• An out-of-state newspaper quietly zapped articles from the internet— to boost John DeStefano’s chances of winning another New Haven mayoral election.
• Meanwhile, you may have seen Jeffrey Kerekes hanging out at Occupy New Haven. But don’t be fooled — he’s secretly plotting! to help the Tea Party and maybe even the Obama-as-hidden-Kenyan birther movement infiltrate our liberal oasis with their agenda.
• Not only that — Kerekes looks like a zombie rising from the dead in a slasher movie, ready to rip kids out of classrooms and sweep “massive” numbers of teachers and other vital public workers into a virtual graveyard!!!
How do we know this?
From the latest barrage of campaign salvos in New Haven’s mayoral race, seeping into mailboxes and computers all over town just in time for the Nov. 8 general election pitting independent challenger Kerekes against nine-term Democrat DeStefano.
Pretty hair-raising stuff. If it’s true.
Fed these allegations, the Independent’s Truth-O-Meter discovered there is more to the story.
Tea Partier?
Like the suggestion that Jeffrey Kerekes is New Haven’s representative of the reviled (in this Democratic city) right-wing anti-government Republican Tea Party.
The DeStefano campaign has been developing this theme in recent weeks, tying Kerekes to that movement. The last two three-page glossy brochures sent to voters over the past week made the argument central. The one arriving Wednesday begins with this cover copy written over faces of vulnerable children:
“The tea party doesn’t care if his classroom is crowded. Or if she has after-school programs. The deepest cuts… are the most dangerous.”
Turn to Page 2 (turn to the top of this story) to see who represents this threat: Kerekes. Who, in headline type “supporters dangerous tea party policies like slashing school funding, even though his cuts could lead to teacher layoffs and fewer after-school programs.” Then comes another mention of “dangerous tea party policies that could weaken our schools, make our streets less safe, cut vital services and lead to massive layoffs” in police and fire budgets, for example.
Kerekes swears he has never attended a Tea Party event. Or belonged to such an organization.
More important, he disagrees with its philosophy, he said in an interview: “They’re against paying taxes or supporting programs. They’re far to the extreme.”
In fact, Kerekes said he agrees with a basic thrust of the Occupy Wall Street/Occupy New Haven movement, which he has popped in on: a “serious concern with the way government” and longtime incumbents favor insiders and the wealthy or powerful at the expense of everyday people.
The DeStefano attack flyers never actually state that Kerekes has formally affiliated with the Tea Party. (Similarly, in recent public statements Kedem has been comparing Kerekes to the “birthers” without calling him a card-carrying member.) The DeStefano flyer Tea Party allegations carry repeated citations of a single 2010 New Haven Independent article. This one. It describes a city budget hearing where Kerekes appeared as a leader of citizen watchdog group called NHCAN, advocating an across-the-board 10 percent cut in city department budgets.
“It’s tea party policies,” DeStefano campaign manager Danny Kedem said Thursday. You can’t cut 10 percent from city budgets without making the kind of draconian cuts laid out in the DeStefano flyers, Kedem argued.
Kedem also cited Kerekes’ support of a Financial Review & Audit Commission (FRAC) study which, he argued, would lead to similar cuts.
Several problems with that argument:
The other side argues that you can, through revising costly pension and health plans struck in previous years (a point DeStefano has championed, calling them the single biggest driver of budget problems) and cutting high-salary bureaucratic management positions (an argument never fully fleshed out with specifics).
DeStefano himself laid off 16 cops this year, 82 city workers in total. His Board of Ed considered laying off up to 60 teachers until finding other cost-savings. DeStefano took heat for ordering that a a popular fire engine be taken off line in East Rock. He successfully pushed for downsizing and privatization of school custodians.
Also, DeStefano himself appointed FRAC, which largely made general recommendations. Kedem acknowledged DeStefano’s role in appointing the commission, which was charged with producing non-binding proposals. He said to the best of his knowledge the mayor never ended up formally endorsing FRAC’s final report, while Kerekes did. (In fact, the FRAC team suggested exploring the idea of hiring more cops in order to pay less overtime.)
In any case, Kerekes has never called for the specific cuts of which he’s accused. He’s never displayed any overt or philosophical alliance with the Tea Party. Saying he does is a stretch like … critics labeling John DeStefano New Haven’s version of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, which happened during this year’s budget crisis. A point to which the DeStefano camp justifiably took exception.
Verdict: False claim.
Macabre Monster?
More literally, does the picture of Kerekes in the latest DeStefano flyer accurately portray him? The campaign took a photo, made it black and white, made it grainy, then cut it in shreds and blew it up to cover the full height of Page 2 (opposite a page of warm, relaxed, high-resolution color shots of DeStefano).
