Thomas MacMillan Photo
Staggers at a West Rock groundbreaking.
Challenger Carlton Staggers has a new asset in his quest to unseat West Rock Alderman Darnell Goldson: campaign literature touting the endorsement of two of New Haven’s top African-American elected officials.
State Sen. Toni Harp and state Rep. Toni Walker have thrown their support behind Staggers, who’s challenging one-term incumbent Goldson in Tuesday’s general election. Staggers and Goldson are competing to represent Ward 30, an area in the far northwest corner of the city comprising the largely African-American West Rock and West Hills neighborhoods.
It’s the second time Staggers has run for the seat. He lost to Goldson two years ago in the 2009 Democratic primary. Goldson went on to earn a first-term reputation as a leading critic of the DeStefano administration.
This year, when Staggers ran again in the Democratic primary, he defeated Goldson 204 to 145. Since Goldson had already petitioned to appear on the general election ballot, the two candidates face a rematch on Tuesday.
As he canvasses the neighborhood, Staggers has been dropping flyers featuring a photo of himself with Walker and Harp, both of whom have endorsed him for alderman.
Melinda Tuhus File Photo
State Sen. Toni Harp.
“He seems like a very nice young man,” Harp said on Friday. “He’s very committed to the neighborhood. I believe he grew up in the neighborhood.”
Harp is a 10-term Democratic incumbent and the city’s most popular African-American officeholder. She said she chose to support Staggers because “he has the support of people in the ward that I respect.”
Those people include Democratic ward Co-Chair Honda Smith and Michelle Sepulveda, Harp said. Sepulveda, who served as alderwoman before Goldson, is Staggers’s campaign manager. Smith, Goldson’s campaign manager when he defeated Staggers in 2009, has been working for Staggers this year, after a falling-out with Goldson.
Harp’s endorsement broadens Staggers’ campaign tent in an important way: She is not a part of the City Hall political team. She offered the most prominent endorsement of mayoral challenger Clifton Graves in this year’s Democratic primary; Graves used her Whalley Avenue campaign office as headquarters.
Walker didn’t return a call for comment.
“Endorsements are endorsements,” Goldson said. Harp’s and Walker’s support might win Staggers a handful of votes, he argued, but ultimately most voters will see it as “smoke.”
On Thursday, as he joined a groundbreaking ceremony on Wilmot Road, Staggers said he’s approaching his campaign very differently this time from the way he did two years ago.
Staggers, who’s 44 and has five kids, wore a black scarf tightly knotted under his chin. He was recovering from a cold that had laid him low for a couple of days.
In 2009, “I was asked to run,” Staggers said. Sepulveda and housing authority chief and Mayor John DeStefano campaign treasurer Karen DuBois-Walton recruited him to run then, Staggers said. (Ward 30 has a heavy concentration of public housing; Goldson has publicly pressed DuBois-Walton’s management team to take better care of the projects.) “I didn’t have a clue what I was getting myself into.”
This time around, his heart is in the race in a different way, Staggers said. He learned a lot from his first run and developed a “tough skin,” he said.
In preparation for his second run, he recently finished the city’s Democracy School, which teaches people how city government functions. “I really needed that,” he said.
Campaigning has helped him realize all the family and personal connections he has in the ward, Staggers said. He grew up in the neighborhood. He bought a house next door to his parents’ on Harper Avenue.
“Last time, I used a lot of people from outside” the neighborhood to help on his campaign, Staggers said. “This time I’m using people from within the community.”
“I’m doing this for the community,” Staggers said. “I’m not doing this for the mayor.”
He said the City Hall staffers who have helped with his campaign are working for him because of personal connections, not political ones. For instance, Staggers coaches basketball with DuBois-Walton’s husband, he said.
As he’s gone door to door this campaign season, Staggers has found that his neighbors’ top concern is crime, he said. People are worried about the recent killings in the city. Neighbors on Wayfarer Street have faced a number of break-ins recently, Staggers said.
Staggers said he’s working to address crime by joining a Stop The Violence working group recently formed by DuBois-Walton. He’s joined a committee on parent involvement to see what can be done to help moms and dads involved in stopping youth violence, he said.
He said he’s also working to increase interactions between different groups within Ward 30. He said he’s been talking to people at Common Ground High School and is working on a way to get more of the seniors in public housing nearby to attend the school’s many weekend events.
Staggers said he’s been hearing complaints about Alderman Goldson as he goes door to door. People have told him they’ve emailed the alderman and not gotten responses, he said. And people have said Goldson is more concerned with what’s going on at downtown than with what’s happening in the neighborhood, he said.
Goldson took issue with both of those alleged neighborhood complaints. On not returning emails: “It’s not true,” he said. He challenged Staggers to name the people who made that complaint. “To make that kind of claim without evidence is unfair.”
“Oh, I can give names. That’s no problem,” Staggers later responded.
As for the charge that he’s more concerned with downtown than West Rock, Goldson listed a number of results he has brought to the ward. “When the city administration tried to relocate an outdoor shooting range in the ward, I fought that off. When Hurricane Irene was still over New Haven, I was driving around compiling a list of damage to bring into the EOC [Emergency Operations Center].” During the most recent snowstorm, he was checking on his constituents, Goldson said. He addressed a flooding problem for homes near Rock Creek, he said.
“I fight for my ward and for the city as a whole,” Goldson said. “We are part of the city.”
Goldson fired back at Staggers with some criticism of his own. He said Staggers has not attended a single meeting of the Youth Commission since he was appointed to it a year ago.
“I have perfect attendance at the Board of Aldermen,” Goldson said. “He has no attendance at the Board of Alderman.”
Staggers said Goldson’s charge of poor Youth Commission attendance is unfounded. “That’s not true,” Staggers said. He said he’s been to the meetings.
Staggers said he didn’t make it to a recent Aldermanic Affairs meeting on the Youth Commission because he didn’t get the notification letter in time.
“I deal with youth every day. I work with them at my job. I work with them as a coach,” Staggers said. He works at Marrakech, a social service agency for people with disabilities. “I’m always involved with the youth.”