Laura Glesby Photo
Rev. Steven Cousin (center): Emphasize the positive.
Amid a campaign season of complaints and conspiracy theories, mayoral candidates took a brief pause from the animosity on Sunday afternoon to say something nice about each other.
As part of a mayoral forum hosted by Varick A.M.E. Zion Church, candidates Urn Pendragon, Toni Harp, Seth Poole, and Justin Elicker spent nearly two hours fielding questions from a panel of New Haven pastors and reverends on topics that ranged from affordable housing to the city’s revenues.
Rev. Steven Cousin of Bethel A.M.E. Church closed the forum with a final question: “With all the rhetoric that’s going on, especially with national politics, can each candidate state one nice thing about the candidate sitting next to you?”
Seth Poole, who’s running as an independent, addressed incumbent Democrat Toni Harp, who was seated to his right.
“I’d like to acknowledge Mayor Harp for a distinguished career,” he said.
The audience erupted in applause. Poole added that all of the candidates are passionate about the city they call home.
Urn Pendragon interpreted the question expansively. “I’ll say something nice about all the people that are here,” she said. “Everybody here is very dedicated to their passions and the city.”
Justin Elicker asked if he could address each of the other candidates.
“I respect your passion,” he told Pendragon. He noted her advocacy for inclusionary zoning laws, an affordable housing policy that Elicker also supports.
He said he admires Poole’s reputation “for being a go getter and a leader.”
And to Harp? “I admire that you took down the fence,” Elicker said, referring to a controversial barrier separating New Haven’s West Rock neighborhood from Hamden that Hamden residents had defended as a means of keeping out crime from their suburb. “That should have been done a long time ago.”
Toni Harp addresses Varick crowd: Seth Poole was her Sunday school student.
Harp also spoke to each candidate in turn.
Addressing Poole, Harp hearkened back to decades earlier — when she was Poole’s Sunday School teacher at Varick.
“It was really wonderful watching you grow up to be the man that you are: a person who is committed to our community,” Harp said. “I’m very proud of you.”
To Pendragon, who would be the city’s first openly transgender mayor if elected, Harp said, “I admire you for your courage. For your courage to listen to yourself internally and to define for yourself who you want to be and then to create opportunities for others to see you.”
She praised Elicker’s decision to send his daughter, Molly, to Fair Haven’s Columbus School next fall, saying that he “will improve the school and the input of parents in that school.”
Candidates Diverge on Community Policing
Elicker.
The topic of community policing recurred throughout the forum.
When asked about what they would do to strengthen community policing, Pendragon, Elicker, and Poole all spoke in favor of improving police contracts.
“I think all of us are in favor of community policing,” Elicker said. “The question is, what does community policing mean?”
Elicker said it means working towards a better contract with police officers, noting that New Haven has lost many of its officers to suburban towns.
“We need to make sure we support our officers,” he said, arguing that overworked and underpaid police officers have weaker ties to the community. He also said he would stop transferring district managers, whom he said were at the core of the city’s community policing efforts.
“Everyone wants more officers on the beat,” he said.
Pendragon argued that the city should settle its arbitration with the police union so as to provide fair wages and benefits for police officers.
“I certainly hope there are no adversarial relations between the police department and the people here,” she said. “They put their lives in danger to protect us. You need to remember that.”
Poole agreed that police officers should be paid more, but he also spoke of the dangers of having an impulsive officer “police a neighborhood that you’ve been taught to fear your entire life.”
He argued that all police officers should be old enough to rent a car. “No one should have a badge or a gun until their brain is fully developed” at age 25, he said.
“Oftentimes we focus on the police, but what makes community policing is the community,” Harp said when it was her turn to speak. She cited New Haven’s community management teams based in each policing district and block watches as a strength in residents’ relationship with the police.
Despite the recent departure of dozens of officers to neighboring towns and to retirement, Harp said that the city has a stronger police force than do other cities in Connecticut. New Haven has its lowest crime rate in 50 years, she said.
In response to a later question about youth-oriented policies, Harp spoke of a program in which her office began to identify youth who were most likely to become victims or perpetrators of gun violence and reach out to their families with resources, known as YoutStat.
“When I first became mayor, I spent my time going to funerals of young people,” she said. “We haven’t lost a child since that program.”
Urn Pendragon and Seth Poole.
In the middle of the program, moderator Wendy Tyson-Wood announced that anyone wearing campaign-related clothing would need to change or cover up their clothes.
Front-row audience members Dominique and Joe Baez, wearing light blue “Elicker for Mayor” T‑shirts, subsequently left. As they exited the room, members of the audience called out suggestions that they turn their shirts inside out.
Dominique later said the request was “strange” to her. She said that she hadn’t seen any announcement of the rule ahead of time, and that a moderator had said the shirts were all right earlier in the evening. (Tyson-Wood said she explained the rule before the forum began.)
Pastor Kelcey Steele, who heads Varick, said that the rule barring campaign-related materials within the church applies only to the mayoral forums. The same rule had been in place at Varick’s first mayoral forum in 2017, he said. “We didn’t want campaigns to be distributing literature and using the event to rally,” Steele said in a text.
The Baezes spend the rest of the day gathering signatures on petitions to get Elicker’s name on the Democratic primary ballot.