Democracy Goes Live

Fresh from handing in signatures to join a crowded primary ballot, four mayoral candidates will debate incumbent John DeStefano as well as each other — and you’re invited to join the conversation.

Clifton Graves, Jeffrey Kerekes, Robert Lee, and Anthony Dawson all claim to have collected more than the 2,092 signatures of registered Democratic voters needed to land a place on the Sept. 13 Democratic Party primary ballot. Mayor John DeStefano’s name is on that ballot too because he received the endorsement of the Democratic Town Committee in his quest for a record-breaking 10th two-year term.

This year is shaping up as the most hotly contested mayor’s race in a decade, supplemented by some of the most contested aldermanic races in just as long.

The Registrar of Voters office must still certify that the candidates collected enough legitimate signatures to make the ballot. Democratic Registrar Sharon Ferrucci predicted the process would be completed by the middle of next week.

In the meantime, all five candidates will participate in the campaign’s first formal debate Thursday night in the Metropolitan Business Academy cafeteria at 115 Water St. The debate, sponsored by La Voz Hispana and the New Haven Independent, is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

The candidates will answer questions posed by reporters from La Voz, the Independent, the New Haven Register, WNPR, and One World. NBC30 will live-stream the debate; you can watch it on the Independent, NBC and WNPR ​“Your Public Media” websites. The Register also plans to live-stream the debate on its site.

Meanwhile, a second panel of journalists will be present at the debate leading a live-blog discussion of the event in real time. People in the audience or watching the debate at home can join that live discussion at the Independent, NBC, WNPR, and Register websites.

Ditto Lee

The candidates all handed in last-minute petitions just under the 4 p.m. deadline Wednesday in the registrar of voters office. They all said they got more than the required number of signatures; those claims can’t be verified until the registrars finish their days of checking and counting.

Robert Lee, for instance, dropped off what he said were 2,400 signatures collected by just eight campaign workers earlier in the day. He returns later with a batch that he claimed would bring the total to around 2,700. ​“I’m going as high as I can go,” he said. ​“Johnny’s not going to make it easy for us. You know that.”

It wasn’t immediately clear that all the signatures on the 115 pages he submitted at 1:30 p.m. would pass the test. Ferrucci (at left in photo above) pointed out a column on ditto marks where the signers should have printed their names. Lee (at right) shrugged it off.

“You’re going to see all kinds of crazy stuff in there,” he said.

Some of the writing is unintelligible because some of the seniors he petitioned couldn’t hold a pen well, Lee said. And other seniors didn’t want to put down their ages, he said. He said he would be bringing in 300 more signatures before the 4 p.m. deadline, in order to have a big buffer against potential disqualifications.

Ferrucci said the ditto marks wouldn’t automatically disqualify those signatures. If the name is readable in the signature line, and it matches the age, that might make a signature valid, she said.

Ferrucci (pictured) has called in reinforcements to supplement her office’s six staffers in checking the petitions. She had eight people total working on Wednesday. She said she expects to have 10 on Thursday and more on the weekend. ​“I’m calling everyone in,” she said after the clock struck 4 and the deadline for submitting petitions passed.

In the early counting she found that her office was certifying about 13 of every 20 signatures submitted, she said. (A page contains up to 20 signatures.)

A festive air filled the crowded registrar’s office on the second floor of 200 Orange St. as candidates handed in their last batches in the final moments Thursday.

Tony Dawson said he ended up handing in around 2,700 signatures. He was confident that his campaign took care to get valid names. ​“I didn’t go to supermarkets,” but rather went door to door with lists of registered voters, he said.

Clifton Graves claimed that his final haul brought his total of signatures to around 3,000.

The biggest haul, according to candidates’ unofficial self-reported numbers, was Kerekes’. He said he turned in around 3,500 signatures. ​“That’s almost half the number of people who voted for the mayor in the last election,” he noted, referring to the 2009 general election, in which 10,399 voters cast votes, 7,715 of them for DeStefano.

Click here for a story about a last-minute scramble among some aldermanic candidates to qualify for both the Democratic primary and the general election.