Is This What Democracy Looks Like?

When Democratic committees bar the public from public meetings and disregard the votes of the majority of their members, they risk ​“hollow[ing] out the party from its roots.”

That criticism of New Haven’s ward-level politics came this week not just from dissenters in the trenches — but from the head of the Democratic Party itself.

Democratic Town Committee (DTC) Chair Vin Mauro, Jr. raised that criticism as he reflected on what went right, and what went wrong, in the way his party went about choosing a candidate to endorse for mayor. His view echoed those of some grassroots party members who felt shut out of the process — in shades of the national intra-Democratic Party Clinton-versus-Sanders debate that took place in the 2016 presidential nominating season.

The fundamental question: Whose Democratic Party is it?

New Haven’s process culminated in a convention Thursday night held at Career High School, at which co-chairs of 30 Democratic Ward committees assembled to endorse candidates for election.

At the convention, Mayor Toni Harp handily defeated challenger Justin Elicker 34 to 16 as she won the local Democratic Party’s endorsement for her reelection bid.

Elicker, along with fellow Democratic mayoral hopefuls Wendy Hamilton and Urn Pendragon, must now collect roughly 2,000 signatures apiece over the next few weeks in order to petition their way onto the Sept. 10 Democratic primary ballot.

Shutting People Out

Those 50 votes cast on Thursday night for the two mayoral candidates did not simply emerge out of thin air. And they did not come without their fair share of controversy.

They represent the culmination of weeks of ward committee meetings at which Democratic Party stalwarts from throughout the city met with their neighbors to discuss the various candidates running for mayor, alder, and the Board of Education.

Often, but not always, those committees were open to the public, as they are required to be by state party bylaws.

In some cases, as in Wards 8, 20, and 25, members of the public and press were barred from parts of those meetings by co-chairs who defied state party open meeting rules.

Often, but not always, committee members voted at the ends of their respective meetings to endorse a particular candidate.

In some cases, as in Wards 3, 4, and 8, the co-chairs decided simply not to host a vote.

And in a minority of cases, as in Ward 14, the ward committees appear not to have met at all before Thursday night’s convention.

Elicker won more of the non-binding votes in ward committees that did hold them.

Votes = ?

Even for those ward committees that did hold votes, those intra-committee ballots had at best a tangential relationship to the actual electoral outcome at the convention.

That’s because ward-level Democratic Party endorsements for mayor, just like state-level Democratic Party endorsements for president, do not function on the principle of direct democracy.

Instead, the co-chairs who lead each of the city’s 30 ward committees serve as delegates at the convention.

Those co-chairs are free to cast their support for whomever they like best at the convention. The votes that take place at committee meetings before the convention, per DTC guidelines, are nonbinding. Co-chairs are encouraged to take under advisement the will of the majority of their committee members. But, come convention, they can vote as they please.

So, even though Elicker won the majority of votes cast at the Ward 7, 19, and 29 committee meetings, for example, he earned just one vote of support at the convention from those six committee co-chairs.

Why Have The Committees?

“The purpose of the ward committees is for committee members to have a voice,” Elicker said after the convention. ​“Not allowing many of the ward committees to even meet and vote is unfortunate.”

The co-chairs themselves are elected every other March during even-numbered years. But they face elections only if a challenger candidate petitions onto a primary ballot in January of that year. If not, no election is held.

Co-chairs then appoint up to 25 members each to their ward committees, and submit those names to the city clerk’s office.

Some have criticized the ward committee process and nonbinding nature of committee votes as unfairly prejudiced in favor of frontrunners, much as Bernie Sanders supporters lambasted the Democratic National Committee’s ​“superdelegates” during the 2016 presidential election.

Others argue that ward committees are invaluable hyperlocal vehicles for encouraging neighborhood-level engagement in Democratic politics. And that a nonbinding committee vote preserves co-chairs’ rights to vote their conscience, and not just what the majority of their members has encouraged them to do.

Commenters to recent articles in the Independent have complained that they don’t even know how to get on their ward committees or when the committees meet. Despite a state party rule to advertise committee meetings on a website or on Facebook, the ward chairs do not. (Article VII, Section 8: ​“All Local Town Committees must post notices in advance of their meetings and caucuses on their local website or Facebook page, if they have one, and on the Connecticut Democratic State Party website.”)

Despite a local party rule to reach out to as many neighborhood Democrats as possible when deciding which members to appoint to any given committee, the ward chairs do not. (Section 3: ​“The Co-Chairpersons of each Ward shall make every effort to contact all registered Democrats in their Ward concerning said procedure [regarding membership application].”)

Click here to download the local party bylaws.

This past month, some committee chairs brought lists of official members to the city clerk’s office as late as the day of or a day before their ward committee meetings, leaving everyone but their picks unaware of when the meetings would take place.

In one case, in Ward 30, one of the co-chairs herself claimed she didn’t know about the meeting. That co-chair, Michelle Edmonds-Sepulveda, accused the other co-chair of hand-picking members and inviting them to her house, without telling others. That group then endorsed Harp and a challenger to Edmonds-Sepulveda (who’s an alder). The other co-chair, Iva Johnson, denied that charge.

Elicker wasn’t the only one to express concerns on Thursday night about the local ward committee process.

“As a ward co-chair,” Mauro told the Independent in the hallways of Career High before the convention began, ​“you want the opinion of your ward committee.”

