In Scramble, Petitioners Confront Skeptics

“Turn the TV down!” the voter called into his living room as the campaigns of four would-be mayors hit the streets on Day One of a two-week citywide blitz. The voter turned his attention to the woman at his door: ​“What do you want?”

“Attorney Graves is running for mayor for New Haven, and I’m here today to ask you to please sign the petition so he can get on the ballot.”

Claudine Wilkins-Chambers made that pitch to a voter Wednesday afternoon, a few hours after her candidate picked up petitions to get on the ballot for the Sept. 13 Democratic primary.

The hard-to-convince ​“voter” she was talking to wasn’t really standing at the threshold of his home with a noisy TV. He was leaning on a podium at Graves’ campaign headquarters on Whalley Avenue, conducting training. The role-playing ​“voter” was Wendell Harp, the architect and developer who is helping organize Graves’ two-week scramble to make it to the primary.

Click on the play arrow above to watch their training exchange, as well as one between Wilkins-Chambers and Maurice ​“Blest” Peters.

The training took place Wednesday as four mayoral candidates launched efforts to scramble together 2,092 certified signatures from registered Democrats in just two weeks in order to secure a spot on the primary ballot. The fifth candidate, Mayor John DeStefano, already snagged his spot on the ballot when his party endorsed him the night before.

Petitions became available around 11 a.m. at the Democratic Registrar of Voters Office at 200 Orange St. For the next 10 hours, the four campaigns tried out different strategies — some more efficient than others — to reach their goal. Besides the technical challenge of finding enough qualified voters to sign petitions in 14 days, the campaigns confronted some critical questions. And not everyone understands that signing a petiiton doesn’t mean supporting a candidate; it means supporting his quest to have his name appear on the Sept. 13 primary ballot.

Graves appeared to have the most volunteers hitting the streets Wednesday. They came to the job after several trainings like the one featured Wednesday afternoon.

Former Alderman Tony Dawson connected with a voter on a crime-plagued block as he hit the streets in the Hill with four volunteers, rounding up 70 signatures.

Social worker and budget watchdog Jeffrey Kerekes tried his luck with passersby at a downtown farmers market, while other volunteers experimented with ​“drive-thru” stations where voters were supposed to go to the campaign — instead of the traditional setup, where the campaign comes to the voters.

The fourth mayoral challenger, former Alderman Robert Lee, couldn’t be reached during the petition drive Wednesday afternoon. Reached late Wednesday, he said he and three volunteers had spread out through the city. Lee claimed he alone collected 200 signatures. He’s planning to collect more on Thursday at a meet-and-greet at Lighthouse Point Park.

“I’m hoping to be done by Monday,” Lee said. ​“Once I finish that goal, and get on the ballot, it’s just a matter of who’s dropping out.”

A CitySeed Stop

Kerekes was the first candidate out of the gate Wednesday afternoon. With petitions in hand, he stood outside CitySeed’s weekly Downtown Farmers Market at 1:10 p.m.

“Democrats like farmers markets,” Kerekes reasoned.

As vendors peddled kale and summer squash, the candidate tried to flag down voters who are both registered Democrats and live in New Haven.

Westvillian Tim Holahan, a fellow citizen budget watchdog, stopped by to grab some greens and stayed for a few minutes to help Kerekes.

“Ma’am, do you live in New Haven?” Holahan asked while holding two bags of lettuce. He got some yeses, and a couple of rejections from out-of-town suits and unregistered voters.

Around 1:30 p.m., Bill Richo rolled through, walking his white SE Lager fixed-gear bike.

“Are you going to beat this guy or what?” Richo asked, referring to Mayor DeStefano. Asked to sign Kerekes petition, he quickly obliged, with a warning: ​“I might be unaffiliated.”

Kerekes was given a list of registered Democrats from the party registrar; when it comes time to tally the signatures, only those voters count. His strategy at the farmers market was to get people to sign up first, then double-check the names later.

