Paul Bass Photo
Aminah Abdussabur (right) prepares to submit mayoral campaign papers Friday on behalf of her grandfather Shafiq.
Community activist and retired police Sgt. Shafiq Abdussabur submitted papers Friday to begin a run for the Democratic mayoral nomination, as New Haven’s public-education challenges continued to top the campaign season issues debate.
Abdussabur submitted the campaign committee filing at the City Clerk’s office.
Actually, his 2 1/2‑year-old granddaughter Aminah formally handed the filing to Deputy City Clerk Mae Reed. Abdussabur, a 55-year-old city native, arrived in the office accompanied by his wife Mubarakah Ibrahim, son Ismail, and Aminah, and made that a point about why he’s seeking to unseat two-term incumbent Mayor Justin Elicker.
“I was born in the city of New Haven. My wife and I have raised our four children in the city. Most of them have chosen to stay and raise their children” here, he said a press conference following the filing.
“My three children are the sixth generation of New Haven residents in our family. I am running for mayor so that our grandchildren’s grandchildren will be proud to call New Haven home.”
“I believe that we can be a better New Haven.”
Watch Abdussabur's campaign announcement and press conference above.
Abdussabur said his top campaign priority is “definitely” education.
“It is no secret that New Haven’s educational system is in shambles,” he charged. “Yet we are spit-gluing it together with after-school programs. We have no concrete plan to address the below-grade reading levels and epidemic levels of truancy and absenteeism.” He said teachers also need more support.
Tom Goldenberg, another declared Democratic mayoral candidate, has also placed education as a top policy priority.
“Education is a crisis that we and other cities around the nation are facing,” Mayor Elicker responded later. He spoke of the administration’s plan to spend $3 million on after-school and summer literacy programs.
Abdussabur said at Friday’s filing press conference that that effort is not a substitute for a broader rethinking of in-school instruction. Elicker responded that his administration is putting in place “an overall strategy” that has included reaching a new teachers union contract with significant pay increases, increasing the number of dropout prevention workers, boosting collaboration with nonprofit partners to engage with student absenteeism, and improving the district’s data analysis to track why students are absent.
Abdussabur Friday at the City Clerk's office.
Abdussabur retired as a sergeant with the New Haven Police Department (NHPD) in 2018. During his two decades with the NHPD, he helped craft the city’s street outreach worker program and negotiated a truce among warring gangs. He ran a community anti-violence program called CTribat. He served as a Beaver Hills alder for six months last year until resigning because of a rule that would have prevented the Board of Education from renewing a cleaning contract with a company he ran. (Then the Board of Ed hired someone else for the contract anyway.)
“I’ve not seen Mr. Abdussabur participate in any Board of Education meetings to work collaboratively to meet the challenge” facing public education, Elicker remarked. “If Mr. Abdussabur were still on the board [of alders] he’d have an opportunity to support a $3 million investment in after-school and summer programming focused on literacy and math.”
Asked for a response, Abdussabur stated: “We look forward to having this conversation with our opponent on the campaign trail and in our first debate.”
Abdussabur was asked Friday if he will participate in the city’s volunteer Democracy Fund public-financing program, which seeks to limit the influence of private interests and help more people seek office by offering grants in return for candidates agreeing to limit the size of individual contributions and forswearing political-committee or business donations.
“Currently our team is still in conversation with members of the Democracy Fund to determine if that is something that we will be able to take advantage of,” he responded. Elicker is participating in the program; Goldenberg is not.
Abdussabur also criticized Elicker for supporting “15-year tax abatement deals” with developers with no plan for enabling New Haveners to afford hundreds of new apartments being built across the city. Elicker responded that the Board of Alders approved those deals, which he said will create affordable housing through projects undertaken by Beulah Heights Development Corp. in Dixwell, Beacon in the Ninth Square, and the Towers in the Hill.
A fourth potential Democratic mayoral candidate, former federal prosecutor and current Hartford inspector general Liam Brennan, has formed an exploratory committee.
In an email press release sent out Friday afternoon, Goldenberg welcomed Abdussabur into the mayoral race and used Abdussabur’s resignation as alder, failure to secure a new cleaning contract with the public schools, and subsequent lawsuit against the city to talk about broader policies around minority-owned businesses. “The City of New Haven needs to review its bidding processes and its Minority and Women Business Enterprise (MWBE) programs to ensure fairness and transparency,” Goldenberg is quoted as saying in the press release. “The most extreme racial disparity in New Haven is Black business ownership, and I believe that the city’s MWBE program should specify Black businesses. I will be sharing a proposal later this month on how the city can better support minority owned businesses.”
