Clinton Takes New Haven 58 – 42, As Sanders Camp Punts On Black Voters

Bernie Sanders electrified New Haven with an historic rally on the Green — then his campaign got clobbered on the streets in Tuesday’s presidential primary.

Official results grudgingly released at midnight by New Haven’s Democratic voting registrar’s office — among the last to be released statewide, by hours — showed Hillary Clinton defeating Sanders by 58 to 42 percent of the vote in the city in the Democratic presidential primary. (Clinton narrowly won the statewide primary as well.)

Clinton collected 9,710 New Haven votes to Sanders’ 7,062. (Roque Rocky De La Fuente collected 35 votes.) Of 50,262 registered Democrats, 16,935, or 33.7 percent, turned out to vote.

On Sunday night Sanders drew up to 14,000 people — the largest political crowd in 46 years — to the New Haven Green for an energetic campaign rally.

On Tuesday his campaign was revealed to have failed to translate that energy and potential support to actual votes.

That was especially true in black and Latino-dominated wards, where the Sanders campaign was largely invisible on primary day.

In the Hill, Clinton defeated Sanders 202 to 79 in Ward 3, 236 to 88 in Ward 4 in the Hill, and 236 to 115 in Ward 5. (Those total and other ward totals do not include absentee ballots.)

In Newhallville, Clinton defeated Sanders 479 to 254 in Ward 20 and 222 to 67 in Ward 21.

Sanders did best in wards with clear white majorities, like Morris Cove’s Ward 18, where he bested Clinton 322 to 279; Westville’s Ward 25, where he won 559 to 554; East Rock’s Ward 9, where he won 380 to 279; Ward 1 (Yale), where he won 138 – 71. Clinton won Upper Westville’s Ward 26 and East Rock’s Ward 10.

The results contradicted New Haven’s reputation for backing insurgent progressive Democrats in contested presidential primaries, such as Jesse Jackson in 1988 and Jerry Brown in 1992.

Donald Trump won the anemic New Haven Republican vote Tuesday night with 509 ballots to John Kasich’s 336, Ted Cruz’s 163, Ben Carson’s 10 (yes, his name was on the ballot), and 103 for ​“uncommitted.”

Full primary results appear at the bottom of this article. (For an easier-to-read version, click here.)

New Haven’s Democratic political organization and allied labor activists — usually the primary vote-pulling forces in town — remained largely quiet during the day. The Sanders campaign’s Tuesday afternoon vote-pullers worked the East Shore, East Rock/Downtown, and part of Westville, while not venturing into many lower-income wards, although they did hit a mixed-income, mixed-race stretch of the Annex.

Sanders earned endorsements from two leading African-American politicians in town, State Sen. Gary Winfield and State Rep. Robyn Porter; an African-American woman was a lead organizer and other African-Americans worked hard on the campaign. But from the start, his New Haven base of support did not extend deep into the black or Latino communities.

“If I were doing that campaign, I would [have] worked on changing that strategy,” said Winfield, who took Sanders himself on a walking tour of Dixwell Avenue Sunday when the candidate visited town.

“Bernie’s campaign focused largely where they saw their strengths, in terms of the demographics of age and race. Every campaign I’ve won had something to do with going outside that. You focus on your core strengths. You also try to break down you opponent’s strength in those areas.”

The voting in New Haven was marred in four wards by residents going to the wrong polling stations because of misprinted where-to-vote postcards mailed by the city (as reported in this article).

Months of media saturation left voters with a lot to say as they cast their votes around town, with interesting debates overheard at the polls, white-power and anti-immigrant pro-Trump declarations in Morris Cove, and, at Edgewood School, some last-minute changed minds.

In Westville, Couple Decides To Think Younger

Two voices across three generations persuaded Susan McCaslin and George Corsillo to vote their dreams Tuesday.

The couple, both 65 years old, had planned to vote for Hillary Clinton in the state’s Democratic presidential primary. They admire her experience. They believe she had the best track record to get work done in Washington.

They liked Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders’ positions, such as his call for universal free tuition at state colleges and universities. But they questioned his ​“revolution” could ever succeed.