Richo, a 28-year-old founder of a cooperative living experiment on Atwater Street, said he wasn’t sure if he had reregistered as a Democrat.

“I remember being fed up enough to go to unaffiliated at one point,” Richo said. He said he’ll support Kerekes because ​“I’m more into grassroots solutions. Jeffrey seems like the person who will open the door to that” — rather than mandate that people ​“come through City Hall for all your solutions.”

In the first 20 minutes, Kerekes had collected 16 signatures. He also tried out an experiment in which volunteers manned two ​“drive-thru signing locations” at Stop & Shop and at his home on Lyon Street. In a campaign flyer, he urged voters to ​“take two minutes” to drive to one of those locations and add their names to the petition.

“I’m not sure how many [signatures] we got from that,” Kerekes said Wednesday evening. 

Kerekes said he personally collected 80 signatures during about nine hours on the street and going door-to-door. He said other volunteers were working Wednesday as well, but he declined to share the details.

Role Play: You Be The Voter

Claudine Wilkins-Chambers and a dozen other Graves volunteers began to trickle into the candidate’s headquarters at 298 Whalley Ave. at 2 p.m.

The campaign meeting was delayed for an hour and a half. As volunteers munched on strawberries, grapes, cheese and crackers, Graves told them the petition drive will be ​“the most critical point” of the campaign, something the team has been preparing for for a month.

Volunteers like Remidy and Maurice ​“Blest” Peters of the Frontline Souljaz group stuck it out until 3:30 p.m, when Harp arrived from a doctor’s appointment. Upon arrival, Harp gave a review of a training some had already received on how to conduct the petition drive.

Wilkins-Chambers,who pulled votes for President Obama’s campaign in 2008, stepped up. She read from a campaign script while others role played disgruntled or interrupted voters, as seen in the video at the top of this story. After each scene, Harp asked for a critique of her performance. (“You can’t criticize the voter,” because voters will do what they want to do.)

After more role playing, the 15-plus volunteers got their petitions, with orders to start knocking on doors at 5:30 p.m.

A ​“Deadly” Street

Meanwhile, Tony Dawson was gathering his own crew to start his petition drive on his home turf, in the Hill neighborhood. Dawson, who served as a Hill alderman for 16 years, grew up on Ann Street.

He set out around 4:45 p.m. on Howard Avenue along with press aide Bob McCormack, treasurer Jorge Lopes and former mayoral candidate Jim Newton, Jr. Instead of standing in one public place like the farmers market, they knocked on doors of people on the voting list. Dawson said the crew was the only one working Wednesday. though he has 35 volunteers lined up to pitch in on subsequent days.

His efforts to knock on doors yielded a mix of empty homes, welcome recognition and an in-depth discussion about crime.

At a couple of homes, like that of Deacon Lee Roy Shaw (pictured) of Rosette Street, Dawson emerged with a quick signature.

Shaw, the deacon at Thomas Chapel on White Street, said Dawson visited his church the first Sunday in June to introduce himself. Shaw said while he hasn’t met Dawson, he’s heard good things and plans to support him: ​“I’m wishing him the best.”

At another house on Rosette Street, where Dawson didn’t know the voter, the signature took a bit more work: 10 minutes and a double-team from two aldermanic alumni.

“My name is Tony Dawson. I’m running for mayor. Can I come up and talk to you?” he asked. He stood at the corner of Rosette and Dewitt streets, where Habitat for Humanity revamped a rundown block with new homes.

On the porch sat Franklin Greene, Sr. (pictured), who put 400 hours of labor into building his own home then moved there from Columbus Avenue three years ago.

Before asking for a signature to get on the ballot, Dawson gave a quick campaign stump speech. That led Greene to probe more deeply into one talking point — that there’s too much crime. Greene said he feels the mayor’s doing a good job fixing the city’s schools but has failed to address the city’s rampant gun violence in the Hill.

“I don’t even think he knows this part of the city exists,” Greene said.

“If you look at my corner porch, it’s got a hole in it from gunfire,” he said. ​“This is not a tough area, this is a deadly area.”

