Paul Bass Photo
It wasn’t officially a mayoral “campaign” event at the Elks Club Tuesday night. But it sure felt like one.
The event — an “exploratory committee” rally — drew hundreds of people to the venerable Webster Street social club to support Hillhouse Principal Kermit Carolina’s quest to become the next mayor of New Haven.
Though a campaign slogan — “Putting Neighborhoods First”— was already on the wall, Carolina (at right in photo) hasn’t officially announced his mayoral candidacy yet. He is expected to do so in coming weeks.
Instead he has formed an “exploratory” committee to prepare for a run. He introduced that committee to the crowd that filled the Elks Club banquet hall, occupying all the tables and flowing out the doors.
Then he announced his running mate for the campaign: Anne Weaver Lozon (at left in photo), a 47-year-old management consultant and mom of three from Westville. Lozon plans to run for city clerk as part of the Carolina campaign. She’s at this point officially “exploring” that campaign, too. (Another Westvillean, Lincoln-Bassett social studies teacher Darryl Brackeen, has signed on to manage the Carolina campaign.)
After Carolina and Lozon spoke to the crowd, Bethany S. Watkins (pictured), the campaign’s director of administration, handed out a stack of “street captain” sign-up cards for attendees to fill out and distribute to neighbors. The campaign has identified 515 initial priority streets in 19 “must-win” wards where it wants to have captains ready to start identifying supporters after the official launch.
“We’ve got to hit the streets hard. New Haven knows what hitting the streets means,” Watkins told the crowd.
Expect to see that as a running theme of the Carolina campaign: Its success will hinge on its ability to ignite and in some cases register to vote a grassroots base of neighborhood activists, similar to the effort that launched Dixwell’s John Daniels to the mayor’s office in 1989 (a campaign that Carolina and some of his current supporters participated in).
This is shaping up as an unusual New Haven mayoral race: As many as five candidates have the potential to raise enough money to compete and draw on sizable potential bases of support. The race will come down to who can translate that potential into organizational strength and deliver a convincing enough message voters in order to get between 8,000 to 11,000 of those supporters to the polls.
Among the figures in the Elks Club crowd Tuesday night were statewide NAACP President Scot X. Esdaile and activist Clifton Graves, who ran for mayor in 2011. Both said they were attending the event as “observers.”
Esdaile observed the energy and high turnout in the room. “By the look of this event, Kerm definitely has the people from the streets,” Esdaile remarked.
Upon officially announcing his campaign for the Democratic mayoral nomination, Carolina would join a crowded field. Newhallville state Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield, East Rock Alderman Justin Elicker, and former city economic development chief Henry Fernandez have already began officially campaigning for the same nomination. A Newhallville plumber named Sundiata Keitazulu has, too. Probate Judge Jack Keyes is expected to join the field in coming weeks as well. They’re all seeking to succeed Mayor John DeStefano, who is retiring at the end of 2013 after two decades in office. Like all the announced candidates except for Fernandez, Carolina has vowed to participate in the city’s “clean elections” public-financing system, run by the Democracy Fund. (Read more about that here and here.)