Rev. Cousin Backs Elicker, Calls For Healing

The Rev. Steven Cousin threw his support Friday to Justin Elicker’s mayoral campaign while offering ideas for how New Haven can learn from the current divisive election season.

Cousin, the influential pastor of Bethel AME Church on Goffe Street, supported incumbent Mayor Toni Harp in the Sept. 10 Democratic primary. Elicker trounced Harp in that primary by 58 to 42 percent. Now the two face each other again in the Nov. 5 general election, this time with Elicker as the Democratic candidate and Harp on the Working Families Party line.

Speaking during an appearance on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program, Cousin — who also serves on the city’s fire commission and police and pension fund board — spoke highly of Harp but said he now backs her opponent.

He emphasized that he is supporting ​“the Democratic candidate.” (Click on the video to watch the full episode, which also included discussion of Board of Education leadership.)

“We have to support the Democratic primary nominee. I’m supporting the process of the Democratic Party. Justin Elicker is the nominee. I would have been saying the same thing if Mayor Harp had won the primary: ​‘We have to support the nominee.’

“I believed that Mayor Harp was the better candidate. That was the reason I supported her [in the primary]. It had nothing to do with Justin’s ideas or his vision. I just believed that Mayor Harp was the better candidate for what she has done for the city. Her vision, her ideas, aligned more with mine.

“I have friends on both sides of the aisle. … I’ve lost friends on both sides. On primary day, I had a Justin Elicker supporter call me a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

Cousin was asked if he thinks Elicker will be a good mayor.

“Only time will tell,” he responded. ​“I think that people are going to have to find out that it’s very different to govern than it is to campaign. Campaigns, you can say anything you want. Once you’re actually in that seat and you realize everything that goes in it, it’s a huge learning curve.”

Some of the discourse and controversies of this year’s campaign stem from an endemic problem with New Haven politics, Cousin argued: two-year mayoral terms.

Past efforts to change the city charter to lengthen the mayor’s term to four years — to match Hartford’s and Bridgeport’s terms — have fallen short in the face of arguments that two-year terms make mayors more accountable.

Cousin argued that the two-year term leads to short-term decision-making on issues like taxes, and a focus on short-term rather than long-term results of actions like Mayor Harp’s trip to China.

“It’s very hard to govern when you’re always running,” he said. ​“You can’t really think long term. You’re always thinking about the next election. You only have six months to govern. You’re spending the next 18 months running.”

Cousin also argued against a system that allows candidates who lose a Democratic primary to run again on an independent or third-party line in the general election. He wasn’t criticizing Harp’s decision to proceed with a run on the line of the Working Families Party (which endorsed her); Elicker, too, had secured an independent line to run in case he lost the primary.

Rather, Cousin argued that the rules should change.

Either way, the extended campaign has prolonged a divisive season in New Haven’s community, Cousin observed.

“Our politics today has become so divisive. It seems as if after the election we talk about reconciliation and healing and bringing people together. We talk about it. But do we really see it? That’s really where the challenge lies.”

He called on whoever wins the general election to keep the door open to all sides and lead a healing process.

“I’m praying,” he said, ​“that it will happen.”