Winter Wins State Rep Primary

(Updated) Steve Winter emerged on top of a three-way Democratic primary for the open 94th state General Assembly seat, after winning the race with 61 percent of the vote. 

The primary took place Tuesday in the district, which includes southern Hamden and northern New Haven.

Update: Official numbers came in at around 11 p.m., when New Haven’s and Hamden’s registrars of voters sent out separate tallies of the final vote counts in each town’s portion of the 94th district. 

According to those tallies, Winter won with 738 votes, or 60.94 percent of the districtwide vote; Osmanu came in second with 388 votes, or 32 percent; and Moore came in third with 85 votes, or 7 percent.

In New Haven, Winter won 493 votes to Osmanu’s 123 and Moore’s 40; in Hamden, Osmanu won 265 votes to Winter’s 245 and Moore’s 45. 

Winter declared victory soon after 9 p.m., after Osmanu called to concede based on initial returns. So far no Republican has emerged to face Winter in the November general election.

“I’m really thrilled to be the Democratic candidate on the ticket this fall, and grateful to Abdul and Tarolyn for running a really strong positive issue-focused race and bringing their messages and ideas to the voters of the 94th District,” Winter said at a victory party Tuesday night, referring to Osmanu and a third candidate in the race, Tarolyn Moore. The party took place at Chazmo Cafe & Lounge right over the Hamden town line on Dixwell Avenue.

The campaign was marked from the beginning by a civil tone and hard work ​“on the doors,” as campaign workers describe the work of voter-by-voter outreach.

Osmanu’s supporters, including volunteers from 1199 SEIU, Working Families Party and the Democratic Socialists Party, gathered inside Hamden’s Mazorca Mexican Restaurant a few blocks up Dixwell in Hamden after the polls closed at 8. Osmanu paced back and forth on the phone, checking his wristwatch, as early returns came in.

“It’s been a crazy ride in terms of this campaign,“ Osmanu said. ​“The people of the 94th district really deserved the race with candidates who talked about the issues and brought out the best in each other.”

As for next steps, Osmanu, who serves on the Hamden Legislative Council, said that he would take a few days to recuperate before fighting for the issues. Osmanu called Winter at around 9 p.m., congratulating him and expressing interest in advocating alongside him.

“If there’s one thing folks know about me: I never back down,” Osmanu said, smiling. He added that he will not seek to run as an Independent on the ballot in November.

Winter jumped out to an early lead, with the tabulated numbers as gathered by Independent poll reports as of around 9 p.m. showing he had 63.7 percent, or 695 ballots. At that time, Osmanu had received 29.61 percent of the vote (323 ballots), while Tarolyn Moore had received 6.69 percent (73 ballots) at that time.

Hamden as a whole received more than 1,300 early voting ballots, though not all of those were relevant to the Osmanu-Moore-Winter race: Hamden Democratic voters went to the polls for three separate state representative primaries as well as a probate judge primary. 

Meanwhile, the polling place at 60 Putnam Ave. in Hamden ran out of machine ballots for a portion of voters, according to Democratic Party volunteer Alan Graham, leaving voters to fill out ballots that would need to be counted by hand. Only some of those ballots will affect the 94th District race. 

Winter, Osmanu, and Moore were all on the ballot for Tuesday’s Democratic primary, in a race to succeed State Rep. Robyn Porter in representing the 94th General Assembly District. Porter decided to not run for reelection after 10 years in the role.

Winter spent five years representing Newhallville’s Ward 21 on the Board of Alders, currently serves as the city’s executive director for climate and sustainability, and has been endorsed by the local Democratic Party and politically influential Yale unions. Osmanu has served on the Hamden Legislative Council for the past three years, and has been backed by the Connecticut Young Democrats and the Democratic Socialists of America. Moore is a local pastor and veteran New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) school resources officer.

Click here, here, here, and here to read more about the candidates. 

Hamden Votes Earlier & Oftener

Tuesday’s was one of the first local elections to test out Connecticut’s new early voting system. Eligible Hamden and New Haven voters took advantage of the new statewide opportunity to vote in-person on seven different days before Tuesday’s primary day.

Only 54 New Haven Democrats turned out early to vote in the Democratic primary for state rep. While the exact number of Hamden voters in the district who did the same was not yet clear early Tuesday night, one fact was clear: Far more Hamden Democrats voted early. Over 1,300 voted early across the four primaries that took place there.

Asked about this steep divide between Hamden and New Haven early voter turnout, both Osmanu and Winter pointed to location location location.

In separate interviews, both noted that Hamden’s sole early voting polling place was at Miller Memorial Library, while New Haven’s was at City Hall.

“There’s parking” at Miller Memorial Library, Osmanu said. There’s also a bus line that goes right there. In comparison, New Haven’s City Hall right downtown doesn’t have that much easily accessible parking.

Osmanu said his campaign aggressively promoted early voting, recognizing that Hamden had one of the higher early voter turnouts in the state during April’s presidential preference primary. He also commended Hamden’s registrar of voters for working hard to make sure residents knew about early voting.

Winter singled out the plentiful parking available at Hamden’s Miller Memorial Library as well as a potential reason for why so many more voters cast their ballots early in Hamden than in New Haven. While New Haven did block off several on-street parking spaces downtown near City Hall specifically for early voters, he said, competing for parking spots is still likely top of mind for some people when considering whether or not to head to City Hall to vote. ​“If you have one early voting location, you want to make sure that people feel like it’s easy to get to,” he said.

He also noted that some early voters in Hamden turned out to Miller Memorial Library for an unrelated activity planned at that community space, and then stuck around to vote, or vice versa.

And he noted that, since there were four different polling places available in New Haven on Tuesday itself, some voters might have found it more convenient to stick it out and vote on Tuesday. ​“If you live on Ivy Street,” he said, ​“why drive downtown when you could walk a block or two” to Lincoln Bassett and vote there?

An enormous thank you to the volunteers who collected results directly from the polling places across the district: Abby Roth, Alan Graham, Babz Rawls-Ivy, Brian Slattery, Carl Goldfield, Crystal Gooding, Jeanette Sykes, and Kevin McCarthy.

Dereen Shirnekhi contributed to this report.