Pork Politics Boosts Elicker

When I held a pig roast this weekend at my East Rock home to support Justin Elicker’s campaign for mayor of New Haven — smoking a whole 155-pound hog over smoldering hickory wood for 24 hours — the most common question I got from the adults was: Have you cooked a lot of whole pigs this way? And from the kids: Can you eat the head?

The answer to both is yes. But the flood of questions made me realize something about big group food or festival food or whatever you choose to call it. The entire tradition of having a big cookout is largely lost.

My guess? Our contemporary restaurant culture (which I love) is responsible. I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid in South Carolina, restaurants were unapproachable places where grandparents went on their anniversary. Instead, once or twice a month, you would just hear that somebody was cooking a pig somewhere and you’d go. Maybe it was that someone was frying chicken or fish, maybe smoking oysters or making a big pot of Brunswick Stew — replete with the original meat ingredient: rabbit. In the north, a clambake. (When was the last time you were invited to one of those?) The key thing here was that all these meals involved a good bit of work, and you wouldn’t really go through all that for four or six people. You’d invite 50 or more, because why not?

One could argue that Kentucky Fried Chicken changed everything. A food that I probably ate five or six times a year on special occasions — fried chicken — was suddenly accessible all the time. (Imagine if some entrepreneur made fast food out of the entire tradition of the Yankee harvest meal and called the franchise CTD, Connecticut Thanksgiving Dinner! And with some bow-tied pitchfork-toting Puritan as the spokesman. Then, suddenly, in every strip mall there would be a joint where you could sit down to slabs of turkey with buttered mashed potatoes and a mess of stuffing all slathered in rich gravy with a finish of pumpkin pie and shortbread. If that were to happen, obviously, there would be an obesity epidemic.)

But anyway: Cooking a whole hog is a blast precisely because it’s group food and requires a group to cook it. The work began by finding a nice healthy local pig — this one from my new acquaintance, Jonathan Secchiaroli, whose family farm near Waterford raises hogs fed on recycled greens and other compostables from area restaurants.

After that, it meant luring a half dozen young men and women to help out with the pig. I found them among my neighbor’s kids and the Yale Farm. We’d have to build a cinderblock oven, get the fire started, butterfly the pig, and work in shifts throughout the night, keeping the smoky fire going. We’d need sides and we’d need to set up the yard — all requiring a half dozen more neighbors, yet another pit crew.

So, in the end, what you’re also looking at, with a pig roast, is what otherwise goes by the warm word, community. Let it be said: The first connection between politics and pork was not the cynical one.

The second question everybody asked me was: So, you’re going with Elicker?

I am — even though New Haven is fortunate this time around. No ​“lesser of two evils” talk needed. All the candidates are good. Even before, when the field was crowded with Gary Holder-Winfield and Matt Nemerson — if you’ve been in town for a while, then you know that best and the brightest really did step forward to take on the challenges after Mayor John DeStefano decided to step down.

We can be happy that Henry Fernandez would make a great mayor and that, while Toni Harp may be running as a cap to her career, she has a solid record in the state legislature.

But Elicker is different from the other two candidates. He’s brilliant with details, and being mayor is more a job of details than one of slogans. If you’re familiar with his work as alderman or his single-handed resurrection of the Friends of East Rock Park group, then you know. He gets things done — finding just the right people who need cajoling, getting around the obstacles and then his stick-to-itiveness carries the plan through. This talent is key, whether we’re talking about fixing a pothole, making sure the snowplows run, or cutting a deal for a new business to come to town.

I like that he pays attention. The debacle of the parking meters last year was telling. We almost gave away the revenue of our parking meters to an out-of-state company at a catastrophic revenue loss until Elicker bothered to read the contract and led a counter-charge.

Finally, he’s young and has fresh ideas. In any other election, that might be a middling virtue, but right now, in this city, it’s crucial. Here’s why:
New Haven’s on the cusp of something potentially great or something potentially disastrous. Everyone in town feels that in their bones. The traditional solutions in this university town are increasingly difficult to make work: Do we beg for more money from Hartford? Raise more taxes from the fleeing middle class? Cut city services and obligations? Harass Yale for more of a contribution?

DeStefano’s legacy, essentially, is that he has maxed out the four main ways to bring money to the city. And a few days ago, we paid for it. Our bond rating was downgraded again. So, New Haven’s DeSteficit just got more expensive to pay off.

A city like New Haven doesn’t have to let this arc of decline continue. It doesn’t have to become Hartford or Bridgeport. It could become Ithaca, New York. That town is currently enjoying a full economic comeback, surrounded by towns that are falling apart.

Why? First, they elected a smart, young mayor — with little bureaucratic experience — but with the kind of suppleness of mind to reimagine his city to be, as one local resident put it, ​“a little San Francisco.” A young African-American kid inspired by Barack Obama, Svante L. Myrick is 26 years old. He took command of a town with a huge university presence and culture — Cornell University and Ithaca College, which dominate the local landscape not unlike New Haven with Yale, Gateway, SCSU, Albertus, and even just over the border Quinnipiac and UNH.

If you read about the revival of Ithaca, and you can do that here.

