Elicker Flips 3 More Committees

Three more Democratic committees that supported Toni Harp for mayor in 2013 voted Monday night to back her challenger instead this year — putting old friends like Sharon Jones and Audrey Tyson in a bind.

Challenger Justin Elicker won endorsement votes from the Democratic committees in Upper Westville’s Ward 26, 23 – 8; Beaver Hills’ Ward 29, 12 – 7; and Downtown’s Ward 7, 7 – 2.

Harp won the endorsements of all three committees when she faced Elicker in the 2013 election. (The mayor did win one endorsement vote Monday night, in West Hills’ Ward 30.)

The endorsement votes are non-binding. They’re basically a straw poll to advise each ward’s two co-chairs as they prepare to cast votes next week when they attend a citywide Democratic Party convention. Each ward’s two co-chairs gets to cast a vote as the party decides whom to endorse for the Sept. 10 primary. And in each of the three wards that flipped Monday night, at least one co-chair has personally supported Harp in the past.

Ward 26 Co-Chair Sharon Jones still does support Harp. After her ward committee voted 3 – 1 to back Elicker at a meeting Monday night at Manjares’ new tapas bar on West Rock Avenue, Jones told the assembled she was going to need to think over how she’ll vote next week at the convention. She was torn: Should she vote to endorse the person she personally supports? Or the one supported by a majority, but not a unanimous majority, of the Democratic ward committee she co-leads?

Her ward has a tradition of co-chairs ​“honoring the substantial will” of the committee in casting mayoral endorsement votes. Is a 3 – 1 split decisive enough to merit both co-chairs voting for Elicker?

After thinking it over and chatting with her fellow co-chair, Amy Marx (an Elicker supporter), Jones made a decision: She’ll cast a vote for Elicker next week.

“In my heart I want” Harp, she said. ​“But democratically, to mess with the integrity and the confidence these [ward committee members] put in me — I can’t let them down.”

Ward 26, one of the city’s more racially diverse, has a particularly engaged Democratic committee, with a tradition of members respectfully disagreeing with each other, and remaining colleagues, Jones noted.

“This,” she said, ” is what democracy is about — everybody feeling free and comfortable to say, ​‘I don’t agree with you, and I don’t hate you either.’”

Toni Harp lived in Ward 26 for years until moving to a new home in Ward 25, which covers mostly lower Westville. The ward committee there, too, voted recently to support Elicker. And one of the co-chairs, Tish Welfare, had a similar decision to make: She’s a longtime friend of Harp and continues to support her. But she vowed to vote according to her ward committee’s wishes at next week’s convention and back Elicker.

Tyson: ​“We Need To Talk”

Over in Beaver Hills Monday night, Ward 29 Democratic committee Co-Chair Audrey Tyson was having more trouble coming to a conclusion. She has been a longtime Harp supporter. And her ward decisively chose Elicker after hearing both candidates make a pitch at a meeting held at the Edge of the Woods natural foods store/restaurant on Whalley Avenue.

Tyson said after the meeting that she will meet with both Elicker and Harp before making a decision. She was already fielding calls from supporters in both camps looking to influence her vote.

“We’re not bound by the vote. But he did win. We need to talk about that,” Tyson said.

“It’s a hard one for me. We are old friends. But I think Justin is a great person. I served on the City Plan Commission with him. I don’t have a negative thing to say about him. I have to sit down with him and sit down with her and decide. It can only be one of them.”

Downtown Decision Looms

Ward 7’s co-chairs, Nadine Wall and Otis Johnson, have also backed Harp in the past. Their ward has been one of the city’s fastest-growing, and has emerged as one of the top voting districts. It also represents the ​“new” New Haven, with population growth downtown fueled by new market-rate apartment construction. (Read about that here.)

Wall was not present at Monday night’s endorsement vote, which took place in the basement hearing room of the 200 Orange St. municipal office building. Johnson did not reveal after the vote which candidate he plans to support at next week’s convention. But he noted that he is not bound by the ward committee vote. And he plugged the mayor’s record.

“Ward 7 has benefitted more than any other ward from the Harp administration’s progress,” Johnson said. He spoke of the increase in recent years in new jobs and entertainment and transportation options. ​“You have to look at the record,” Johnson said.” People don’t take the amount of progress we’ve had into consideration as much as they should.”

He called Ward 7, which includes new luxury apartments as well as the McQueeney public-housing tower on Orange Street, ​“an especially politically diverse ward.” The committee can hold up to 50 people; nine people ended up attending to vote on the nonbiding mayoral endorsement. Johnson said the turnout was smaller than anticipated Monday night because ​“many residents have moved and graduated in recent months.”

