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Acri at WNHH FM: Voters deserve "a choice."
Anthony Acri knows what it’s like to rebuild a life after a setback. He wants voters to send him to Hartford to put that experience to work for other people seeking to rebuild theirs.
Acri, a Republican who lives in New Haven’s Morris Cove neighborhood, is challenging incumbent Democratic State Rep. Alphonse Paolillo, Jr. for the 97th District General Assembly seat on the east side of town in Tuesday’s election.
“I want to give New Haven a choice” in a city where all state legislators (not to mention holders of every contested elected position) is a Democrat, Acri said Tuesday during an interview on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program. Paolillo, who has held the seat since 2017, declined an invitation to appear on “Dateline.”
Acri, the 69-year-old owner of an auto body shop who has spent his career managing private businesses, challenged Paolillo as well in 2022, his first campaign for public office. He also ran for city clerk last year.
He said on “Dateline” that he’d like to see government offer the homeless more than just temporary shelter, but also job training and other help getting on their feet longterm.
A challenge from his older daughter to address New Haven’s rising unhoused population led him to run for office in the first place, he said.
“My daughter runs a program in New York City for homelessness and mentally disabled people. She came home one day and she said, ‘I looked this up, Dad. Homelessness and mental disabilities. It’s out of control in your city. I’m doing it in New York. Why don’t you look and see how you can help?’ So she guilted me into looking into helping. My whole political career, we’ll say, has started from that, from trying to get involved in the homelessness situation.”
In the last campaign he hired 10 people living in the former homeless encampment off Ella Grasso Boulevard to distribute leaflets door-to-door and talk up the campaign, he said.
He spoke as well about the need for job-training for people released from prison — an issue he has thought about since a three-year stint he served in a federal prison facility after pleading guilty in 2016 to playing a role in a bribery case involving a government contractor in Texas.
The stint opened his eyes, he said.
“I tell everyone, that’s perhaps one of the best experiences I’ve ever had in my life. I got involved in helping with the GED program there. I got involved in [a drug rehabilitation counseling] program. I got involved in job placement. I got involved in the dog program, where we trained service dogs for disabled individuals. So I got to see, instead of corporate America, which my whole life I was involved in, I got see the rest of the world. And the rest of the world is beautiful, if you can just get involved and help people.
“I saw individuals with five or six kids, and on visiting day, their whole families came, and some of these guys are in there for 15 – 20 years, because under [President] Nixon, there were very strict policies. I mean, he would say, ‘I had a bag of marijuana, and I got 15 years in prison.’ I didn’t realize that could be possible. Seeing this happen, I wanted to get involved. I have been going around, speaking at different prisons, trying to talk about different programs that you could get in. When you have someone who is selling drugs, making a million dollars a year, let’s say, and they come out and they can’t even get a job for $12 an hour — how are they going to support a family? If they’re trained in certain skills, for instance, get their CDL [commercial driving license], now they can make some money. …
“A lot of these guys that are in prison have been there for 20, 25 years. They don’t know what a computer is. They don’t even know how to function. [With] training for homelessness, the training for prisoners who’ve gotten out, we can cut down the recidivism.”
Lightning Round
The “Dateline” interview included a “lightning round” on where Acri stands on state issues. Some examples:
• Acri supports the current level of flight activity at Tweed-New Haven Airport, and opposes further expansion.
• He opposes a referendum question on the ballot to allow universal absentee ballot voting in Connecticut without needing a special reason.
• He said he’s open to considering a proposal to adjust the “volatility cap” in a 2017 bipartisan “fiscal guardrails” agreement to allow for spending more tax revenue from capital income tax returns. He wants to learn more before deciding for sure where he stands.
• He supports a ban on students using cell phones in school.
• He opposes a bill to allow strikers to receive unemployment benefits after two weeks on the line. “The strike is on their dime. So if you strike, you go the whole way.”
• He opposes electrification of CT Transit and school bus fleets. “I think that our power grid is going to be with the electric cars, the electric busses, everything else going to be a place where we’re going to be taken down. It’s going to implode. We are not ready for that. “
• He “absolutely” opposes New Haven State Sen. Martin Looney’s proposal for a “mansion tax” increasing real-estate levies on the most expensive homes. “Property taxes are too high.”
Click on the video below to watch the full discussion with state rep candidate Anthony Acri on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.” (Click here to subscribe or here to listen to other episodes of “Dateline New Haven.”)