“I agree with everything he says,” George thought to himself. ​“My worry is I want it to be possible. People said, ​‘It’s too much too fast.’”

Then their 34-year-old daughter Liza, an artist like her mom, started working on them. She urged them to think bigger about what’s possible to accomplish.

”I realized with global warming it’s always too late. I thought, ​‘I’m going to give him” a shot.

McCaslin was moving that way, too. But she remained undecided until she attended the mass Bernie Sanders rally Sunday evening on the New Haven Green.

There, she heard Sanders compare the revolution he sought to other mass movements over the years, like the ones that produced gay marriage. Suddenly it seemed more possible to accomplish goals that according to conventional wisdom seem out of reach. Sanders spoke of how his young supporters have the ability to dream big.

“It hit me suddenly: We’re not the young people,” McCaslin. ​“When [Sanders] said, ​‘Listen to the youth’ — That is our daughter! We should listen to her.”

So she did. She and her husband voted for Sanders at Ward 25’s polling station Tuesday at Edgewood School.

Quinnipiac College cook Keith Wylie also liked Sanders’ message. But he cast his ballot for Clinton. ​“I like the job her husband did” as president, Wylie said. And ​“I think it’s time for a woman to be in office.”

“Minority” White Male Voice In The Cove

In overwhelmingly Democratic New Haven, Republican voters were present and accounted for most visibly in Ward 18 in Morris Cove.

“I voted for Donald Trump because he’s the one who’s for single white males,” said a tattooed, grey-bearded Morris Cover. ​“And you can quote me.” But we can’t, he said, have his name.

“We are the new minority!” he shouted out his car window as he drove away.

One Morris Cove Republican switched parties to vote for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary.

That voter, Marie Cacace, a former banker, has lived in Morris Cove for 50 years. ​“I voted for Bernie Sanders to vote against Hillary,” she reported at the ward polling place, at Nathan Hale School. ​“I think it’s absolute appalling the way she used the Sandy Hook tragedy to get votes in Connecticut. That Sandy Hook ad [featuring family members of some of the killed] capitalizing on the tragedy really bothered me.”

Cacace said she intends to re-register as a Republican in time to vote for Donald Trump in November.

Retired insurance fraud investigator, Vic Colella voted for Trump in Tuesday’s primary. ​“I believe Trump is a man who says what he means and means what he says,” Colella stated. He listed the issues that drove him to cast his Trump vote: ​“Bringing jobs back and security. … Too many donors and lobbyists contributing [to others]. I want to see a change and I think it’s terrible the way the RNC [Republican National Committee] is run.”

Trump’s anti-immigration stand won the vote of Bill Nazzaro, a medical researcher at Yale. ​“Too many free benefits, while I’m struggling to pay for my stepdaughter’s education,” he said.

View From Newhallville:

“Lying Aunt vs. Drunk Grandpa”

Despite the invisibility of Sanders workers at Newhallville’s Ward 20 polling place, Lincoln-Basset School, Tuesday afternoon, the candidate did enjoy some support.

Albertus Magnus psychology student Jasmine McAlister voted for Sanders, she said, because she’s paying $40,000 a year in tuition. ​“Free tuition for college? That sounds pretty good!” she said.

She met Newhallville’s political eminence grise, former State Rep. Bill Dyson, outside the Ward 20 polling place, Lincoln-Basset School. Dyson voted for Clinton. ​“She has the quality and the experience,” he said.

Morganna Payne, who works at Albertus Magnus, and mom Dorothy Payne-Rice split their votes: Morganna for Sanders, Dorothy for Clinton.

Morganna described her reason thusly: ​“It’s a choice between the lying aunt and the drunken grandpa. I fell like Bernie’s one beer from pulling his pants down. I like that in a politician; it keeps it humble. I feel he’s genuine.”

In East Rock, A Generational Debate On ​“Progressive”

Having just cast his vote Tuesday for Bernie Sanders at Wilbur Cross High School, 28-year-old web developer Zachary Morek was in the middle of voicing his enthusiasm for the candidate when 74-year-old Matthew Jennett cut in. Jennett, too, had voted for Sanders, but more grudgingly.