One of the opportunities of a university town like New Haven is the breadth of possibilities that exist among the colleges. In the past, the relationship of town and gown, especially between Yale and New Haven, has been one of tension. In its grimmest mood, Yale perceives the town as a badgering deadbeat with a shambling mayor looking for a larger handout. On the other side, the city resents the ever widening moat between Fortress Yale and the peasants condemned to a modern Sherwood Forest.

There are many elements to a healthy Ithaca-style revival. For instance, Myrick created side-by-side business zones with the colleges coordinating better jobs for locals keyed to a university’s new plans and start-up companies. Another feature is to have a college president eager to work with a smart, innovative mayor. And of course, the flip side is to have a mayor whose day job has been to come up with creative solutions and to seek out new ideas.

(For instance: In the last two years, some 45 albums were funded here in New Haven, through Kickstarter and Indigogo —Carrie Ashton, Plume Giant and Beat Culture, Heather Fay, 4EVA’s gospel hip-hop, and Chrissie Gardner, whose fans kicked in more than $48,000 toward her new record. Everyone knows there is a music scene here. There are recording studios here. Yet this entire emerging world exists haphazardly, uncoordinated amid the clubs, local radio, the festivals, music departments, off-beat venues, and business-school marketing maestros. Sure, New Haven is no Seattle, but it could be an Athens, Georgia. Right now? It’s not even trying.)

We need fresh thinking. Elicker’s day job is to work with companies and government bureaus to incorporate innovative green technology that’s not just a bunch of green fluff but a real way to create savings in a business. Uncommon solutions are what he does. This is the most crucial talent the new mayor needs. And I’m not supporting Elicker just because he’s young. If we had a candidate with a Ben Franklin-esque suppleness of mind — capable to smart, forward thinking — I would be supporting the geezer.

No, I am supporting Elicker because I’ve seen him at his job and seen the clever way he operates. I worked with him to create the East Rock Summer Camp, and Elicker was cunning at finding out just who might get in the way of this good idea and who could help. They all came to early planning meetings, and Elicker out-flanked the opposition’s arguments before they had a chance to form. The Summer Camp is now in its fifth year, providing a great summer to local kids; the plan is currently being duplicated in Edgewood Park.

Some people talk about how we need a mayor with lots of experience. In many elections, that’s a good argument. But experience, in New Haven right now, too often means ​“knowing how things work” and knowing only that. We could use a lot less experience and a lot more Svante Myrick. In that regard, Elicker has gotten more done with the pathetic resources of an ​“alderman” than other bureaucrats have achieved with mighty budgets at their fingertips and lobbyists at their backs.

Elicker is a strategic thinker when it comes to blazing a path to collaboration, and one that will wend its way to a conclusion better for everyone. When the merchants on State Street were struggling with a way to change the traffic flow, it was Justin who realized that the complication came from the fact that State Street is, oddly, a state road with some city involvement and local homeowners and merchants on the edge. He resolved that one to everyone’s satisfaction and saved the city money.

This is the kind of frame of mind we need in a mayor, especially at a time when Yale has hired a brilliant, cool, and involved president. Peter Salovey has so many things to recommend him as the innovative president who can fundamentally change Yale’s handout-relationship with the city. (Despite his lofty appointment, Salovey still plays in his bluegrass band—and Elicker still wails on his banjo, too — so maybe that clinches the argument right there. Or kills it, depending on your view of banjoes and whether you’re already burned out on Mumford.)

But, frankly, new beginnings are breaking out all over New Haven. Garth Harries has just taken over the school district, and already there is an air of innovation and improvement and hard work afoot. With Salovey at Yale, the next mayor of New Haven needs to be an innovative thinker who can honestly evaluate where the city’s strengths are in terms of labor, potential, schooling, land, facilities, etc. and coordinate those resources with the emerging needs of the great economic engines that are already right here. Collaboration creates a lot more jobs than antagonism.

Better jobs make for better parents and students. Better jobs make crime go down, as well as teen pregnancy and drug dependency. Better jobs makes it easier to balance city budgets without firing fire fighters or crushing city pensions or raising taxes. Better jobs is not a cure-all for poverty and social ills, but it is the best beginning for all the other cures.

So, I look at a new New Haven on the verge of stepping out — with a real possibility of an Ithaca revival — because serendipity has given us a new Yale president and a new school superintendent. Now, most crucial to all this, we need a new mayor who will be able to work together with them to give the whole city a fresh start.

That’s why I am voting for Justin Elicker, and that’s why I cooked a local hog. And one other reason: As the adults stood off a good bit while I picked the pig, the dozen or so kids who were there from all over New Haven crowded the table, absolutely mesmerized at seeing a pig three times their body weight, literally right in front of their faces. I provided them with a little anatomy lesson, showing them what a ham looks like when it’s still on the pig and the magical place where bacon comes from. I pried out a rib and handed each kid one. They’d all eaten ribs before, but now they were holding and eating a real one. They looked at rib in their hand and back at the whole pig, overwhelmed not only by the smoking hot flavor, but also by the intense pleasure of understanding how a whole breaks down into all these parts and how all these parts can add up to one great whole. It was a sublime moment, no metaphors needed.