated $3,000 towards Democrats Stand Up, according to Kennington. She said the union plans to send volunteers to work for union-backed candidates on Tuesday. She didn’t give a number of volunteers, but said ​“a lot of us are going to be hitting the doors.”

Kennington said Tuesday’s contests will test whether the momentum that gathered steam last year will carry over to shake up the party structure:
​“This is really about how the Democratic Party is going to be reinvigorated or not.”

Democrats Stand Up has raised about $5,000, according to treasurer Jess Corbett, who’s also an executive board member of Yale’s Local 34 and a co-chair in Ward 28. Corbett said that figure includes ​“over a hundred donations from people in the community,” which he called significant show of support from everyday people. He noted that even the $3,000 comes from everyday workers’ union dues.

He said the money is being spent on literature, flyers, signs and snacks for volunteers. The candidates comprise people the aldermen met as they knocked on doors during last year’s spirited primary season, Corbett said. They share the same goals: ​“more democracy, transparency, to open up the process, and rebuild party.”

The candidates in Ward 9 are raising money for their own committees, the only neighborhood where that’s happening.

In Dwight’s Ward 2, Arnott said he and Kinity have received literature and volunteers from the slate.

He said he considers himself part of a ​“movement” that began last September. ​“I don’t think of it as a union agenda,” he said, ​“it’s a shared agenda.”

While the candidates are helping each other out, Arnott said, ​“we’re not getting memos from on high.”

The exercise of running for office — talking to people about their concerns about the neighborhood and signing them up to vote — is ​“parallel to the goal.”

A Change of Guard

DTC Chairwoman Susie Voigt said no matter what the results are at the polls Tuesday, there will be ​“a huge turnover” in the makeup of the party. Less than half of the current members of the DTC are seeking reelection. Voigt herself said she does not plan to seek reelection.

The newly elected DTC will vote on a new leader at a meeting set for March 14 at 6:30 p.m. at the Conte/West Hills School at 511 Chapel St. Four people have expressed interest in the seat: Chris Randall, Alderwoman Jackie James, and former Aldermen Vinnie Mauro and Esther Armmand. James is expected to emerge as the new chairwoman, with Mauro as her deputy.

Voigt said the party has evolved over the years. When she joined the DTC around 1990 at the age of 39, most of the committee members were in their 50s and 60s. Since that time, at least 85 percent of the members have left the committee, making it one of the more fluid Democratic Party organizations in the state, Voigt said.

“When you look at other towns, it really is the same people and everyone’s over 50.”

Voigt welcomed the newcomers. ​“They bring a fresh perspective and fresh energy, and that’s only good for the Democratic Party.”

Most candidates earned their spot on the ballot on a team of two. However, that doesn’t mean they’ll win or lose as a pair: The top two vote-getters will prevail even if they run on separate slates.

Here’s who’s running, and where to vote. (The asterisk signifies the slate was endorsed by UNITE HERE Locals 34 and 35.)

Ward 2 (Dwight): Christopher Arnott/ Jane Kinity* vs. Anita Morales
Augusta Lewis Troup School, 259 Edgewood Ave.

Ward 9 (East Rock): Cristina Cruz-Uribe/ Lauren Miller* vs. Jane Edelstein/ Donald Harvey
Wilbur Cross High School, 181 Mitchell Drive

Ward 11 (Fair Haven Heights): Patty DePalma/ Paul Tricaso vs. Fannie Brooks/ Dorothy Harper*
Two polling places: 1. Bella Vista, 343 Eastern St.; 2. Bishop Woods School, 1481 Quinnipiac Ave.

Ward 20 (Newhallville): Ernest Jones vs. Latoya Agnew/ Barbara Vereen*
Lincoln-Bassett School, 130 Bassett St.

Ward 22 (Dixwell): Gina Phillips/ Cordelia Thorpe vs. Jayuan Carter/ Josef Goodman*
Wexler/Grant School, 55 Foote St.

Ward 26 (Upper Westville): Arnold Amore, Jr./ Ronald Rainey vs. Theresa Jones
Mauro-Sheridan School, 191 Fountain St.

Ward 29 (Beaver Hills): Betty Alford/ Major Ruth* vs. Thomas Ficklin/ Audrey Tyson
Beecher School, 100 Jewel St.