In most cases, he said, co-chairs follow the guidance of the nonbinding committee votes. They cast their ballots at the convention in line with the majority of their committee members, who themselves are appointed to committees by their respective co-chairs.

But sometimes personal relationships trump that guidance, Mauro said. And that can lead to a breach of trust between co-chair and committee.

“To go off and say, ​‘I want to do it this way because I want to do it,’” Mauro said, ​“that in and of itself hollows out the party from its roots. I think when you start to hollow out the party from its most basic ward level, it not only presents a problem today, but it really presents more of a problem going forward.”

Taken as a whole, Mauro said, the ward committee meetings leading up to the convention served their primary purpose of educating registered Democrats about the candidates and encouraging neighborhood residents to get engaged in local politics, and feel prepared and energized to vote come September and November.

“In a lot of ways it was an open process,” he said. ​“There were a couple snafus on whether it was an open meeting or not an open meeting. People have to understand that all meetings are open meetings. Hopefully we will rectify that going forward.”

The Independent caught up with a half-dozen co-chairs right before the start of the convention Thursday night to ask about how they think the ward committee system currently works, and should work going forward.

Brenda Harris, Ward 8 Co-Chair, Wooster Square

A ward committee should ​“make decisions, help out wherever there’s need, and help people come together as a neighborhood,” Harris said.

When asked why she and her co-chair Ana Winn decided not to host a vote amongst Ward 8 committee members at the end of their pre-convention meeting, Harris had no answer. ​“We just didn’t do it,” she said. Winn declined to comment. Both Harris and Winn cast their votes at the convention for Harp.

Claudia Herrera, Ward 9 Co-Chair, East Rock/Fair Haven

A ward committee should constantly be evaluating the performances of local elected officials, Herrera said. Not just during election cycles, but all year round. ​“That should be our job as co-chairs,” she said. ​“Helping to assess our city.”

The Ward 9 committee voted to support Elicker at its pre-convention meeting, and both Herrera and her fellow co-chair Sarah Locke cast their ballots for Elicker at the convention.

Kurtis Kearny, Ward 11 Co-Chair, Bella Vista

A ward committee’s primary responsibilities are community outreach and educating residents about the candidates, Kearney said.“We’re doing pretty good,” he said. In addition to serving as Ward 11 co-chair, Kearney is also the chair of the Quinnipiac East Community Management Team.

Kearney said he is in support of the committee votes remaining nonbinding on what co-chairs are ultimately permitted to do at the convention.

“This is freedom of choice,” Kearney said. ​“We’re not robots.”

Ward 11 Alder Renee Haywood, sitting just a few chairs down from Kearney, disagreed. If a ward co-chair purports to represent a group of people, she said, that co-chair should be obliged to cast his or her vote for what the majority of that group wants. Anything else would be ​“disingenuous,” she said.

Although Harp won the Ward 11 committee vote, Kearney cast his ballot at the convention for Elicker. Joe Fuce, the other co-chair for Ward 11, cast his ballot at the convention for Harp.

Claudine Wilkins-Chambers, Ward 19 Co-Chair, Newhallville/Prospect Hill

Ward committee members should knock on doors, register neighbors to vote, and help them understand who is running for office and what those candidates stand for, Wilkins-Chambers said.

“I try to educate people who have never voted before.”

She said she supports keeping the committee vote nonbinding on co-chairs at the convention.

If they were binding, she said, that would ​“take away your democratic rights.” Although the Ward 19 committee voted to support Elicker, Wilkins-Chambers cast her ballot at the convention for Harp. Her fellow co-chair Ethel Berger cast her ballot at the convention for Elicker.

Janis Underwood, Ward 25 Co-Chair, Westville

Ward committee co-chairs and other members ​“should be ambassadors for the DTC,” Underwood said. They should welcome neighbors into the Democratic Party and help get them interested in participating in local politics.

“I think it absolutely should be binding,” she said when asked about how a committee’s vote should influence co-chairs at the convention.

The Ward 25 committee voted for Elicker during its pre-convention meeting, and Underwood cast her ballot for Elicker. Harriet Welfare, the other co-chair for Ward 25, did not show up for the convention.

Underwood declined to comment on whether or not committee meetings should be open to the public.

At their June 16 meeting, Ward 25 co-chairs barred non-committee members from listening in on the vote. That was in violation of Article VII, Section 8 of Democratic state party rules, which states: ​“In accordance with the Charter of the Democratic National Committee, all meetings of the Democratic town committees, subcommittees and all other Democratic Party Committees shall be open to the public, and votes shall not be taken by secret ballot.”

Iva Johnson, Ward 30 Co-Chair, West Hills

As a ward committee co-chair, ​“I am responsible for making sure my residents make an educated vote,” she said. Ward committees should foster a strong, engaged political community that is deeply connected to day-to-day concerns of residents in the neighborhood, she said, and should endeavor to do as much outreach as possible while still recognizing that getting every single person in the ward involved would be ​“an astronomical task.”

When asked about a prior complaint from her co-chair, Ward 30 Alder Michelle Edmonds-Sepulveda, who claimed that she had not been invited to the Ward 30 committee meeting, Johnson and fellow Ward 30 committee member Mabel Carroll called bull. ​“We don’t want no division,” Carroll said. Johnson cast her for Harp at the convention, and for challenger Honda Smith for alder.

Correction: The original version of this story incorrectly stated that the Ward 23 committee did not meet before the convention. That committee did meet, and voted to endorse Mayor Harp.