Thomas Breen photo
Mayor with Harris-Tucker School students at Tuesday’s meeting.
Mayor Justin Elicker picked up yet another straw-poll vote of support, this time in a Newhallville ward where he has lost in past campaigns, as his reelection quest glides towards a likely endorsement at next week’s Democratic Town Convention.
On Tuesday night, the first-term incumbent mayor bested mayoral challenger Karen DuBois-Walton 13 – 10 in the Ward 20 Democratic Ward Committee’s nonbinding vote for mayor.
That vote came at the end of a nearly three-hour meeting that roughly 50 Newhallville residents attended in the groundfloor cafeteria at Lincoln-Bassett School.
Mayce Torres, who is also vying for the Democratic nomination for mayor, was not present at the meeting, and did not receive any votes of support.
The committee also voted 17 – 7‑1 to back community management team co-chair Shirley Lawrence over Devin Avshalom-Smith and Addie Kimbrough for the Democratic nomination for alder. All three are looking to fill the Ward 20 alder seat recently vacated by Delphine Clyburn.
The Ward 20 committee meeting at Lincoln-Bassett.
The Newhallville ward committee vote marked just the latest show of support for Elicker as he and DuBois-Walton crisscross the city in the runup to the July 27 Democratic Town Convention and the Sept. 14 Democratic primary.
Time and again at these committee meetings, the first-term incumbent has ended up on top. While committee votes are only advisory, they do offer a temperature check of how local Democratic Party insiders from across New Haven are currently feeling about the mayoral race. (See below for a full list of ward committee votes so far.)
Tuesday night’s ward committee outcome also showed just how much progress Elicker has made in winning the support of Ward 20 Democrats since he first ran for mayor in 2013. The ward often produces the highest Black turnout in New Haven elections.
In that year’s four-way Democratic primary, he won only 14 votes to 530 notched by the eventual Democratic nominee and mayor, Toni Harp. In that year’s general election, Harp beat Elicker in Ward 20 696 – 84..
In 2019, during his ultimately successful challenge to then-Mayor Harp’s fourth-term reelection bid, Elicker lost the Ward 20 Democratic Ward Committee vote 13 – 2—but won 163 votes in the primary and 257 in the general. (Harp won 348 Ward 20 votes in the primary that year, and 377 in the general election.)
Elicker and Ward 20 Co-Chair Barbara Vereen.
On Tuesday night, Elicker listed ways he has focused on Newhallville in his first 18 months as mayor.
After entering office in January 2020, he said, “the first place I came, the first community management team I came to was right here. That was in part because in that election, there was a lot of people who turned out and voted for Mayor Harp, and I wanted to make sure people knew just how important Newhallville was” to him, he said.
He also prioritized that visit because the predominantly working class Black neighborhood has historically been neglected by City Hall, even as former Mayor Harp “shined a light” on Newhallville.
He listed a slew of experiences and memories of visiting the neighborhood as mayor over the past 18 months: handing out food on Dixwell Avenue, handing out masks at ConnCAT, hosting a pop-up Covid-19 testing clinic at Lincoln-Bassett, painting “Black Lives Matter” on Bassett Street, and walking with newly appointed Acting Police Chief Renee Dominguez up Winchester Avenue.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said. “We’ve accomplished so much during Covid. Imagine what we could accomplish if there weren’t a pandemic. Imagine what we could do with more time.”
DuBois-Walton (second from left) with Harris-Tucker students.
In her pitch to the ward, DuBois-Walton — who previously served as a top aide to former Mayor John DeStefano before running the city’s public housing authority for 14 years — emphasized her deep roots in New Haven public life and her commitment to racial and economic equity in her various leadership rolls over the past two decades.
What About Gun Violence?
Jahmal Henderson (right) with outgoing Alder Delphine Clyburn.
Reading the first of three questions voted on by the committee to ask each of the mayoral candidates, Newhallville resident Jahmal Henderson asked Elicker and DuBois-Walton about the recent rise in shootings and homicides citywide. What are their plans to make New Haven, and Newhallville, a safe place to live? he asked.
Elicker pointed to increased police walking and bicycle beats, a reinvigorated shooting task force, a doubling of the number of street outreach workers, and the opening of a one-stop prison reentry welcome center.
“If anyone is telling you community policing is gone, that’s just not right,” he said.
The mayor also said he visits every homicide scene after a shooting death, and talks to neighbors and family members after each such tragedy. “I’ve seen that pain too many times.”
Shirley Lawrence (center).
“We are in a state of emergency crisis,” Lawrence told the mayor. Too many people in the neighborhood have been traumatized by hearing or seeing or being directly impacted by gun violence in Newhallville.
“We need a mental crisis center set up, like, yesterday. We are completely traumatized.”
The mayor agreed. “We need many, many different supports,” he said. He pointed to how City Hall is working on setting up a community crisis response team that will send social workers instead of cops to certain mental health and housing-related 911 calls.
DuBois-Walton said that, if elected mayor, she would create a new Office of Neighborhood Safety. That office would be helmed by civilians, not uniformed police officers, and would deal with everything from noise complaints to concerns stemming from addiction and unstable housing. She said that that would free up police officers with guns and badges to deal with more serious crimes.
She also said that the police department needs new leadership that is more present and visible in the communities they serve. And the city needs to invest in addressing the “root causes” of crime, such as poverty, mental health, and homelessness, she argued.
“Until we address safety in our communities,” she said, “we can’t think about anything else.”
Ward results to date follow, with links to stories.
Ward 4: Elicker near-unanimously (no official final vote tabulation)
Ward 7: Elicker, 14 – 5
Ward 8: Elicker, 16 – 4
Ward 9: Elicker, 7 – 0
Ward 10: Elicker, 14 – 0
Ward 14: Elicker, 15 – 11
Ward 15: Elicker, 11 – 0
Ward 18: Elicker, 20 – 4
Ward 19: Elicker, 22 – 4
Ward 20: Elicker, 13 – 10
Ward 21: Elicker, 12 – 10
Ward 25: Elicker, 31 – 12
Ward 26: Elicker, 26 – 12
Ward 27: Elicker, 7 – 0
Ward 29: DuBois-Walton, 17 – 7*
Ward 30: DuBois-Walton, 19 – 1