Smith Files For First-Time Alder Run

As East Rocker Caroline Tanbee Smith filed papers to make official her first aldermanic run, Fair Havener Claudia Hererra readied to hand over the local legislative baton — to a candidate she says will build bridges between those neighborhoods and across the broader city if she’s elected to be Ward 9’s next representative.

That was the scene Friday afternoon, as Smith, a local entrepreneur and prolific volunteer who formerly served as chair of the Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team and co-founder of Collab, stepped into the City Clerk’s office at 200 Orange St. to sign up for a spot as a Democrat on this year’s ballot and a potential seat on the Board of Alders.

She was joined by Claudia Herrera, a Fair Haven activist and the current alder for Ward 9, the district Smith is seeking to represent. Sarah Locke, the Co-Chair for the Ward 9 Democratic Town Committee, and Megan Baker, a Yale nephrologist and Smith’s girlfriend, also showed up to see Smith file papers. According to the city’s Election Information website, no one else has filed to run for Ward 9 alder so far this year.

“I’m very proud of you,” Herrera told Smith as they rode the elevator up to the City Clerk’s office. Herrera jumped into the role last year after her own alder, Charles Decker, abruptly resigned, leaving her Fair Haven neighborhood with a growing community of working class Latino immigrants with no legislative point person to represent them. 

Ward 9 includes a section of East Rock between Humphrey Street to the south, Willow Street to the north, Orange Street to the west, and East Street to the east. It also includes a section of Fair Haven from Clay Street to the south, Willow Street to the north, the Mill River to the west, and Blatchley Avenue to the east. The ward combines Fair Haven with parts of East Rock, which is home to a large number of Yale graduate students and tends to see a relatively high turnover of residents from year to year.

Herrera said she took on the job to make sure her community maintained a neighborhood-level advocate, but that she’s ready to get back hours otherwise lost to legislative labor to attend to her family. Over the past year, she has led grassroots efforts to connect with the community, leading events like neighborhood walks around Fair Haven to identify residential concerns and brainstorm solutions to broad issues of public safety or more pointed problems like a fallen sign or torn-up sidewalk.

“There’s always someone stepping in for a few years and then they leave,” Herrera said of the alders who typically represent her district. ​“They don’t make roots in New Haven. As a community leader and homeowner, I wanted representation and voice,” Hererra said.

When Smith subsequently moved to East Rock, she picked up the same volunteerism she’s known for across the city and adapted it to the needs of her new neighborhood, whether that was joining Hererra in those neighborhood walks or waking up early on winter mornings to shovel snow from the sidewalks of State Street small businesses. A potential Ward 9 representative, a millennial Yale graduate with no plans to leave New Haven anytime soon, emerged. 

“I’ve been in this city for 14 years. I’m really proud to call it my home,” Smith told the Independent. ​“I would be very privileged to be here for the rest of my life.”

In particular, she said, she loves Ward 9’s identity as a ​“bridge” district that connects neighborhoods, including the ​“incredible business spine of Upper State Street.”

Smith, who was raised in Kentucky by a mom who had immigrated to the states from Korea and a dad hailing from North Carolina, moved to New Haven more than a decade ago to study at Yale as an undergraduate. ​“The question we were always gonna ask ourselves,” she said of herself and her sister, who is also a Yale graduate, ​“was where is home?” 

“I feel grateful for this city because it gave me a home. It’s a city that fights for itself, a city with so much history, with neighbors who care. There are protests right outside my door about climate justice and workers’ rights. I’ve built stakes here.” 

If elected alder, she said, ​“some of the things that get me really fired up are around economic opportunity, climate justice and LGBTQ+ issues.” 

During her time in New Haven, Smith has co-founded Collab, a nonprofit accelerator that aims to provide resources for and reduce barriers for New Haven residents looking to start local businesses, and started a host of volunteer initiatives, including New Haven Bike Month and Asian American Pacific Islander New Haven, an affinity space for people of Asian descent living in the New Haven area. This fall, she’ll be becoming a student again, in a graduate program at the Yale School of Management. 

If elected, Smith noted that she’d be the first Korean American resident elected to the Board of Alders as well as one of the first Asian American residents to serve.

Locke expressed excitement for Smith’s potential to connect with Yalies who make up a relatively transient community of students within East Rock and convince them to register to vote in New Haven, where they live, rather than continuing to vote in other towns and cities where they’re originally from. Herrera, meanwhile, said Smith’s intention to continue growing roots in New Haven alongside her mission to support and represent the growing Asian Pacific Islander communities locally resonated with her as someone who immigrated to New Haven in search of stability.

“One of the main things we always talk about is how diverse New Haven is,” Herrera said. ​“For Caroline to just be there, on the Board of Alders, is sending a message that everyone has a voice.” 

Smith said she plans to kick off her campaign by canvassing in Fair Haven — and start early on the kind of work she hopes to do if elected by surveying Fair Haveners about which three infrastructural issues in their neighborhood they’d like a representative to address, ultimately creating ​“streets and sidewalk audits.”

She’s already been speaking with small businesses along Upper State Street about how they’d collectively like to see the shopping district develop — more street lighting, she mentioned, is a popular request.

As longer-term goals, she pointed to the role in New Haven’s buildings as top producers of greenhouse gasses. She said that in addition to prioritizing energy conservation by educating residents about environmental programming like ​“I Heart New Haven,” an initiative started by Neighborhood Housing Services to offer renters and homeowners alike free counseling and energy audits to lower their utility bills and encourage sustainable practices, she wants to create a city-wide plan to retrofit homes and buildings. 

She also pointed to district-wide school climate surveys as evidence that LGBTQ+ students feel lesser sense of safety and belonging than their non-LGBTQ+ peers, and said that ​“at a moment in time where states across the country are passing anti-LGBTQ legislation, New Haven can be a beacon showing what a welcoming city can look like.”

One way she’d pursue that reality, she said, is funneling more resources into schools to establish gay-straight alliances in the city’s middle schools. ​“Growing up in Kentucky, we definitely didn’t have GSAs in middle school or high school. It’s definitely important for young people who are in them, but also for you who aren’t ready yet — it’s a statement the school is making about what kind of welcoming community we want to build.”

“I think we’re in a really cool moment to make something happen in New Haven,” she said.