DeStefano Survives Strong Challenge

(Updated 10 p.m.) Move over, Elizur Goodrich: Mayor John DeStefano is kicking you off of your longtime perch in New Haven’s history books.

DeStefano Tuesday night won a record 10th two-year term as New Haven’s mayor.

But it didn’t come easily. DeStefano faced his strongest challenge since he was first elected, in 1993, from first-time candidate, independent Jeffrey Kerekes.

With all city precincts reporting, according to results collected by the New Haven Independent, DeStefano held onto a 55 to 45 percent lead. DeStefano outspent Kerekes about 20 to 1. It was the closest a challenger has come to DeStefano since he became mayor.

See all our election results here, of the mayoral and aldermanic races.

That means DeStefano can surpass the 18 1/2 year reign of Elizur Goodrich, who served as New Haven’s mayor from 1803 to 1822. Goodrich wasn’t popularly elected; the legislature appointed him. DeStefano is already New Haven’s longest-serving elected mayor, having topped Dick Lee’s 16 years in the last election.

But the city voters clearly exhibited some DeStefano fatigue in an anti-incumbent year across the country. Jeffrey Kerekes, with a message that DeStefano has fallen down on the job in his handling of crime and the schools and the city budget, showed strength throughout the city. He won five wards, and he came surprisingly close in wards from Dixwell to Fair Haven to Fair Haven Heights.

DeStefano addressed hundreds of supporters crammed into the Wicked Wolf bar at Crown and Temple streets for a victory party.

In an indication of how bitter the contest had become, DeStefano did not congratulate Kerekes on a hard-fought campaign, the way victors often do.

He told his supporters Tuesday night that the message of the election is that voters in New Haven want government to get more active on pressing issues, not less.

“We need to do more” on school reform, job creation, and building the tax base, DeStefano said. (Click on the play arrow at the top of this story to watch.)

A prominent longtime DeStefano backer, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, told the crowd, ​“John DeStefano has returned New Haven to its glory days.”

During his election-night concession speech, Kerekes did congratulate DeStefano. But he also came out swinging. Click the play arrow to hear it.

“The problems we’ve been talking about haven’t gone anywhere,” Kerekes told some 30 supporters gathered at his headquarters at his Lyon Street home. He said he was proud of having run a clean campaign; he said. He said DeStefano hadn’t.

Kerekes did not rule out running again in two years. Whatever he decides, he promised to keep fighting for the issues he cares about.

Kerekes said he called DeStefano; the mayor didn’t take the call, he said. DeStefano’s campaign manager said WEdnesday that DeStefano hadn’t had his phone on him at the time. He did return the call later when he retrieved the phone, and called Kerekes back. (Kerekes was not available, he said.)

Also Tuesday night, challenger Carlton Staggers decisively knocked Darnell Goldson out of his Ward 30 aldermanic seat, in the West Rock neighborhood. Jeanette Morrison became Ward 22’s new alderwoman, in Dixwell, overcoming a challenge from Cordelia Thorpe. Westville’s Sergio Rodriguez held onto his seat in a challenge from Darryl Brackeen in Westville’s Ward 26. Barbara Constantinople, a Democrat, trounced incumbent independent Alderwoman Maureen O’Sullivan-Best in Fair Haven Heights. And Sarah Eidelson is the new alderwoman from Yale’s Ward 1.

Feeble Flyers?

Some of the more surprising results came in the black community. DeStefano won the wards there, but Kerekes posted a strong showing.

It was known to both campaigns that Kerekes’ biggest and most important hurdle — and DeStefano’s stronghold — would be the black vote. Or, if that turned out not to be the case, then DeStefano might have more to worry about than most observers believed.

The black vote carried DeStefano to a clear victory the last time he faced this spirited a challenge, in 2001 against state Sen. Marty Looney in a Democratic mayoral primary. This time around, DeStefano worked hard to line up endorsements from church leaders and other prominent figures in the black community, such as former mayoral opponent Anthony Dawson and the Firebirds, a black firefighters’ group. DeStefano also flooded the homes of sympathetic black voters with campaign flyers savaging Kerekes and promoting the incumbent (as he did in other neighborhoods).

Kerekes, who’s white, has little name recognition in New Haven, especially in the black community, a reassurance to the DeStefano camp; it was believed that a prominent black challenger would have had a good chance of unseating the mayor.

Kerekes tried to counter those disadvantages by spending quite a bit of time personally knocking on doors in Dixwell, Newhallville and the Hill neighborhoods, and with a final-weekend ad blitz on WYBC-FM, the main radio station targeted to New Haven’s African-American community. He also got the endorsement of two activist African-American leaders, educator Gary Highsmith and defense attorney Michael Jefferson.

Random interviews with African-American voters at polling places Tuesday revealed that Kerekes had gotten through to at least portions of the community; a surprising number of people claimed they had voted for the challenger.

“It’s time for a change,” 78-year-old Lillian Huckaby said as she walked out of the Ward 28 polling place, Hillhouse High School. Another voter there, retired cop Rick Randall, added, ​“Bricks and mortar don’t teach students,” saying DeStefano’s citywide school rebuilding program didn’t impress him; he too voted for Kerekes.

“I voted for change,” seconded Ron Copeland, as he stepped out of Ward 29’s polling station at Beecher School in the Beaver Hills neighborhood. Copeland said he received ​“18,000” mailings from DeStefano; he dismissed them as a ​“joke. It didn’t fool me.”

Another Beaver Hills voter, Margo Johnson-Taylor, 72, decided to stick with DeStefano — reluctantly, she said. ​“Jeffrey [Kerekes] doesn’t have enough experience,” which she considered a shame. ​“If the president is limited to two terms,” she said, ​“nobody should be in there for 20 years. No matter how great you are, you’re not that great … You need some new ideas.”

“Information can’t improve the status of what’s going on,” Mamie, a school bus driver, said in reference to DeStefano’s mailers, as she left a Dixwell Avenue voting station, the former Urban Youth middle school. ​“Words don’t mean a hill of beans. They have to show me.” R. Nelson, a 44-year-old Democrat, chimed in: ​“It’s the same story [with DeStefano]. Nothing’s changed; a bunch of broken promises. He has given us beautiful schools, but we can’t get the kids to stay in them. What’s the point of having the beautiful schools if we can’t get them to go to the schools? We need a change — someone who’s on the same page, about saving youth.”

A Kerekes voter at Lincoln-Bassett School predicted DeStefano would win because ​“we [African-Americans] fight amongst ourselves too much. I should have mailed some of the stuff [DeStefano mailings] back. Too bad they didn’t have a delete button, like on Facebook.”

Harriet, a Democrat, cited the WYBC ads. ​“I liked the statement that [Kerekes] made that people are tired of the mayor. I liked how he went about it. Everything’s outrageous in New Haven right now. We need to clean it up. Everything’s messed up for no reason.”

Even a DeStefano fan over in Westville, retired schoolteacher Phyllis Friedman, said the mailings ​“did not affect me at all. I had already made up my mind. I knew I was going to vote for Mayor DeStefano. I think that his [school reform plan and school rebuilding program] have been outstanding. I understand that crime is a problem in New Haven, but I can’t fault him directly for that. I think that he has probably been in too long, but he has done a good job, and we haven’t had good opposition that would cause me to vote for someone else.”

Ariela Martin, Allan Appel, Nicole Morales, Deni Cifuentes, and Neena Satija contributed reporting to this story.