Melissa Bailey Photo
Latoya Agnew is too young to hang out in bars. Whether that means she belongs in political office is one question at hand as candidates line up for a new round of local elections.
Agnew (pictured), who’s 19, is running with Yale union organizer Barbara Vereen in a March 6 primary for two of Newhallville’s seats on New Haven’s Democratic Town Committee (DTC).
The duo are set to take part in one of nine contested primaries for the position of Democratic ward co-chair. Sixty co-chairs from the city’s wards comprise the DTC.
Candidates had until Wednesday to collect petitions to make it on the ballot. Scroll down to the bottom of the story for the final list of who made the cut. The list includes two longtime local journalists, Christopher Arnott (in Dwight’s Ward 2) and Thomas Ficklin (Beaver Hills’ Ward 29).
Agnew, who recently started a youth group in Newhallville, said she’s running to bring new energy to the Democratic Party — and bring disenfranchised young people to the polls and to get involved in their neighborhood.
“I’m energetic,” Agnew said. “I want to get people registered” to vote.
One of Agnew’s opponents, incumbent Tanya Smith, countered that the newcomer is too young to attend party fundraisers, which often take place in bars — and therefore too young to effectively do the job. She argued that the party needs more experienced workers to run voter drives and party headquarters on Election Day.
The debate comes as a burst of democracy that exploded in the fall carries over to a new set of political contests. After a labor-backed coalition upset 14 City Hall-backed candidates in spirited Democratic Party aldermanic primaries last year, more new faces are getting involved in the race to be part of the official party structure.
The 60 members of the DTC are elected every two years, two from each ward. They help shape the political landscape by giving endorsements for aldermanic and mayoral candidates. They can develop active organizations of neighbors to work on campaigns and address other neighborhood issues, if they choose.
New Haven’s DTC currently meets only a few times per year to endorse primary and general-election candidates. In one-party New Haven, winning Democratic primaries or endorsements is often tantamount to winning office.
New DTC members will decide whether the party should become independent of Mayor John DeStefano on public policy matters and at the polls. They will choose a new party chair, as well.
After upending DeStefano’s allies in the fall elections, union organizers have focused more on building parallel ward organizations than on taking over Democratic ward committees.
Laurie Kennington, president of Yale’s UNITE HERE Local 34, said four of her members chose to run for co-chair seats this year: Vereen in Ward 20; Jess Corbett, who’s already a co-chair in Ward 28; Jayuan Carter in Ward 22; and Vanessa McBride in Ward 23.
In two wards, people who fought on opposing sides in the election are coming together to serve side by side. For example, two slates of competitors in Westville’s Ward 25 opted to make peace and merge into a combined slate, with Mike Slattery and Janis Underwood and Mike Slattery on the compromise ticket. The ticket contains one person who ran for alderman in alliance with City Hall, and another who worked for the labor-backed coalition that defeated him at the polls. A similar compromise took place in Fair Haven’s Ward 14.
In Ward 20, two teams of candidates aim to capitalize on last fall’s campaign enthusiasm to get more neighbors involved at the polls.
Agnew and Vereen were recruited to the position by new Alderwoman Delphine Clyburn, a labor-backed candidate who unseated mayoral ally Charles Blango at the polls last September.
Agnew said she worked for Clyburn towards the end of her aldermanic campaign. She told Clyburn she was interested in starting a youth group; Clyburn connected her with New Elm City Dream, a youth group that’s supported by staff from the national Young Communist League.
The next day, Agnew found herself in the spotlight when she spoke out at a rally about her experience losing a best friend to prison after a shooting. She quickly got her own group going called Newhallville Rising Dream Team. She said New Elm City Dream helped her print out flyers, which Agnew took door to door to drum up participation.
The group organized a vigil in January for the 34 homicide victims of 2011. It has more activities planned for Black History Month. Agnew, who grew up in Newhallville, graduated from Eli Whitney Technical High School and currently works at Home Depot in Hamden.
Agnew said she has proven her organizing skills with her new youth group, and she’s ready to take on the task of educating young people about their right to vote. Along with 42-year-old Vereen, she aims to create a cross-generational combo that would tackle voter apathy.
The Wicked Wolf Test
Paul Bass File Photo
Tanya Smith (pictured), who’s seeking reelection as Ward 20 co-chair, said Agnew is too young to do that.
Smith, who’s 41, has been a co-chair for six years in Newhallville and (before that) the Hill. She said one of co-chairs’ biggest tasks is to “lobby for funds” to support ward-level party headquarters for endorsed Democrats on Election Day. Those headquarters need money for poll workers, people to run numbers, and food to last the entire day, she said. The money usually comes from statewide candidates’ campaigns.