“It feels to me that a vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote that the system as it stands is OK,” Morek had been saying. ​“She has a similar platform to Bernie — a lot of sort of progressive ideals, and feminist ideals, and things like that. But it feels to me that Bernie’s platform is much more that things really need a lot more thorough fixing than someone who is sort of deeply embedded in Washington can accomplish.”

“Hillary’s platform in the past — she’s changed her alignment. She’s sort of apologized for mistakes of the past, and all of that. … But it’s 2016. A lot has changed in the last 20 years. I do like that Bernie has been on the same sort of message for the entire time. It’s refreshing that he had sort of progressive ideals before progressive ideals were sort of front and center right now, with so many minority communities of every kind gaining a louder voice than they have had in the past.”

“Do you really think minorities have a greater voice now than they did in the past?” Jennett asked.

Morek didn’t miss a beat. ​“When I think about what the internet has done to give various marginalized groups the ability to gather together and talk to one another, when I think about what’s happening with feminism, when you see what’s happening at Yale with protests …”

“That’s very interesting,” Jennett interjected. ​“I ask because I’m a lifelong Democrat … You probably don’t know much of what happened. [Late state party boss] John Bailey brought the minorities to the Democratic Party. … See, I find it interesting that because of the internet and other things people use this term ​‘progressive’ which is sort of, they’re afraid to say ​‘socialist.’ They say ​‘left,’ they say Hillary is left — she was a tool of the moneyed class and her husband was a tool. They provided a way, paved a way for the banks to really take the money and gut the individuals. Things like student loans really helped the banks enormously.”

“Right, doesn’t really help the people,” said Morek, who paid off his student loans by working multiple jobs as a student at University of Connecticut, and living with his parents after graduation. He looked out at the rain, planning an escape path.

It turns out they both attended UConn, decades apart. When Jennett attended, in-state tuition cost $300 a year. When Morek graduated in 2009, it was closer to $7,632. UConn recently announced a tuition hike to $11,224 starting next fall. (Out-of-state tuition will run $32,066.)

“I’m a left of New Deal Democrat and this party, the Democratic Party, is reduced to two people who use the word ​‘progressive’ — they’re really afraid to say who they are,” Jennett pressed. ​“They pretend to be socialists, but they’re not. The Democratic Party has been reduced to such a weak status that they have these two people. This guy [Bernie] uses the royal we! The other frog-toad … I voted for Bernie so that Hillary will lose, and I hope that the next election will be back to the people. If the Democrats lose this national election, they deserve it for all the crap they put us through, starting with the demonstrations in the ​‘60s. The demonstrations gutted the Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders, who protested the war in Vietnam in the ​‘60s, did not protest the Israeli six-day war. He was in his kibbutz.

“Why aren’t they willing to sit down with the Palestinians? Why don’t they talk about ISIS? Why don’t they tell you that the United States government, including the Democrats, have had a mission to stop the Ba’athist [sic] party because they were involved in Lybia, Syria, because they were associated with the Russians? The generation gap is huge.”

While many felt the Bern at Cross, a strong Clinton contingent came out too. Mother-daughter team Eve Morales and Eva Lozano were part of that.

Morales, 55, said the candidate’s stance on gun control attracted her to Clinton.

“She has a lot of good things — the gun laws and all that. It’s very important because innocent people are dying. To me people should not own military guns if they’re not in the military. My granddaughter is in the New Haven schools. It worries me — so many innocent people are being killed. That’s a big thing for me. She’s just 6. Sanders doesn’t bother me really, but I listened to all of them and I feel that Hillary’s the best one.”

So was Wanda Kelly-Jones, who declined to give her age and profession, but cited immigration, budget and employment as most important to her. ​“She’s been around the block, from her husband and then President Obama — I believe she has the experience, and that’s what we need.

“She stood for equality for a long time,” she added when asked about Clinton’s fraught history with people of color and inner-city neighborhoods. ​“First with Bill, who was president. I think she knows firsthand the struggle.”