New Haven Delivers For Malloy Again

It turns out the Dannel P. Malloy knew what he was doing when he practically camped out in New Haven this past year.

As part of his successful reelection campaign, Malloy was counting on New Haven to repeat the victory margin it delivered for him than it did in 2010, and increase it.

New Haven’s envied Democratic grassroots vote-pulling operation came through in Tuesday’s election with a 19,692-vote margin of victory.

Malloy beat Foley by 18,613 votes overall in New Haven in 2010, almost three times his entire statewide victory margin.

A combination of seasoned grassroots vote-pullers and newer ward chiefs rounded up Malloy votes from Fair Haven Heights to Dixwell and Westville, targeting repeat voters and homeless people alike. Here’s a taste of who did it, and how.

Finding The Homeless

Rafael Martinez was walking the Green on Election Day when two guys riding in a black mini-van waved him over and asked him if he needed a ride to the polls and something to eat.

He needed both.

“Are you guys Democrats?” Martinez asked. ​“I want to vote for a Democrat.”

Jesse ​“J‑Hop” Hardy (pictured above) and Clarence Phillips Jr. wanted to help with that too.

The two men were a part of a team of drivers and phone bankers operating out of Democrat headquarters at Dixwell Plaza Tuesday.

The team was hitting the streets and every place it could, trying to turnout voters who are homeless, formerly incarcerated and just in need of a ride.

And they were doing their best to turn them out for Democratic Gov. Malloy.

Though they had been at it since 5:45 a.m., drivers like Kenny Driffin, a longtime homeless outreach worker, said they had no plans to slow down.

“I’m just banging ​‘em out,” Driffin said of taking people to the polls. At about midday, the crew of four drivers had found and taken about 75 people to the polls, according to Jackie James, who runs the headquarters. Driffin said he feels a little bit responsible for the traffic jam that some voters experienced at City Hall Tuesday because he’d taken a number of people to that polling place. (Read more about the wait for same day registration and voting here.)

Jesse ​“J‑Hop” Hardy (pictured with Dixwell headquarters chief Jackie James) wasn’t stopping either. The formerly homeless Hardy, who now is a tireless advocate for homeless people, pounded the Green with his bullhorn shouting out to people, homeless or not, asking them if they needed a ride to the polls.

A young man who could have passed for a student said he was a convicted felon and had moved to the area a while ago, but wasn’t sure it was OK for him to register to vote.

“Long as you’re not on parole,” Hardy said. ​“Go right over there to City Hall, you can register and vote on the same day.”

He said he would.

“Have you voted?” he asked a man on the Green named Andrew. ​“Are you going to go vote? You need a ride?”

Sixty-year-old Andrew, who did not share his last name, said not only had he already voted, ​“I’ve been voting since I could vote.” He had the sticker to prove it.

“I voted for Malloy,” Andrew said. ​“Foley is trying to get us. If he gets elected, the rich will be fine, but the poor will just get poorer.”

“Most people assume that everybody out here on the Green is homeless,” Hardy said. ​“Some of them are and some of them are not. There are homeless people everywhere, and we’re going here on the Green and out under bridges to let people know they can vote.”

Phone bank operators spent the day making calls to voters to remind them to go vote, to tell them where their polling places are and to offer them a ride. Drivers made the rounds to soup kitchens downtown and any place they were told someone needed a ride.

Martinez (pictured to the left) made it to the headquarters just in time to grab some lunch and shake hands with Malloy.

“The last time I voted, I was living near the fire station on Edgewood,” he said. ​“I’ve got a room now and I want to vote for a Democrat.”

“We Need You”

Across the Quinnipiac River, vote-pullers carried out similar same-day efforts to motivate their neighbors in Fair Haven and Fair Haven Heights.

At around 1:30 p.m., Mildred Melendez was walking the same route for the second time Tuesday, after getting up to place Malloy/U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro door hangers at 6 a.m. She had also walked around her Fair Haven Heights neighborhood canvassing on Saturday.

Wilbur Cross High School junior Shauntasia Hicks spent her day off from school helping to get out the vote. She said she also spent a year canvassing with an activist student group at Yale in the last election. ​“I can’t vote, and I know how important it is for the student vote to be heard,” she said.

Most people were not home Tuesday afternoon, but Melendez planned to go around again at 5 p.m. She said she started ​“walking these turfs” just after Labor Day. She moved to Fair Haven Heights from another New Haven neighborhood last year and started canvassing ​“to get involved.”

Melendez (at right in photo) and Hicks caught Gwen Battle (at left) as she was leaving her house.

“It’s a really close race. We really need you,” Melendez said. ​“It’s just as important as Mayor [Toni] Harp’s race.” Battle reassured her that she was on her way to vote and didn’t need a ride.

“No es mañana?” one man asked, after opening the door to the pair. Melendez assured him that Tuesday was election day, not Wednesday. After he closed the door, she said, ​“I’m going to have to come back to this one. He doesn’t make me confident that he will vote.”

She made a note to get him on the following round.

“Ya votaron?”

“People like that here in New Haven,” said Migdalia Castro, a former Fair Haven alder who now heads city government’s elderly services department. Castro drove around her neighborhood starting at 5 a.m. to remind early risers to vote. ​“It’s important for people to knock on your door,” she said.

A Fair Haven resident since the age of 12, Castro was still going strong at 4 p.m., an hour before people started returning from work. As she drove, she rolled down her windows and called out to people she knew, who yelled back excited hellos.

“Ya votaron? Did you vote already?” Castro called to almost everyone she passed by on the street. Many said that they had or would, and she offered the rest rides to their polling places in her car.

Some asked her opinion on how to vote, and she explained Malloy’s campaign points and past completed promises. ​“Toda la B,” she said, advising them to vote Democratic across the board.

In between a harried round of canvassing, she looked through the resume of a man having trouble finding work and agreed to help another neighbor fix his housing status.

Castro stopped by El Jibaro Haircut on Grand Avenue to see if the barbers had voted. Almost all said they had, including Luis Carrasquillo, who proudly pointed to a line of four ​“I Voted” stickers on a poster of Barack and Michelle Obama.

Carrasquillo said he voted at 6 a.m. because he is ​“demócrata 100 percent.” He moved to New Haven from Puerto Rico four years ago, and voted for Obama in the 2012 election.

His co-worker Rene Burgos Rodriguez was less sure of the process. He said he had registered with a couple of women who came by his house on Fillmore Street, but had not heard anything since. Castro called the Ward 16 polling place to see what was up.

At first, it seemed Rodriguez was not registered, but then the polling worker said she had found him — under just Rene Burgos.

“John Martinez School. Call me and I’ll take you to vote!” Castro said.

Paul Bass contributed to this article.