“We have to befriend the governors. We have to befriend the senators,” she said. “To build these relationships, you have to go to fundraisers. You have to go to social events.” Many of those take place in bars, Smith pointed out.
“Even the mayor’s after-party was at the Wicked Wolf,” a pub on Temple Street. “19 years old? You can’t even get in!”
“I think it’s imperative to get our youth involved,” she said, “but it’s more efficient for them to start on the ground level and work their way up, so that they’re prepared — and not just kind of going in and not being well-informed.”
Agnew wasn’t available to respond to that specific point. In a joint interview at Vereen’s Pond Street home, Vereen said the running mates aim to change the party from its status as an “old boys club.”
Vereen is taking a leave from her job at Yale to work for a year as a union organizer. She said she got interested in running for co-chair after she found out how difficult it was to get involved in ward-level politics.
Co-chairs get to pick 25 people each to fill out a so-called ward committee, the tentacles of the party structure reaching out into the 30 wards. Vereen said she tried to get involved in the committee last year, but was not allowed to join. Similar complaints have arisen elsewhere in town over the years.
“It’s time to shake things up,” declared Vereen.
Smith acknowledged that she allowed no new members to join the ward committee last year. She said that was because of special circumstances: Smith had just joined the ward committee in March of that year. Her fellow co-chair, Cathy Weber, was terminally ill.
“I absolutely agree — open the ward [committee] to more people,” Smith said. “But I was very careful of the changes that I tried to implement” as ward co-chair because of Weber’s condition. Weber was moved to hospice before the primary. “I didn’t want to cause her any undue stress.”
Weber passed away on primary day. Smith is now running with Ernest Jones, who works at a halfway house and is an involved parent at the John C. Daniels School. She said she and Jones share her opponents’ goals of getting more young people involved, signing up more voters, and encouraging more participation in the ward committee.
She cautioned that inexperienced co-chairs might fall prey to new aldermen who try to use them merely to support their own campaigns. Instead, she said, the job should be about signing up new voters and making sure they have the transportation or absentee ballot applications that they need to vote.
“I’m glad there are people running against us,” she said of her opponents, “but overall I really think that experience is required.”
The March 6 primaries are open to all registered Democrats. Most candidates earned their spot on the ballot as a slate of two. However, that doesn’t mean they’ll win or lose as a pair: If more than two candidates run in a race, the top two vote-getters will prevail even if they run on separate slates.
Here’s who’s running (contested races in bold):
Ward 1 Benjamin Crosby/ Nia Holston
Ward 2 Christopher Arnott/ Jane Kinity vs. Anita Morales/ Greg Smith, Sr.
Ward 3 JeQueena Foreman/ Ohan Karagozian
Ward 4 Abraham Colon/ Evelyn Rodriguez
Ward 5 Johnny Dye/ Kampton Singh
Ward 6 Helen Martin-Dawson/ Kris Sainsbury
Ward 7 Nadine Wall/ Alberta Witherspoon
Ward 8 Chris Randall/ Carmen Rodriguez
Ward 9 Cristina Cruz-Uribe/ Lauren Miller vs. Jane Edelstein/ Donald Harvey
Ward 10 Ray Saracco/ David Streever
Ward 11 Patty DePalma/ Paul Tricaso vs. Fannie Brooks/ Dorothy Harper
Ward 12 Gerald Antunes/ Gregory Switaj
Ward 13 Linda Davis/ Anfred Onorato vs. Rose Santana/ Josue Vega, Jr.
Ward 14 Rafael Ramos/ Carmen Reyes
Ward 15 Frank Redente/ Robert Roberts
Ward 16 Migdalia Castro/ Celestino Cordova
Ward 17 Edith Macri/ Al Paolillo
Ward 18 Nicholas Colavolpe/ Jacqueline Kozin
Ward 19 Kimberly Edwards/ Matthew Nemerson
Ward 20 Ernest Jones/ Tanya Smith vs. Latoya Agnew/ Barbara Vereen
Ward 21 Theresa Morant/ Geneva Pollock vs. Rodney Williams
Ward 22 Gina Phillips/ Cordelia Thorpe vs. Jayuan Carter/ Josef Goodman
Ward 23 Vanessa McBride/ Jerry Poole
Ward 24 Alice Stewart/ Arthur Gary Stewart vs. Seth Poole/ Kebra L. Smith-Bolden
Ward 25 Mike Slattery/ Janis Underwood
Ward 26 Arnold Amore/ Ronald Rainey vs. Theresa Jones
Ward 27 Sharon Jones/ Henry Lowendorf
Ward 28 Jess Corbett/ Donald Walker
Ward 29 Betty Alford/ Major Ruth vs. Thomas Ficklin/ Audrey Tyson
Ward 30 Cassandra Lang/ Honda Smith