File photos
Democratic incumbent Elicker, Republican challenger Orosco.
Mayor Justin Elicker’s reelection campaign raised more than $109,000 from more than 560 different people during the first three months of the year.
His Republican challenger, who began his run roughly two weeks ago, does not appear to have begun raising money.
That’s the latest with this year’s mayoral race. Three-term incumbent Democrat Justin Elicker is seeking another two-year term as mayor. (Per a recently approved charter revision, the first four-year terms for mayor and alder kick in in the 2027 election cycle.)
According to a filing posted to the State Elections Enforcement Commission’s (SEEC) online database on Thursday, Elicker’s reelection campaign raised a total of $109,479 in contributions between Jan. 1 and March 31.
His campaign reported spending $16,647.15 during that three-month time period. That leaves his campaign with a balance on hand of $92,831.85.
Elicker’s Q1 campaign finance report indicates that he held fundraising meetups in late March at a house on Livingston Street in New Haven, at a restaurant at 360 Broad St. in Hartford, and at an office at 385 Herbert St. in Milford.
Elicker said that he’s held some out-of-town fundraisers during previous campaigns for New Haven mayor, too. While his campaign’s donors “are overwhelmingly New Haven residents,” he said, “there’s people outside of New Haven that are enthusiastic about the direction we’re going in as well.”
Click here to read Elicker’s first-quarter campaign finance report in full.
A press release sent out by Elicker’s reelection campaign Thursday morning indicates that the $109,479 that the campaign has raised so far came from 664 donations from 564 unique individuals. That press release also states that a “majority” of the donors to Elicker’s campaign are New Haven residents.
As with each of his previous runs for mayor — in 2013, 2019, 2021, and 2023 — Elicker is participating this year in the city’s public financing program, the Democracy Fund. That program, which dates back to 2007 and was most recently updated last year, attempts to limit the influence of special interests and encourage more candidates to participate in mayoral races by capping the top amount of individual contributions at $400 apiece.
At a glance, some of the donors who contributed the $400 maximum to Elicker’s campaign last quarter include Downtown/East Rock Alder Eli Sabin; local biotech business leaders Craig Crews and Vladimir Coric; lobbyists Chris DePino, Paul Nunez, and Melissa Biggs; Democratic town chair Vin Mauro, Jr.; Yale New Haven Health CEO Christopher O’Connor; lab-office building developer and landlord Carter Winstanley; apartment developer and landlord Randy Salvatore; Gideon Friedman, Dan DeStefano, and Amir Hazan, whose company owns the 360 State St. apartment tower; city-contracted PR worker Mary Coursey; local public arts supporter Laura Clarke; local attorneys James Segaloff and Ben Trachten; and retired former city economic development chief Sal Brancati.
Orosco’s campaign, meanwhile, has not filed a first-quarter campaign finance report with the city clerk’s office or online with the SEEC as of the publication time of this article.
Orosco began his run for mayor on March 25, less than a week before the end of the first quarter. On his initial candidate registration form, he checked a box indicating that he is exempt from forming a candidate committee, which typically means a candidate will not be raising money for their campaign. Orosco did not check any corresponding boxes on his registration form, however, indicating why exactly he is exempt from forming a committee.
Orosco did not respond to requests for comment by the publication time of this article. John Carlson, the chair of the city’s Republican Party, told the Independent he believes Orosco will be raising money for his mayoral run.
Thursday is the state-set deadline for when candidates for elected office in November need to file their first-quarter campaign finance reports if they’re raising money.
By this time last election cycle, in 2023, Elicker’s reelection campaign had raised more than $174,000. That included money raised in the first quarter of 2023 and in the final quarter of 2022. In April 2023, Elicker still faced three candidates seeking to challenge him in the Democratic primary — Liam Brennan, Shafiq Abdussabur, and Tom Goldenberg.