Clinton Wins Backing Of Key New Haven Minister

After a whirlwind day with a former president and an aspiring next president, the Rev. Eldren Morrison Friday said he’s backing Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Morrison has emerged as a leading figure in New Haven civic life in recent years as the pastor of fast-growing Varick AME Zion Church, one the city’s oldest and most historic congregations; chairman of the city’s fire commission, and the founder of a new charter school.

On Thursday morning Hillary Clinton invited Morrison to Hartford to participate in a roundtable discussion on gun violence as part of her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Thursday afternoon, Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, arrived at Varick on Dixwell Avenue. He spent an hour and a half behind closed doors pitching his wife’s campaign to about 30 African-American ministers from around the state. Clinton argued that Hillary Clinton’s agenda would directly help the black and Latino communities and that she is best able to get her ideas enacted into law by working across the partisan divide, according to Morrison. He said Clinton also argued that ​“her policies will continue the Obama administration’s policies. They’re just a natural flow from much of that work.”

Morrison said Friday that he will vote for Clinton in this coming Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary. He said he’s speaking for himself; his church does not make endorsements.

“I’m supporting the person that came to see me, that reached out to me,” Morrison said.

He was asked what message he plans to deliver to his congregation — which regularly fills the expansive church for three separate Sunday services each week — about the election.

“I tell my congregation always, ​‘You look at those who have been here with you and for you even before this election process. Those who helped you. You need to vote, whether you’re voting Democratic, Republican, or whatever. My main thing is to get people out there to the polls,” Morrison responded.

“But I also tell them, ​‘You need to be educated on the issues. You need to go for people who have come to see you and care about you.’ … I am looking at the person who reached out to me.”

Morrison said he sensed that ​“the majority” of the ministers present at the Bill Clinton session support Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Some ministers present do support her Democratic primary opponent, Bernie Sanders, he added.

Come November, he said, the consensus in the room was: ​“Whoever wins the [Democratic] nomination, we’re going to support.”

Perhaps the most significant aspect of Thursday’s Varick session was the coming together of Baptist and Methodist and Pentecostal clergy, Morrison said.