Paul Bass Photo
State Rep. Walker.
Toni Walker has avoided using the first-person singular in public since she lost over $100 in one year for resorting to it dozens of times. But she has to figure out some way to call attention to herself if she wants to succeed in her quest to ascend to the state House of Representatives’ second-highest post.
Her solution: The first-person plural.
“We are all about Connecticut’s progress and development,” she said, trying out a slogan in an interview on WNHH radio’s “Dateline New Haven” program. “And we will make sure that happens.”
Walker, a Democrat, has represented New Haven’s 93rd General Assembly District in Hartford since 2001. The past six years she has held the powerful post of co-chair of the legislature’s Appropriations Committee. In that time, she has rarely faced any real competition for reelection. She hasn’t had to tout herself much in public, hasn’t had to hold press conferences, or issue many releases, or speak about how “I” accomplished great deeds. She has been able to work congenially with her colleagues behind the scenes.
Now Walker faces a double challenge. Unlike most New Haven state legislators, she faces a Republican candidate this November, New Haven landlord organizer Doug Losty. Assuming she wins that race, and assuming Democrats retain control of the state House, she will then face a fellow legislator, Matthew Ritter of Hartford, in a contest to become the next majority leader. (The other state representatives vote on that position.) As the chamber’s number-two position, the majority leader is responsible for negotiating with and uniting party members to pass legislation.
“When I talk about myself, I have always talked about everything that I do as a ‘we.’ It’s an ‘us.’ I don’t talk about it as a singular person. That was part of my upbringing with my dad,” Walker said during the WNHH interview.
Walker’s dad was the late Rev. Edwin “Doc” Edmonds (pictured), the leading New Haven civil-rights figure and black political powerbroker of the second half of the 20th century. “I never want to hear you say ‘I’” because it takes people working together to accomplish great things, Walker’s father told her when she took office as a state representative. Then he monitored her speeches from the floor on CT‑N network.
Doc Edmonds was blind. But he could hear well enough to catch Walker saying “I.”
“He actually charged me five dollars every time I said it,” Walker recalled. That first year in Hartford, Walker ended up paying her dad $150.
When The Klan Came Calling
Walker’s father learned about collective action when he and other civil-rights activists organized a chapter of the NAACP in North Carolina. Walker was 5 years old at the time.
“I remember one night sitting with my mother in the closet when the Ku Klux Klan was burning a cross outside. Me and my sisters were sitting there. The only thing my mother could say was ‘I want to get through this one more time so I can take my children.’
“They were burning a cross. Killed the dog. My father was organizing NAACP voter registration. And they told him if he went out and did this, they were going to get his family. My mother said, ‘That’s it. I have four babies.’
“That’s how we got to New Haven.”
Walker grew up to be a social worker, then leaped into politics at the dawn of the century. Since then, she has sought to make her mark as someone who helps legislators work together, she said. When she co-chaired the Human Services Committee, she drew up a “Medicaid 101” informational guide so legislators could participate more meaningfully in deliberations about the health care program, the state budget’s second-biggest expense. As co-chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee, she said, she has “learned how to empower more of my members” to form a “collaborative team.”
She said she’s now lobbying her colleagues to elect her the next majority leader so she can do that on a larger scale in tough budget times; the legislature had to cut an unexpected $930 million out of the most recent budget, and projections show more tight days ahead. Walker said her experience as the Appropriations gatekeeper for how the state spends all its money prepared her for the challenge.
She now wants to focus as well on how the state raises its money, she said. She’s excited to work with “progressive” new Democratic House candidates like Hamden’s Joshua Elliott, who has called for bringing back highway tolls at state borders and raising the top tax rate of 6.99 percent to 7.3 percent on annual incomes above $500,000 and 7.7 percent on income above $1 million.
At the same time, she wants to use her knowledge of the budget to find inefficiencies in existing spending in order to free up more money for services that have taken a hit this year, including mental health and community colleges and adult education. (Her day job is assistant principal of New Haven Adult and Continuing Education Center.) She cited a potential inefficiency she discovered this week: It turns out that the state’s departments of children and families and of mental health and addiction services run separate teen suicide prevention programs. She said she plans to see if combining those programs can save money while saving just as many lives.
She resisted the chance to take shots at State Rep. Ritter when goaded on the “Dateline New Haven” program. It was noted that Ritter has been in the legislature only six years; he hasn’t served a prominent role on a financial committee the way Walker has. Yet some Democratic leaders supported Ritter from the start. (He is the son of former House Speaker Thomas Ritter.) Walker was asked if race might play a factor. Ritter is white; if selected, she would become the first African-American majority leader in either state legislative chamber. She didn’t take the bait.
Instead, she said, “Matt is a nice young man. And I think he’s going to have an incredible future.”
Ritter returned the compliment when interviewed about the race by the CT Mirror’s Mark Pazniokas: “There is no question that Toni is someone who has mentored me and someone I’ve worked with on issues and have the utmost respect for. We’re good friends, and these things do happen.”
In the WNHH interview, Walker did make one contrast, the gist of her pitch. And it included a glancing use or two of the first person singular: “I think he needs more experience. … The thing that’s most important, I think, why I’m running, is [that] the most pressing issue we’re going to have in 2017 is the budget. You need to have someone who’s been in the process … to make sure when we go in there with the negotiations, we have people who understand the budget.”
Click on or download the above sound file to hear the full interview with Toni Walker on WNHH radio’s “Dateline New Haven.” Yale-New Haven Hospital provided support for this episode.