Before ward members voted, they heard pitches from three mayoral candidates: Elicker, Urn Pendragon and Wendy Hamilton.

Elicker called New Haven ​“two cities”. ​“While Yale has a spread of beautiful buffets for students, families down the street are struggling to put food on the table,” he said.

Hamilton pressed Elicker with questions on property taxes. ​“I can’t promise not to raise property taxes,” he responded.

Elaine Piraino-Holevoet and her husband Don Holevoet have lived on Orange street since 1976. They said their property taxes have skyrocketed. So Elaine Holevoet was ​“a bit disappointed with Elicker’s response on property taxes.”

Elaine Holevoet said she likes Elicker’s ideas but thinks ​“Yale is often seen as the solution for everything.” She said Yale gives back to the community in other forms besides taxes that the public might not be fully aware of. Elicker has called for Yale to give New Haven a $50 million annual voluntary contribution. (Hamilton has upped that number to $250 million in her campaign platform.)

For Holevoet, ​“when I think Elicker, the word honesty comes to mind,” she said. She argued that Harp ​“hasn’t surrounded herself with the best people.”

Candidate Hamilton pulled out a stack of articles about injustice and poverty during her pitch. ​“The wealth gap is such a chasm that even middle-class families don’t know when they could lose their houses. Any one of us could be on the street,” she said.

Pendragon said her main priorities are green energy, lead poisoning, and affordable housing. She said she will fight because ​“gentrification is a side effect of not holding City Hall accountable.”

The committee also heard from two candidate for a seat on the Board of Education: incumbent board President Darnell Goldson and challenger Amber Moye.

Goldson, who is running for a second term, said he has ​“deep roots in New Haven.” Goldson previously served four years on the Board of Alders. he called education ” the new civil rights issue” and referenced a recent Independent report on suburbs profiting off New Haven magnet schools.

“That money is ours,” Goldson said. ​“We’re going to go get that money.”

Challenger Amber Moye said she is running ​“to support students who look like me and who I have served.” Moye said she is dedicated to help mend the disconnect between parents and teachers and ​“make sure to put the kids first.” The Ward 7 committee voted 7 – 1 to support Moye over Goldson.

West Hills Backs Harp

Harp did get one resounding vote of confidence Wednesday night: The Democratic committee in Ward 30, which encompasses the West Hills and West Rock neighborhoods, voted for her over Elicker 17 – 1.

However, that doesn’t mean Harp will get both co-chair votes at the convention. One of the co-chairs, incumbent Alder Michelle Edmonds-Sepulveda, boycotted the meeting and the vote, saying she and others had been excluded in order to rig the vote. (Her co-chair denied the charge.) Edmonds-Sepulveda faces a challenge for her seat this year from Honda Smith (who won the ward committee vote 18 – 0 Monday night); Mayor Harp has endorsed Smith over Edmonds-Sepulveda.

Asked whom she plans to support in next week’s convention endorsement vote for mayor, Edmonds-Sepulveda replied, ​“I don’t know.”

Elicker stopped by the meeting before the vote, which took place at the Rock Creek Road home of ward Co-Chair Edmonds-Sepulveda. He spoke about a divide between downtown and ​“the neighborhoods that are often forgotten.” He promised to bolster free summer and after-school programming, increase job opportunities for New Haven residents in areas like construction and healthcare, and require new developers to offer affordable housing.

As the committee deliberated, Johnson told the group about an early encounter she had with Harp when she was a student in West Haven. Harp, then a state senator, offered to give her a ride home from an event they both attended. When they drove by a man collecting bottles in a shopping cart, Johnson recalled that Harp said, ​“That’s the kind of person I want to help.”

“I took that with me,” Johnson told the group.

“I don’t see Justin Elicker as a follow-through guy,” said Cassandra Lang. ​“He ran [in 2013]. He lost. And then he sat down.”

Celesta Keareney agreed. ​“He came to a couple of meetings and then fell off the face of the earth,” she said.

“He was talking to people, but it wasn’t to us,” Lang added.

Mayoral candidate Urn Pendragon arrived after most committee members had cast their votes. She spoke to the group, focusing her speech largely on implementing inclusionary zoning laws that would promote affordable housing. She handed out business cards, copies of a thesis proposing a New Haven Green Deal, and an article she had written about the importance of electing LGBTQ+ political representatives.