At ​“Unity Rally,” Harp, DeLauro Tap Into History

The scripted portion of the evening had ended. The music picked up — and Barbara Holden found herself dancing in the park.

Wooster Square Park, to be precise.

Holden, a 73-year-old retired hospital worker, was in the park Monday evening for a campaign rally. She stood in the park listening to U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro give a speech. DeLauro endorsed the mayoral campaign of Democrat Toni Harp. Holden cheered. Everyone cheered.

Holden stood in the park listening to a group of white- and gray-haired men who run the building trades unions, who previously had endorsed a different candidate in the Democratic mayoral primary, endorse Harp for the general election. Holden applauded. Everyone applauded.

Holden stood in the park listening to Harp herself give the keynote speech exhorting Democrats to vote for her on Nov. 5. Holden, along with more than 100 others present for the rally, cheered.

Then the deejays cranked up Harp’s campaign theme song, Alicia Keys’ ​“Girl On Fire.” DeLauro gave Harp a hug.

DeLauro, a tap dancer back in her childhood days, started dancing along with the song. (Click on the video at the top of this story to watch.)

Harp, caught up in the spirit, started dancing too.

Holden (at right in photo) started dancing. With gusto. So did a lot of other people, especially African-American women like Holden, caught up in the spirit.

The rally — a formal kick-off to Harp’s general-election campaign — had its revelatory moment.

Candidates draw voters for a variety of reasons: platforms, records, comparisons with the opposition, particularly effective marketing. Then they have their core supporters, the base for whom the campaign is a crusade, the passionate believers who identify personally with the candidate, who see themselves in him — or, as is the case of Harp, who’s running to become the city’s first female (and African-American female) mayor, her.

Harp’s opponent, independent Justin Elicker, has plenty of core supporters like that, too. One such revelatory moment about that base came in a communal locally-sourced 155-pound pig roast in East Rock at the home of the writer Jack Hitt; read all about that here. Elicker emerged as Harp’s top opponent in a crowded primary season in part because he convinced a significant number of New Haveners that he shares their passions for clean, for publicly-financed campaigns, for bike- and pedestrian-friendly streets, for a break from established political organizations and labor unions, as well as for home-bred chickens and environmentally conscious living. They see themselves in the candidate.

For some of the Harp supporters caught up in the spontaneous ​“Girl on Fire” celebration in Wooster Square Park Monday night, for people like Barbara Holden, Harp represents the culmination of a lifetime of gradual, hard-fought progress for women, especially African-American women.

They see their own history being made. They, too, see themselves in their candidate.

“This must happen. This has to happen,” Holden, a 73-year-old retired Yale-New Haven Hospital employee, said after the music ended. She was referring to Harp’s prospects of becoming mayor. She has been volunteering for Harp’s campaign, just as she volunteered 24 years ago to help John Daniels become the city’s first black mayor.

“This woman is opening doors for black females that have never been open in this city before,” Holden said.

Jan Parker is recovering from back surgery. That didn’t stop Parker (second from left in photo) from hopping into the midst of the ​“Girl on Fire” line dance.

“I hope the insurance people aren’t looking!” she joked.

Parker, 82 (pictured with fellow Harp women Esther Armand, Holden, and Carol Suber), has worked on campaigns, political campaigns, civil-rights campaigns, for more than a half century. She supported her husband Hank’s three runs for mayor. (Hank Parker won a different office, state treasurer, serving as the state’s highest African-American elected official.) Parker herself served a term in the state legislature.

She spoke of ​“watching” Harp’s ​“journey” over the past 26 years as first an alderwoman, then a state senator working her way up to the powerful position of co-chair of the legislature’s Appropriations Committee. Parker spoke of Harp’s mayoral campaign as the culmination of her own decades in the political trenches.

“You know who Fannie Lou Hamer was?” she asked. ​“A lot of that is happening in New Haven — women coming together. The joy is overwhelming.”

Audrey Tyson (second from left in photo), another woman who has spent decades working on campaigns, also got caught up in the moment. ​“I’m very proud as a black woman,” she said. ​“I feel like we’ve come a long way. This makes history for us.”

The event’s emcee, Hill Alderwoman and Democratic Town Chair Jackie James (at left in photo alongside Jimmy Kottage and Frank Ricci of the firefighters union), spoke of the campaign in terms of her role as ​“the mother of an African-American girl.” Girls like her daughter, she said, will ​“see there are great possibilities” if Harp gets elected.

The rally’s official speakers hit on some of the same themes, minus the music. They made a conscious link between the career of DeLauro — New Haven’s first female U.S. representative — and that of Harp.

“They are cut from the same cloth,” remarked former aldermanic board President Tomas Reyes in introducing DeLauro.

DeLauro herself spoke of her mom Luisa, a longtime Wooster Square alderwoman. (She spoke next to a sculpture entitled the ​“DeLauro family table.”) DeLauro quoted a line her mother had written in 1938 in a newsletter for her Democratic ward club: ​“Come on girls, let’s make ourselves heard!”

“Toni Harp has made herself heard” on issues ranging from health care to job creation, from homelessness to public safety to education, DeLauro said.

She spoke of how Harp, the daughter of a Greyhound bus and a Santa Fe railroad worker, helped organize a city government AFSCME local and served as a steward before entering political elected office. She emphasized the labor ties both she and Harp have. They both present years in elected office as a plus, as valuable experience, rather than presenting veteran elected office-holding as a problem; Harp has held her State Senate seat for 21 years, DeLauro her U.S. Congressional seat for 23 years.

And DeLauro specifically spoke to African-American women like Holden and Tyson: She noted that African-American women account for only 5 percent state legislators nationwide; that only a dozen or so cities with more than 50,000 people — and only one city with a population over 100,000 (Baltimore) — have a black woman as mayor.

In her own remarks, Harp spoke of DeLauro in turn as a ​“trailblazer and a glass-ceiling breaker,” ​“an inspiration to me.”

Then she noted paid sick-leave and gun control as examples of issues DeLauro has promoted in Congress while Harp has simultaneously promoted them in Hartford.

Harp chose not to mention Elicker or criticize his campaign. Instead, she focused on ​“what it means to be a Democrat” — a call to the party faithful, the largest voting block in the city, to stick together in November. She defined Democrats thusly: ​“The party of Roosevelt. Of Kennedy. Of Obama. The party of Ella Grasso. And the party of Rosa DeLauro.”