Paul Bass Photo
Former city development chief Henry Fernandez began his official campaign for mayor — and called for delaying the hiring of a new schools superintendent until after the election.
Fernandez (pictured), who’s 44, told the Independent Monday that he plans to file formal papers establishing his candidacy this week. His campaign has begun meeting and has this website up and running.
The campaign also has a slogan: “One City.”
“We’re best in New Haven when we’re all working together. What benefits one neighborhood benefits all neighborhoods,” Fernandez said of the campaign theme. “If you do well, I do well. When our schools are better, that benefits all of us, even if we don’t have children in the schools. When crime is reduced anywhere in the city, that’s good for us everywhere in the city.”
Fernandez joins a growing field of Democratic candidates looking to replace outgoing 10-term incumbent Mayor John DeStefano. Newhallville state Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield and East Rock Alderman Justin Elicker have already announced their candidacies and started campaigning. Probate Judge Jack Keyes this past week also put out word that he’s running for mayor and has begun making the public rounds. Hillhouse High School Principal Kermit Carolina is expected to announce his candidacy soon. Newhallville plumber Sundiata Keitazulu has filed papers to run for mayor, as well.
Fernandez has been active in city life for more than two decades. After graduating from Yale Law School, he was the founding director of the LEAP youth mentoring program. In 1998, facing a potentially career-ending corruption scandal, Mayor DeStefano tapped Fernandez (on the advice of then-state Rep. Bill Dyson) to take over and clean up the administration’s troubled neighborhood anti-blight agency, the Livable City Initiative (LCI). Fernandez subsequently ascended to the position of top city economic development officer. Since 2004 he has run a firm that consults with progressive not-for-profit organizations such as criminal justice reform, voter registration, get-out-the-vote and immigration-reform efforts around the country. He also serves as a fellow with the Center for American Progress (whose website has a page collecting his opinion articles on a wide range of issues).
The campaign doesn’t have a manager yet. Bruce Ditman, who runs the marketing department for a national accounting firm out of a downtown New Haven office, has signed on as treasurer. “I knew Henry by reputation growing up here,” Ditman said Monday. “The reputation speaks for itself — his accomplishments helped make our city the greatest small city in America.” Another early campaign volunteer is Keisha Blake, who co-owns the Seychelles shop downtown and is active with the Urban League’s young professionals group. “I believe he’s the progressive candidate,” Blake said of Fernandez. “His experience in New Haven is very diverse — I believe his outlook is going to unite New Haven.”
Not So Fast On Search
In an interview Monday, Fernandez praised the emerging school reform drive in town, with special praise for the involvement of the teachers union. He raised questions about the current search for a new superintendent to replace Reggie Mayo, who retires on July 1 after two decades in the job. The school board has launched a “national search” that it intends to complete by the end of June in the hopes of having someone permanent at the helm in time for the next academic year. Assistant Superintendent Garth Harries is widely expected to be the favorite to emerge from the sped-up search.
Fernandez said he admires the work Harries has done. But he said the school board shouldn’t pick a permanent replacement until the city knows who will be the next mayor. And he argued that New Haven “deserves” a true search that includes the best possible pool of candidates.
“If Garth gets this job, and he and the next mayor simply disagree on the future of the schools, the we’re going to have to pay a lot of money to get rid of Garth,” Fernandez said.
“I think he’s a strong candidate. I think he’s an extremely smart guy. He has helped improve the New Haven schools. He should be in a competitive process with some of the best candidates around the country.”
Fernandez said he has worked with superintendents “around the country.” “High-quality superintendent candidates are often recruited by mayors and want to know who the mayor is going to be,” he said.
Bypassing Democracy Fund
Fernandez will be the first major candidate in the race to bypass the Democracy Fund, New Haven’s voluntary public-financing system for mayoral campaigns.
He called himself a “big supporter” of the fund. “It allows a lot of candidates to enter the race,” he said.
So why bypass it?
“Unfortunately, I’m entering this race really late,” Fernandez responded. “So I have five months to raise money. I need to be able to do so quickly. Unfortunately, the Democracy Fund doesn’t allow for that.”
Elicker and Holder-Winfield have both signed up to participate in the Democracy Fund, which offers matching public dollars in return for a promise to limit individual contributions to $370 and swear off donations from outside committees. Candidates who collect at least 200 donations of at least $10 can quality for a $19,000 grant from the fund plus matching dollars. The fund matches the first $25 of donations at a rate of two to one. The goal of the fund is to enable a wider range of candidates to run for office with enough money to compete; to keep down the overall cost of campaigning; and to limit the influence of outside special interests like large corporations.
In an interview last week, Jack Keyes did not say whether he will or not he will participate in the fund in his own mayoral campaign. But he said he has been “bitterly disappointed” by U.S. Supreme Court decisions — most recently in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission —that prevents campaign-finance laws from limiting spending and outside special-interest contributions to candidates. He questioned how effective campaign-finance laws can now be as a result. “Citizens United annihilated it,” Keyes said. “Some corporation can write you a check for a million dollars.”
“One City”
Fernandez exchanges phone numbers with candidate Holder-Winfield at an immigration rights rally last month.
In elaborating on his “One City” campaign theme, Fernandez Monday cited his central role in City Hall in the decision to bring Gateway Community College to a new campus downtown.
The college opened up last year on downtown blocks that had stood empty for three decades as officials tried unsuccessfully to lure a private developer to build on the grave of the old Malley’s and Macy’s department stores. It has since brought thousands of people downtown, enlivening street life, creating a market for more new small businesses and apartments, Fernandez said.
The move also made a statement about how much New Haven “cherishes education for the people who live here. We ought to make it accessible, affordable, and in the center of the city.”
As another example of a “One City” approach, of how different neighborhoods’ fates hang together, Fernandez brought up property taxes. Some neighborhoods — notably East Rock — have been socked with in some cases astronomical property-tax hikes. That has happened not just because those neighborhoods are doing well, but because other neighborhoods have seen their own values plummet.
He cited Fair Haven, for example, where his family owns a home.
“Mortgages are under water. Our prime assets — our homes — are worth less than the mortgages, even what we paid for them,” he observed. He said the key to improving property values in Fair Haven, the Hill, Dixwell, Newhallville, lies in strengthening the schools, cutting crime rates, working with young people more. When values recover in those neighborhoods, assessments can drop in, say, East Rock.
As mayor, he’d seek to find private donors to help revive concerts that draw tens of thousands of people to the Green and make New Haven feel like “one city,” Fernandez said. He’d also seek to revive a former citywide concert series in neighborhood parks.
He’d also seek private help in making sure each neighborhood has its own youth center, he said. And he’d seek to create a capital fund, again including private donations, to make sure those centers can stay open by paying for emergency building repairs.