Harp Unleashes Last-Minute Secret Weapon

Toni Harp smiled Tuesday.

A lot.

She had to learn to do that in her campaign for mayor. By the final two weeks, her staff had finally convinced her to shelve that impassive ​“legislator look” and let her face light up. Especially at debates. Even if she was being called unpleasant names or accused of unpleasant deeds.

Harp, the Democrat facing petitioning candidate Justin Elicker in the race to succeed retiring 20-year incumbent Mayor John DeStefano, kept the smile flashing as longtime Election Day driver Byron Breland (15 years behind the wheel) shuttled her and her entourage in a 2010 Honda Crosstour to greet voters at polling places around town Tuesday.

Staffers kept after Harp throughout the campaign to smile more from her first, downcast appearance in a candidates’ debate back at Davis Street School back on May 20. They continued pressing the point, with limited success, throughout the primary. Even the producer of a primary radio space urged her to smile — to improve how she sounded. ​“When you smile,” Harp recalled him telling her, ​“you light up. If you smile it gives you a different level of energy.”

Harp didn’t disagree. She already smiled plenty of times in a typical day, just not often while in the midst of political activity. She needed to reorient herself, she said Tuesday.

“I discovered there’s a ​‘legislator look,’” the 11th-term state senator said. ​“Because we’re always listening. We go inside ourselves.”

Then came preparation for a high-stakes debate two weeks ago, at Gateway Community College. Two debate coaches from Yale kept emphasizing the need to smile. This time the advice clicked. Harp kept smiling through most of the debate, and did so again during much of this past Sunday’s live WTNH debate. She came across as more comfortable and forceful in those debates than she had in the 15 or so primary debates.

Harp kept smiling on the trail Tuesday as she encountered volunteers and voters in the Wilbur Corss High School parking lot (pictured at the top of the story) …

… as she said hello to independent aldermanic candidate Andy Ross …

… as well as to state Sen. Marty Looney and Democratic aldermanic candidate Aaron Greenberg at Conte-West Hills School in Wooster Square’s Ward 8 …

.. and as she hugged U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro at Prospect Hill/Ward 19’s polling place, at Celentano School.

She even smiled for WTNH’s Mark Davis as she expressed optimism that she would prevail in her quest Tuesday to become New Haven’s first-ever female mayor.

Campaign staffer Chris Campell, who accompanied Harp on her rounds, said he had a reason to smile too: By 11:30 the campaign had hit 13 polling places. At 8 of the 13, not a single Elicker campaign worker was in sight.