Harp, Elicker Swap Roles In Home Stretch

Justin Elicker played the role of establishment-backed frontrunner Sunday, as the state’s top elected officials and New Haven’s leading alders and top vote-pullers whipped up a packed ​“unity” rally.

Toni Harp, meanwhile, offered a passionate defense of her record and discussed the challenge of ​“going against the party that supported us for many, many years” before a packed gathering in a private home in Woodbrige. She sat alongside a fellow African-American mayoral candidate — from Bridgeport — mounting a longshot challenge after losing a Democratic primary.

The two events reflected how dramatically Elicker’s and Harp’s roles have reversed — and the dynamics have shifted — as New Haven’s mayoral campaign entered its final 16 days.

As this year’s campaign began, Elicker was the grassroots challenger to three-term incumbent Mayor Harp, who had won 17 campaigns, and lost none, in her 32 years. A majority of New Haven’s alders and the most important vote-pulling operation in town, connected to Yale’s UNITE HERE unions, lined up behind Harp (while leading state Democrats stayed on the sidelines). Elicker assembled a team of supporters without City Hall connections.

Then came the Sept. 10 Democratic primary, when Elicker trounced Harp by 58 to 42 percent. In a city that has elected only Democrats to the mayoralty since 1953, he became the frontrunner, with U.S. senators, among others, lining up to endorse him.

Harp still had an option to run in the Nov. 5 general election: Her name is on the Working Families Party line. That party in fact decided not to send any more support to her in the general election. But after weeks of indecision, Harp decided to keep her name on the ballot so people can still vote for her. She ​“suspended” her campaign by closing her office and laying off her campaign staff. Then, this past week, she declared she is ​“all in” and is running hard to win a fourth term — backed by a new political action committee and sundry other volunteers, but no new campaign office or paid staff, she said.

Now she’s running as the underdog, with little money, no paid staffers, and no establishment institutional support.

That support all lined up behind Elicker at the Sunday noon rally inside his Whalley Avenue campaign headquarters. Speakers included all the state’s elected constitutional officers: the governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of the state, treasurer, and attorney general. It included alders and state legislators who had supported Harp in the primary or stayed neutral.

“We will come together as Democrats,” the Rev. Scott Marks declared in a fiery address to the crowd. Marks, through the UNITE HERE-backed New Haven Rising activist group, oversaw the labor vote pulling for Toni Harp in the primary. Now he and UNITE HERE Local 35 President Bob Proto were in the room supporting Elicker.

“I know there are some differences. I know racism is alive and well. I look at the human race,” Marks said. ​“If there was ever a time to come together it is now. Let the healing begin.”

Harp (pictured with Bridgeport mayoral candidate Marilyn Moore at their Woodbridge fundraiser) shrugged off Elicker’s rally Sunday and the endorsements by leading state and local political figures who used to back her. ​“He won the Democratic primary. They’re Democrats,” she noted.

In fact, she sounded energized by her new role.

“I think there’s more momentum and energy” among her core supporters, she said. ​“It’s exciting. We’re having fun.”

Elicker (pictured at his rally) told the Independent the race’s changing dynamics haven’t changed his message. ​“The results of the primary made it overwhelmingly clear the city is ready for a change and a new type of government,” said the candidate, who has promised to put the government’s checkbook online and work to enable nonprofit organizations to run after-school programs in city school buildings. ​“Nothing has changed about my message. Nothing has changed about who I am and what I care about.”

“We’ve Got Your Back”

What has changed is who’s in the room, as was clear at Sunday’s rally.

The event offered a stark contrast to a previous event in the same Whalley Avenue headquarters, Elicker’s official May 5 campaign kick-off. The crowd that day consisted of critics of the Harp administration, neighborhood activists, and people who have clashed with the mayor or lost city jobs.

Sunday’s crowd, by contrast, was an A‑list of Democratic party elected officials and influential campaign figures, like Marks and Proto. Beaver Hills Alder Richard Furlow (pictured), who had backed Harp’s primary run, introduced other alders who have switched to Elicker, including Newhallville’s Delphine Clyburn and Beaver Hills’ Jill Marks. Westville Alder Adam Marchand was in the room, too, having swapped the Harp campaign sign on the lawn for an Elicker sign.

Similarly, New Haven State Rep. Toni Walker, who endorsed Harp in the primary, showed up to endorse Elicker along with New Haven State Reps. Gary Winfield and Al Paolillo Jr. ​“We’re not taking away anything from what anyone did before,” Winfield said. ​“We’re adding to it. We’re a family.”

The significance of the labor leaders’ support isn’t necessarily in votes Elicker might gain; both Marks and Proto said UNITE HERE hasn’t endorsed a candidate in the general election. Instead, the significance is in votes lost: Harp lost the primary by 2,000 votes, and UNITE HERE/New Haven Rising, the most effective campaign organization in town, was out rounding up votes. Proto and Marks made a point of stressing that they’re backing Elicker as part of a broader agenda of pushing large employers like Yale to hire more New Haveners and pony up more payments in lieu of taxes.