Greene, who’s 50, said when he calls the cops, they don’t show up for hours.

Dawson told Greene he has worked in security for 28 years for Yale-New Haven Hospital.

“If we organize our block watches and get our cops back on walking beats,” Dawson offered, ​“we can get [crime] under control.”

At that point, Newton walked onto the porch to seal the deal. He introduced himself as Rosette Street’s former alderman: He represented Ward 5 from 1983 to 1987.

“You need access” to police, and to decision-makers, Newton declared in his distinctive baritone.

Newton is familiar with the process: He ran for mayor twice, in 1999 and 2007. The last time around, he went through the same petition drive that Dawson is now attempting but failed to get on the ballot.

Newton explained what went wrong: He said he was hospitalized due to kidney failure halfway through the two-week crunch. There was one week left to go, and he was just 300 signatures away from qualifying for the primary. He said he sent out an inexperienced campaign team to finish the job. He submitted the petitions, and was heartbroken to find out that hundreds of the signatures were ineligible.

“Eight hundred signatures were cast away,” Newton recalled. He said the campaign staffers allowed people to sign up who were not registered Democrats.

“It was an embarrassing situation,” Newton said. Now he’s working to help make sure Dawson makes the cut.

Standing on the porch with Greene, Newton reemphasized a key point — that the petition is just to get Dawson on the ballot, not a vote of support. Greene took the pen and signed his name.

After the duo left, Greene explained why he obliged.

“I’ve never had a politician show up in the neighborhood,” he said. ​“I’ve had a truck ride by with a speaker, but no politician ever showed up on my porch.”

Dawson, one of three African-American candidates seeking the mayor’s job, said he’ll concentrate his efforts in the Hill, West Rock Newhallville and Dixwell, which are heavily African-American neighborhoods. He’ll also spend time in Fair Haven, where his running mate, Claudia Herrera-Martinez, may have some pull with Latino voters.

Reached Wednesday night, Dawson spokesman McCormack reported that the crew had collected 70 signatures in two and a half hours that evening.

Off-Script

At about 6:30 p.m., some three hours after her training session with Wendell Harp, Wilkins-Chambers led the way down Goffe Street to the St. Martins Townhouses to meet some real-life Democrats. She and two other women, Cheryl Jaminson and Stephanie Smart, checked the lists of registered voters while Graves followed behind, ready to talk. His younger brother, Eddie Graves, tagged along.

Ten other volunteers were hitting the doors in other areas, Graves said. He didn’t give a signature count by the end of the night.

At each door, Wilkins-Chambers gave Graves a grand introduction as ​“your next mayor!”

She stuck to her script and quickly explained the purpose of their visit: ​“We’d love your vote,” she said, but this week’s goal is to get on the primary ballot.

The second stop hit a speed bump when a voter complained that John Daniels, the city’s first and only black mayor, made mistakes during his tenure from 1990 through 1993.

The argument boiled down to: ​“The last time we had a black mayor, he screwed up,” paraphrased Jaminson. (Graves too is African-American.) She said the campaign is encountering that attitude a lot. Graves tried to change the voter’s mind. The woman said she supports Mayor DeStefano. Graves wasn’t sure he convinced her to vote for him, but he did get her signature for the petition drive.

The campaign crew hit another diversion when a worried mom asked for advice about led poisoning in her house. Wilkins-Chambers gave her instructions on who to call in City Hall, then got back to her task.

At the last townhouse that faces Goffe Street, a voice called from a front window.

“I can’t come out: My mom’s not home.”

A young man’s head appeared from behind the curtains. The voice sounded slightly mischievous.

“I’m not going to open the door,” he said.

The crew was about to give up when the face in the window cracked into a grin.

“That’s my nephew!” declared Stephanie Smart (who’s Wooster Square Alderman Mike Smart’s sister).

Tykon Allen (pictured), who’s 29, emerged and took the campaign team’s pen.

His signature filled up the first sheet of names on the petition. Twenty down, 2,072 to go.