In recent years campaigns across the country have started using photo-altering techniques to make their opponents look as scary and ugly and distorted as possible. DeStefano has been on the receiving end of that tactic; his supporters have complained about such personal attacks that pollute public debate.
DeStefano campaign chief Kedem defended the accuracy of the Kerekes picture.
“Any image that we use of Mr. Kerekes does not in any fashion distort his image at all,” Kedem said.
Even when cut in pieces through a distorted grainy black-and-white filter?
“That conveys the emotional resonance of how profound the impact would be on the city with massive cuts to public education, the fire department and police,” Kedem explained. “It conveys emotional resonance of how profound the cuts would be on the city and people who live there.”
The Truth-O-Meter matched the flyer photo with in-person views of Kedem. Verdict: Hokum.
Massive Media Conspiracy
In the general election campaign, Kerekes hasn’t had money to pay for mailing glossy flyers. He has gotten his message to large numbers of voters in part through mass campaign “newsletter” emails.
The campaign distributed an edition of the newsletter following DeStefano’s mishandling of the departure of Police Chief Frank Limon. The newsletter produced a remarkable account of how the DeStefano team pulled strings to avoid criticism of DeStefano’s new choice as police chief, former Providence Chief Dean Esserman:
“So what’s with Esserman? Several issues have already been raised about the new selection from a quick Google search. I think it is important and relevant to note that many of the articles I read about Esserman over the weekend have now been deleted from the news website Providence Journal (still available in Google cached sites: see below). When someone is connected enough to get a newspaper to delete negative stories about them, that gives me serious pause.”
Kerekes was asked how he knew the articles were deleted. Because he read them one day, he said; then they were gone.
Something else happened in the interim, it turns out. The Providence Journal stopped allowing the public to read its archived news articles for free. Like other dailies across the country, it instituted a “pay wall” policy for its website. That plan, and the date it went into effect, had been in places for weeks. Even before John DeStefano picked Dean Esserman to come to New Haven.
Peter Phipps, managing editor for new media, assured the Independent that there was no singling out of archived articles.
“All published newspaper stories are available in the paid archive,” he said. “It can be found at the top of the homepage.”
Pinocchio Factor
The same Kerekes newsletter carries a headline that got the candidate extended coverage on TV network affiliates for two days: “Mayor Still Lies.”
Kerekes — along with other critics in town, like the head of the city police union — said DeStefano lied to the public about the fact that Limon had quit his job.
The key exchange in that episode came on Friday, Oct. 14. As rumors swirled around the city, Limon went on an extended “leave.” But it also turned out he had cleared out his office, cleared out his condo, and told some associates he wasn’t coming back.
“Frank is still the chief of the department. There is nothing that is imminently going to happen” to change that, DeStefano told the Independent, as well as other news outlets.
Without question, DeStefano was hurt by his handling of the situation. By Monday afternoon, after Kerekes got campaign mileage out of the confusion sweeping the city, DeStefano announced that he’d struck a deal with Limon to leave the city with 27 months left on his contract in return for a $90,000 “consulting” gig; and that DeStefano had found a new police chief.
Does that mean he lied?
DeStefano also revealed that he’d been negotiating for weeks with Limon to leave. He said those negotiations did not conclude until mid-day Monday, obviously hastened by the local controversy. When a manager negotiates with a contract employee to leave a job, he can weaken his (and in this case the public’s position) by revealing publicly that such negotiations are taking place. At the least, public managers have a right and, according to some views, the responsibility to negotiate deals quietly in early stages. That’s not necessarily dishonest.
DeStefano did say a change wasn’t “imminent” — a clear signal to the public that it was going to happen at some point. So as with Bill Clinton parsing the definition of “is,” it may depend on your definition of “imminent.”
Police union President Arpad Tolnay argued in an interview that the cops and the public had a right and a need to know that a change was underway; and that the $90,000 severance pay isn’t in truth a “consulting contract.”
“Why don’t you just tell people: ‘Listen you hired Limon to do something, and it didn’t work. We owe him money. But we’re going to save money because we’re only going to pay him a percentage of what he’s owed.’ Why not tell the truth?”
The Truth-O-Meter vacillated on where to come down on this one. Reasonable people can disagree about how much wiggle room to give a chief executive trying to protect the public interest in the midst of delicate negotiations. The turn of events showed that Kerekes was basically taking an accurate position that forced the mayor to act. “Lying” seems overstated.
Previous Truth-O-Meter installments:
• Dawson Takes The Gloves Off
• Did Parking Fee “Double” When Yale Bought Lot?
• Bull’s‑Eyes, Errant Arrows In Debate Attacks
• 1 Picture, 2 Interpretations