Thomas Breen Photo
Karen DuBois-Walton: “New Haven knows how to come together and solve big problems in creative ways.”
Promising to rally New Haveners to tackle big challenges with “equity,” Karen DuBois-Walton has decided to explore a challenge to incumbent first-term Mayor Justin Elicker in a Democratic primary.
DuBois-Walton said in an interview Friday that she plans to hold an announcement of an exploratory mayoral campaign committee on Monday, which is International Women’s Day.
The formation of the committee will enable DuBois-Walton to raise money for her exploratory campaign. She said she intends to limit individual contributions to $375, so that when she switches over to a formal campaign she can participate in the city’s public-financing Democracy Fund.
Donald McAaulay Sr. is serving as her campaign treasurer. Robin Golden is her deputy campaign treasurer. No campaign manager has been announced yet.
DuBois-Walton, who is 53, serves as president and CEO of the Housing Authority of New Haven/Elm City Communities. She has spent months meeting with people about a mayoral run; she said she encountered “excitement” in many quarters about a potential run: “A lot of people feel left out, not included. They want to see leadership that will be inclusive and bring people together with energy.”
Elicker announced in January that he is running for reelection this year. (Click here to read about that, including his case for reelection.) Both he and DuBois-Walton are Democrats.
After Elicker’s 2019 mayoral victory, DuBois-Walton served on his transition team. In Friday’s interview, she refrained from criticizing him. Rather she focused on the moment, and the challenge, facing a diverse city looking to emerge from a brutal pandemic year.
“I don’t want to say anything ‘anti,’” DuBois-Walton said.
DuBois-Walton said that, if she decides to run, “I’m running for a vision, which is a vision of equity and inclusion, a vision of bringing people together. I don’t think any of these problems get solved in isolation. We [will] bring a team together that is energetic and excited about tackling problems.”
She spoke of inspiring a community recovering from the health, economic, and social losses of the Covid-19 pandemic: “It means positioning our young people to address this learning loss they’ve had, also the loss of recreation time and play time with friends. It’s addressing the distress our community is feeling which is coming out in many ways, including the increase in criminal activity and the tragic loss of life due to homicide.”
DuBois-Walton came to New Haven in 1985 to study at Yale.
“What drew me to New Haven is New Haven’s ability to come together and have big vision and take bold actions that you don’t see any other place daring to do. That’s the kind of leadership that’s needed to take on the multiple pandemics New Haven is facing right now. … Let’s come up with some creative stuff that people feel included in, rooted in equity. A spirit unlike the spirit we’ve lived through in the national conversation. Let’s do what New Haven knows how to do: come together and solve big problems in creative ways.”
Maya McFadden Photo
DuBois-Walton, at center, cutting ribbon in October on Phase II of rebuilt Rockview homes.
DuBois-Walton has been a part of that civic problem-solving process for decades, beginning with her work at the Yale Child Study Center in the early years of its joint program with city cops to help children exposed to violence address their trauma. Besides heading the housing authority, DuBois-Walton has served as mayoral chief of staff and city chief administrative officer, overseeing line departments like police, fire, parks, and public works. She serves on the state Board of Education. In the past four years she has organized community-wide forums about how to respond to the Trump administration; and, with her husband, she has organized Storytellers New Haven, events at which a diverse group of people active in the community have shared personal life stories. DuBois-Walton and five fellow Black women in September launched a political action committee called Ella’s Fund aimed at translating this summer’s grassroots uprisings for racial justice into lasting state and local political power.
In eyeing the mayor’s office, DuBois-Walton said Friday, she will look to do on a broader scale the kind of work the housing authority has done in low-income neighborhoods under her watch. Part of that work has involved rebuilding rundown developments into clean, safer neighborhoods, such as Rockview and Brookside, and Mill River Crossing (formerly Farnam Courts). Part of that work has involved offering opportunities for families: prenatal and early-childhood programs, in-school tutoring and after-school and employment programs for students, workforce development programs for adults.
“None of it is perfect,” DuBois-Walton said. It involves “working with people to meet them where they are, dream with them, and then put in supports.”
New Haven has traditionally given mayors second terms. The last one-term mayor, Thomas Tully, was elected in 1929; he wasn’t on the ballot in 1931. The one-term mayor before him, Samuel Campner, did lose a reelection bid in 1917. But Campner (New Haven’s first and only Jewish mayor) was actually a half-term mayor: As president of the Board of Aldermen (as it was then named), he ascended to the mayoralty in 1917 when the previous mayor died, and he served out the term.
“I welcome Dr. DuBois-Walton to the race,” Elicker told the Independent.
“I’m running for reelection so I can continue to ensure that we get through the pandemic, people get vaccinated, we get our kids back into school, we can continue house permanently individuals experiencing homelessness, and build on the work that we’ve already done.”