Call Her Landslide Harp

Two years after a grueling, close campaign, Mayor Toni Harp won a second term with 89 percent of the vote Tuesday, in part by making converts — or at least neutralizing critics — in East Rock, Westville and the East Shore.

Based on preliminary machine-ballot returns from 27 out of 30 wards, Harp, New Haven’s first female mayor, had around 10,784 votes to 1,070 for her nearest competitor, unaffiliated candidate Ron Smith. A third candidate, Sundiata Keitezulu, received 269 votes.

Click here for a ward-by-ward breakdown of the mayoral vote and results of all the alder and Board of Ed races.

All the endorsed candidates for school board (Edward Joyner and Darnell Goldson) and alder won their races Tuesday . There was one close race: In Yale’s Ward 1.

The polls were kept open late there because long lines of people were kept waiting to vote. Incumbent Sarah Eidelson ended up winning by 17 votes over Republican Ugonna Eze. A surge of same-day registrants and voters at City Hall narrowed the gap for Eze, who had been down by some 50 votes at the main Ward 1 polling place at the public library. Some people were sent away on line at 8 p.m. because they hadn’t yet completed their registration; some latecomers were upset about not being able to vote. ​“I had to explain the law that if you were fully registered — a 10 to 15-minute process — if that’s completed by the time you’re in line you get to vote,” said head election monitor John Cirello. Not so for other people. ​“I don’t like to send people away,” but he had to abide by the law. Cirello showed voters page 9 of the the secretary of the state’s manual, which makes clear that rule for election-day registration and voting.

A relaxed Harp danced with her supporters at her boisterous victory party at the Keys to the City nightclub. But first she gave a speech thanking the crowd and the city.

Harp gave a speech at a boisterous victory party at Keys to the City nightclub. ​“I stand before you tonight proud of what we have accomplished … and excited about the great work ahead of us,” Harp said.

She said that New Haven has made great strides in two years and she committed herself to working hard in her second term to help the ​“families and neighborhoods still in need” in a ​“thriving New Haven.” Harp danced with supporters upon finishing her speech.

“I stand before you tonight proud of what we together have accomplished, thankful for the trust you have placed in me, excited about the great win and the work ahead of us, and hopeful for a bright future for our city,” she said.

Two years ago, she said, ​“New Haven took a risk on me. On my leadership. On my skills. On my vision Today we are seeing that gamble pay off. So thank you.” She spoke of safer streets, a ​“vibrant” cultural and food scene, ​“new housing being built,” and ​“cutting-edge industries” coming to town.

“We know that while New Haven is thriving there are too many families and neighborhoods still in need,” she added, promising to focus on helping them in her second term.

Some Skeptics Won Over

Harp won her first term in 2013 in a field that began with seven Democratic primary opponents, then a general election in which her opponent came within 1,945 votes votes with 45 percent of the final tally. (Click here for a look at how that vote’s racial breakdown revealed a divided city.)

This time around she faced no primary challenge. In the general election she faced no challenger who had money, citywide name recognition, or any organizational support or ward-level vote-pulling operations.Outside of two debates, all the campaign’s events were Harp campaign events.

Historically, given the city’s two-year term, New Haven voters have given their mayors a second term as a matter of course.

But another factor contributed to Tuesday’s non-election: Harp in her first term won over or at least somewhat mollified many skeptics. Some decided that she didn’t turn out to fulfill the caricature painted by opponents in 2013. Others decided that she has actually done a good job lowering crime, creating new programs for young people in trouble, keeping city finances in check, bringing down the decades-old fence separating Hamden from West Rock public-housing developments, getting a new music hall opened in a long-empty College Street theater, launching a small-business center on Dixwell Avenue.

There was no groundswell for a challenger who could beat her.

Those second-look sentiments emerged in interviews Tuesday with voters leaving the polls in the wards that voted overwhelmingly in 2013 against Harp in favor of independent Justin Elicker: East Rock’s Wards 7, 9, 10 and 19; Westville’s Ward 25; and Morris Cove’s Ward 18. (Ward 7 also includes part of downtown, 19 a slice of Westville; Yale’s Ward 1 also voted overwhelmingly for Elicker, but many of those voters have since left town.) Only in the Cove did the attitude toward Harp, even among some who voted for her, remain wary or outright hostile.