“There is so much more our City Hall can do to make all of our residents thrive,” Elicker told the crowd. ​“I will represent every single resident in this city.”

The state officials on the bill made a point of praising Elicker without criticizing Harp.

“Toni Harp has served this state well. She has served this city well,” said Gov. Ned Lamont (pictured), who stayed had neutral in the mayoral primary a year after Harp had backed in his own Democratic gubernatorial primary race. ​“I wish her well. Today we have a new leader for the city.”

“I want you to know,” Lamont said, turning to Elicker, ​“we’ve got your back.”

“A Message Of Liberation”

The one elected official present at the Harp fundraiser at the Woodbridge home of Dr. Deborah Desir, by contrast, was a Bridgeport state senator waging a write-in campaign for Park City mayor after losing a primary that many people consider stolen from her through absentee ballot fraud.

The crowd packed its own power. Over 80 people, many of them African-American woman successful in public and private lives in Connecticut, filled the Desir family living room, and an overflow adjoining room, to hear Harp and Moore pitch their candidacies as following in a civil rights tradition. Harp is New Haven’s first female mayor, and its second black mayor. Moore would be Bridgeport’s first African-American mayor.

“Now is the best time to be a black woman in America,” said Inner City News Editor and WNHH Fm ​“Love Babz Love Talk” radio host Babz Rawls-Ivy (pictured with Harp), who emceed a discussion with the two candidates at the event. ​“We are coming out of the kitchens … with a message of liberation for all people.”

Harp spoke of crime dropping 50 percent, graduation rates climbing 10 percent, and finances stabilizing during her six years as mayor.

She drew the loudest cheers of the afternoon by describing how her administration identified the 550 teens most at risk of shooting someone or getting shot, created the ​“Community Youth Stat’ program to help keep them out of trouble, and offered them after-school vocational training.

She offered that story when asked about the dysfunction at the Board of Education, which has cycled through four superintendents in three years.

“These people are politicians. They play to the crowd,” Harp said of elected Board of Education members. But a mayor can still help children with measures like the above-mentioned. ​“That doesn’t mean that people are not going to act nutty in the Board of Education. That doesn’t mean they won’t try to run out the superintendent.” But it does mean a mayor can still make a difference.

Asked about gentrification, Harp endorsed a task force’s call for ​“inclusionary zoning” in the form of requiring developers of new apartments to set aside a percentage of affordable units. The bigger challenge, she said, lies in pushing suburbs to end exclusionary zoning. She noted that 47 percent of New Haven’s housing stock meets the definition of ​“affordable” and that most new apartment construction takes place on vacant lots or in vacant building, without displacing people.

“Yes, we need more [affordable units] in new apartments being built. But where we really need it is in … the surrounding towns” that are not ​“doing their share.”

The mayor also committed to help people in struggling neighborhoods not just find jobs, but build wealth. Her administration is working on a plan to create a worker-owned laundry in Newhallville, for instance. ​“It’s important to change the paradigm,” Harp said. ​“Yes, people need well-paying jobs. They need to understand what equity is. They need to understand what building wealth is.”

“One of the wonderful things for me right now,” Bridgeport’s Moore, sitting beside Harp, said to her, ​“is learning from you,”

Men ​“Stand For Toni”

On Saturday afternoon, a dozen people gathered at the corner of Dixwell Avenue and Pond Street, near the Hamden border, to spread out and to knock on doors on behalf of Mayor Harp’s reelection bid. The event was billed on social media as ​“100 Men Stand For Toni.”

The group was unhappy when a reporter showed up, complained about what they termed unfair coverage of the mayor in the Independent and other venues, and asked that their canvassing not be covered.

Only one person was agreeable to be quoted: local lawyer Alex Taubes, one of the organizers of Harp’s People’s Campaign PAC.

“If you don’t get on board with the party nominee, you’ll be shut out,” is how he paraphrased an alleged general atmosphere of threat that has set in after the primary.

“And the media doesn’t help,” Taubes added, specifically citing coverage in the Independent.

Taubes then withdrew from his backpack and distributed clipboards with lists of voters and addresses.

He called attention to the uniqueness of the moment: ​“There’s never been a Working Families versus Democratic Party contest ever in New Haven history. Let alone one where the Working Families nominee is a lifelong Democrat who’s served for 40 years and is the incumbent,” he said.

Taubes, and others attending, who spoke but declined to be quoted or identified, included long-time Public Works Department staffer and Harp friend and supporter Honda Smith, who is running unopposed for the Ward 30 Board of Alders said.

They said they are simply volunteers, that there is no money for the canvassing effort, and all are participating because the mayor — her record and contributions to the city — have been misreported and underappreciated.

Taubes then went further. He said it’s a mistake not to understand the contest in New Haven apart from the larger context of politics and race in the Trump era. Taubes referenced a Sept. 15 article in the Hartford Courant, ​“The Year of the White Man In Politics.”

“Accusations against Harp are a projection of the [Democratic] Party,” he said.

“We’d hope the Working Families Party would support her, but we’ve seen no resources. They’re being pressured by the Democrats,” he concluded.