Neena Satija Photo
Candidates Vinay Nayak and Sarah Eidelson.
Get ready for an influx of new Yalie voters — and out-of-state cash.
The rush of new voters and money has appeared as Yale senior Sarah Eidelson and sophomore Vinay Nayak prepare for a general election battle Tuesday for the aldermanic seat in Ward 1. The ward, which spans campus dorms, is traditionally represented by a Yale undergraduate.
Eidelson claimed she’s registered 688 new voters in the ward since she announced her candidacy in August. Nayak claimed he’s registered about 600. And the Yale College Democrats registered around 200, according to their president, Marina Keegan.
Their numbers could not be independently confirmed by the city’s Registrar of Voters because, staffers said, of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s decision to extend the deadline for voter registration to Friday due to the freak snowstorm over the weekend, pushing back the date when the city publishes voter lists.
Because Yale students generally change residence every year and most who graduate leave the city, the influx of new registrants — and exodus of others — isn’t unusual. However, numbers provided by the registrar show the overall number has grown dramatically: As of Oct. 27, the registrar had counted 2,400 registered voters in the ward. Around the same time last year there were about 2,050.
Eidelson and Nayak are both running as Independents on Tuesday. That’s because campus Democrats changed the endorsement process: Ward 1’s Democratic committee decided in January not to hold an endorsement vote for an aldermanic candidate in the spring, so that Yale freshmen joining in the fall can have a say in who represents them in the city.
The surge in registrations could give the ward an unexpectedly large role in Tuesday’s mayoral contest, where 18-year incumbent Mayor John DeStefano faces independent challenger Jeffrey Kerekes.
Signs point to increasing student participation in local elections, which often go ignored on Yale’s campus.
Two years ago, Michael Jones sailed into office by gaining 233 votes in the Democratic endorsement. (He went unopposed in the general election in November.) A total of 435 voters went to the polls from Ward 1 for the 2009 endorsement vote, which was itself considered an indication of a surge of student interest in city politics.
A debate between the two candidates last month was one of the best-attended aldermanic candidate debates in years, with 250 students in the crowd.
While both candidates have significant support on campus, Eidelson said she’s making a greater effort to reach outside campus borders and connect with people who live in the city long-term.
Eidelson, a Philadelphia native, said she’s spent more time talking with New Haven residents and activists to get a sense of what can be done in the next two years.
Yale junior Francisco Tamayo told Eidelson he’s voting for her in part because her campaign finance reports “show a commitment and a belief and trust in you” from New Haveners.
She said her campaign finance reports illustrate that point. Her campaign’s first report lists $2,851 in donations coming from mostly small donors living in New Haven. According to Nayak’s first finance report, his campaign received $6,596, mostly coming in larger chunks from his home state of Illinois. (Click here to read a Yale Daily News analysis of those reports).
The latest reports, submitted by the candidates on Tuesday, don’t show a big difference along those lines. Both candidates collected about half of their money from out-of-state: Eidelson got $1,271 in donations between Oct. 10 and Oct. 25, with $670 coming from out-of-state. Of the $1,061 donated to Nayak’s campaign, $575 came from out-of-state.
Nayak, who hails from a Chicago suburb and is deciding between a major in political science or psychology, said he’ll be more in touch with Yale students because he has two years to go at the university. “I will be on campus with my constituents all the time,” he said. He also thinks his platform — focused on policy proposals to reduce recidivism and combat wage theft — is more “specific” than Eidelson’s.
Nayak said he wants to expand the city’s “ban the box” legislation, passed in 2009, to create incentive programs for private businesses to do the same; he said he also wants a transitional employment program for ex-felons to work in the public sector before moving on to the private.
Yale senior Latisha Campbell tapes a poster onto a willing dorm occupant’s door.
Eidelson called those proposals old news. “New Haven has actually been a leader in addressing recidivism,” she said, adding that incentives for the private sector already exist on the state and federal level. “We can’t afford to add incentives that already exist.”
As for Nayak’s idea for a transitional employment program, “If there are a lot of vacant jobs lying around in the city, I certainly don’t see them,” Eidelson said.
Eidelson said she wants to focus on “a return to true community policing,” which Nayak calls redundant given the recent return to walking beats and Dean Esserman’s pending arrival as New Haven police chief, and the upcoming revision of the city’s charter.
Both have some experience with aldermanic affairs. This past summer Eidelson managed the campaign of Sarah Saiano for Ward 18 alderman; Saiano was the only one of a slate of union-backed candidates who lost in September’s Democratic primary. Nayak was a policy assistant for the Board of Aldermen’s Community Development Committee last year.
Still, Eidelson has painted herself as far more involved in city politics. The candidates who’ll likely become the next aldermen in neighboring wards — Doug Hausladen and labor-backed Jeanette Morrison and Frank Douglass — all endorsed her last week.
Nayak said he’s spent plenty of time with alders and wants to work between coalitions on the board, not within them. “I don’t like the pro and anti-City Hall rhetoric,” he said. “The people [Eidelson]‘s worked with have all been part of one coalition.”