“After two years in office,” observed Democratic Town Chairman Vincent Mauro Jr., ​“she has clearly become the mayor for the entire city.”

The number of people voting for her in Ward 25, for instance, rose from 461 in 2013 to 724 in this year’s ower-turnout, largely uncontested race.

Outside Ward 25’s Edgewood School polls, database analyst David Zukowski (pictured) said he voted against Harp in 2013 partly because ​“there was some negativity associated with her son’s activity as a landlord.” Since then he has learned that as an alderwoman back in the early 1990s, Harp had ​“been in favor of police reform that had [officers] on walking beats.” That discovery won him over, he said, as did the food truck festival her administration organized on Long Wharf. ​“She made a good appearance,” he said, and he loved the event.

Another ex-Elicker voter who moved to Harp Tuesday, an IT consultant who gave his first name as David (he declined to give his last name), also mentioned ​“rumors I heard” about her family’s real-estate business as having turned him against her in 2013. Since then he has been pleased to see her ​“more involved” than he’d expected, he said. ​“She just seems to be more hands-on than [former Mayor John] DeStefano.”

“She proved herself,” said Alice Leishman, a first-time Harp voter in the heart of Elicker country, East Rock’s Wilbur Cross High School voting spot. ​“After years the [State Street] Bridge is finally working. … [And] I like that she is fighting crime.”

At Ward 19’s Celentano Museum Academy polling station, Esther Berger (pictured) joined the former Elicker voters filling in Harp’s name this time around.

Esther Berger, a book illustrator and New Haven Reads tutor who serves as Ward 19 Democratic co-chair, cited the mayor’s programs ​“reaching out into many of the city’s neighborhoods.” She said the mayor is doing ​“a very good job. I’m particularly impressed with her Youth Stat,” Harp’s program that brings teachers, administrators, cops, social workers, and probation and parole officials in a room each week to figure out how to help kids sliding into serious trouble.

Michael Jones, an enthusiastic Elicker supporter in 2013, showed up early in the morning at Celentano Tuesday to cast his vote for Harp.

In 2015, Jones said, he gets the sense that Mayor Harp is out and about and thinking about the city as a whole, the way he felt Elicker did two years ago.

“She’s trying to work with the whole city. You see her out and you see more police out [too],” he said. ​“I live on Sheffield Street. I came home, on Sheffield last night. There was a beat, two cops on a walking beat on the street. 9:00 p.m.,” he said. Jones said he had not seen that previously.

Jones cited personally seeing Harp at an event at ​‘r Kids Family Center on Dixwell and elsewhere about town.

Still Skeptical In The Cove

By contrast, at Nathan Hale School in Morris Cove’s Ward 18, where more than 75 percent of the vote went to Elicker in 2013, even Harp’s voters offered grudging reasons at the polls Tuesday.

“She’s doing okay,” said Tracey DeMilo (pictured above), a 26-year Cove resident who works for North Haven’s fire department. She said she would have voted for Elicker again if he were on the ballot.

“I’m supposed to vote,” said Arlene Ferrucci, so she voted for Harp, even though she said ​“she’s not doing a great job. ​“Justin [Elicker],” a former two-term city alder, ​“was more qualified,” Ferrucci argued.

“I know her, and the others are totally unknown,” reasoned former New Haven Register science reporter Abe Katz .“She is doing an adequate job.” Katz quibbled about ​“robotic phone calls” from the mayor and about Townsend Avenue sidewalk repairs he suspected were timed to coincide with Election Day.

Harp did elicit more enthusiasm from social worker Barbara Golden (at left in photo) and office manager Deborah Oswalt (at right), former Elicker voters. They praised Harp’s support for, and attendance at, the International Festival of Arts & Ideas.

“I thought she was part of the old boys club — on the state [legislature’s appropriations] committee. I wasn’t sure how she would do standing on her own feet [as mayor]. And she is,” said Golden.

Republicans at the Cove polls said they left the mayoral line of the ballot blank. Their complaints: she has made a disaster of handling problems in the fire department; she doesn’t hire enough white people in City Hall (so when you visit it seems as though most employees are African-American); the city and the election are rigged anyway; that the city has been Democratic for too long.

Lucy Gellman and Emma Bromage contributed reporting.