Paul Bass Photo
Tyler Kuhn & Jonathan Wharton at WNHH.
Stop the presses: Republicans will run for office in New Haven this fall.
At least one office. Or two. Maybe even four.
Somewhere in town.
We just don’t know where yet.
That word comes from two men working mightily to revive bright-blue New Haven’s Grand Old Party, which last elected a mayor in 1951; has elected zero members to the city’s 30-member Board of Alders or to its state legislative seats; and hasn’t run even sacrificial candidates for most positions in recent years.
GOP Town Chairman Jonathan Wharton has revived the party since taking over last year, holding fundraisers, serving on city commissions, developing a platform that differs from the Democratic Party consensus on immigration policy and governnment transparency. Now he and local party secretary Tyler Kuhn, a 25-year-old who works in the Knights of Columbus legal department, are busy recruiting candidates to run for at least some Board of Alders seats in this fall’s general elections. (They don’t plan to run a candidate for mayor, they said.)
“We’re in rebuilding mode. We’ve got a lot of excitement going on in the local field. If we can concentrate our resources on one, two, three, four five races. That’s how you start rebuliding a party,” Kuhn, a Dartmouth graduate who grew up in Cleveland, said during an appearance with Wharton on WNHH radio’s “Dateline New Haven” program.
They said they have some identified potential candidates and are now making sure those folks have time to commit to a campaign. “Anybody who’s going to run has to be truly and fully on board and fully committed to this race,” Kuhn said.
The party is targeting races downtown and in the Westville, East Rock, and Morris Cove neighborhoods, he said.
Wharton, who teaches political science at Southern Connecticut State University, said the party hopes to announce members of an alder slate at a party fundraiser planned for June 29 at City Point Kitchen. (Click here to read about the event there last year.) The party has raised thousands of dollars at fundraisers this past year, Wharton said, with interest from Republicans outside the city as well as within New Haven.
As of the beginning of May, New Haven had 45,532 registered Democratic voters, 2,785 registered Republicans, 18,359 registered unaffiliated voters, and 595 registered with other parties, according to the registrar of voters office.
Kuhn is serving on New Haven’s Board of Ethics. Wharton sits on the City Plan Commission, where has has spoken up against a proposal from members of the Board of Alders to create a new “high impact” special exception zoning category that would add a new layer of approval to any university development projects. In the “Dateline” interview, Wharton argued that city needs to make it easier, not more cumbersome, to build here. And he attributed the proposal’s intent to the agenda of the alder majority backed by Yale’s UNITE HERE union locals.
“It’s another example of how they like to delay things here in town. They love to choke anything that’s possible here,” Wharton argued. “Any cause … they will use as leverage. They love to have a chokehold on what can be done and what can’t be done. They’re too effective. They’re too powerful. They clearly have a way of preventing things from getting done and politicizing causes very effectively. Unfortunately that’s dominating the Board of Alders.”
The proposal’s proponents argue that it would make development more democratic, requiring Yale in particular to spell out the community benefits of development projects, as well as impacts on parking, mass transit, local hiring, and open space.
Click on or download the above audio file to hear the full episode of WNHH’s “Dateline New Haven” with Jonathan Wharton and Tyler Kuhn.