Primary Shapes Up As Harp Referendum

(News analysis) Voters will see two names on Tuesday’s Democratic mayoral primary ballot. But many have focused primarily on one name — and weighing whether to vote for or against her.

The two names: Mayor Toni Harp and challenger Justin Elicker. The two face off in a rematch primary election Tuesday.

Based on much of the two campaigns’ marketing materials and the substance of the public debate, the election has turned largely into a referendum on Harp’s three-term mayoralty.

For the most part voters appear poised either to vote for or against her, as opposed to for or against her opponent.

More than any one specific policy issue, the campaign has focused largely on whether Harp has managed city government well at a time of a market-rate apartment boom, job growth, safer streets, fiscal uncertainty, lead-paint enforcement fights, and school district controversy. (The candidates do offer specific platforms. Elicker has proposed making records of all city expenditures publicly available through an online checkbook portal and matching nonprofits with school buildings to run after-school programs; find his platform on a drop-down menu atop this website. Find Harp’s record summary here. They debated issues at a substantive debate Thursday night. Read about it and watch it here.)

Like any hard-fought primary, this one has revealed much about New Haven’s political agenda and pushed the administration to up its game in managing the city. The primary election will also test assumptions about how power and how elections work in New Haven at the dawn of a new decade — and how racially divided a city we are.

The Issues

One striking facet of the campaign: What the candidates have not disagreed about. Both Harp and Elicker have embraced what seem to be popular policy positions among the electorate: They support ​“sanctuary” policies for undocumented immigrants and noncooperation with federal deportation efforts. They swear allegiance to that amorphous concept ​“community policing.” They express concern about taxpayer’s abilities to shoulder any more mill rate hikes while not committing to cutting taxes or eliminating any major functions of government. They support unions. They blame the state for not reimbursing New Haven for revenue lost on tax-exempt property. They embrace the general call for inclusionary zoning and stepped-up efforts to create affordable housing. They call for Yale to do more for New Haven. They don’t question the dominant influence Yale’s UNITE HERE unions exert over city government. They call for expanding early education. They abhor President Trump’s policies.

In debates, the candidates have found points of disagreement about how to carry out those goals. But in general, both campaigns have talked about these and other issues in terms of Mayor Harp’s record in pursuing them.

Harp argues that she has been the most successful mayor in modern New Haven political history. She trumpets a 50-year low in violent crime rates and drop in unemployment. She trumpets a rise in high school graduation rates and new jobs, as well as plans for 2,000 new low-to-moderate-income apartments. She touts successes in shepherding projects like the DISTRICT tech campus, Randy Salvatore’s project on 11 acres in the Hill, and the College Street Music Hall that, even amid a boom, required risk-taking and creativity to breathe new life to long-vacant properties that her predecessors never developed. She highlights YouthStat, an innovative youth violence-prevention program credited with savings lives. (The New Haven Register adopted this view of the race in its endorsement of Harp.)

Elicker argues that the Harp administration has devolved into an unethical, dysfunctional mess. He cites Harp’s role in pushing through the unpopular appointment of a new schools superintendent whose first year has been marked by infighting, mass resignations, teacher and student protests, and scandal. He claims City Hall has failed to include lower-income neighborhoods in the building boom, has failed to push Yale hard enough for more financial contributions. He highlights the current FBI investigation into poorly documented and questionable spending by Harp’s youth department. He criticizes her administration’s decision to restructure $160 million in debt to fund operational expenses. And he criticizes Harp for failing to joining him in participating in the city’s public-financing program — and for continuing to defy state legal requirements to identify campaign donors and city legal requirements to protect young children from lead paint poisoning.

So Harp’s vote depends on convincing people the city’s doing well thanks in large part to her leadership. ​“New Haven is doing better and better and better,” she declared at Thursday night’s candidate debate.

Elicker’s vote depends on convincing people that city government is corrupt and failing. (“HARP’S CITY HALL IS IN CHAOS — New Haven deserves better,” read one in a stream of attack mailers his campaign sent this past week.)

Harp is asking people to vote for experience — she has served in elected office for 32 years, including decades as a powerful state senator. Part of the referendum on Harp is about whether Elicker can convince voters that’s enough. Elicker is asking people to vote for generational change and to consider his experience — two terms as one of 30 city alders and director of a small but successful nonprofit, the New Haven Land Trust — adequate preparation for government’s top job.

The Reveals

In addition to choosing a candidate for mayor, the expected 10,000 to 15,000 voters in Tuesday’s primary will also offer an update on how politics works in New Haven. Among the questions to be answered:

• Does UNITE HERE still dominate elections as thoroughly as it has since 2011? The Yale union’s locals, which support a majority of city alders, have endorsed Harp and dispatched canvassers throughout the city. They’re all in. Will they deliver?

• How much will the ​“new” New Haven — the often white-collar people who have moved here in the last decade and along with immigrants have made New Haven the only Connecticut city to gain population — affect who gets elected? Will this vote be less influenced by party organizations and familiar, veteran names? One district to watch in particular: Downtown’s Ward 7. (Read about that here.) Others include Westville’s Ward 25, East Rock’s Wards 9 and 10.

• How racially divided are we? That’s a related question. In the original 2013 Elicker-Harp match-up, Elicker’s votes came almost exclusively from white people. (Check out this article for details.) Harp drew racially mixed support, as she has throughout her career. This time around, majority-white wards may be moving even more toward Elicker, based on the prominence of lawn signs, the results of ward committee votes, and the impressions of people active in both campaigns. The Harp team has focused most of its home-stretch campaigning on doors and events in the black community. Elicker has hit Harp in the home stretch with mailers depicting her administration as corrupt. He has also tried hard to broaden his monochromatic 2013 base. Tuesday’s election will determine whether he did so, and to what extent white and black/brown perceptions of New Haven’s politics are tales of two cities.

• What strategy best motivates the black and brown vote? 

Harp is the city’s most successful African-American elected official as well as the city’s first female mayor. She has also picked up endorsements from Latino political leaders. How much will that matter? In addition to appealing to communal pride, her campaign has sought to appeal to voters by tapping into a history of brutal white government conspiracies against the black community (from the Tuskegee Experiment to COINTELPRO to modern-day voter suppression and unchecked police violence): In this case it has claimed that Elicker, who is white, is benefitting from a conspiracy hatched by President Trump, Democratic Town Chair Vincent Mauro Jr., and Elicker’s wife, an assistant U.S. attorney. It also released a TV commercial suggesting that by expressing interest in a proposal to use drones to track illegal dirt bike and ATV riders, Elicker seeks to use ​“police drones to spy on our neighborhoods” and ​“violat[e] our rights.” Elicker’s supporters have criticized those attacks as inaccurate and divisive.

Elicker, meanwhile, has sought to show that, even though he is white, he has measurable black and brown support this time around. He has made a point to campaign in the Hill, Newhallville, Dixwell, Fair Haven, and highlight grassroots supporters there. He has also made a point of picturing himself alongside black and Latino figures in his campaign material. Will that make a difference at the polls? Elicker has highlighted the support of black and brown public figures who have had fallings-out with Mayor Harp: His most visible campaign backers include Board of Ed member Ed Joyner, who served as Harp’s transition co-chair in 2013 but then broke visibly with her over schools policy; Nichole Jefferson, whose firing as city equal-employment chief remains a legal battle years later; and former Assistant Police Chief Luiz Casanova, who sued Harp and asked a federal judge to order her to name him the next chief after Harp picked someone else. (Elicker posed on the cover of one flyer with Casanova and walked a Fair Haven parade alongside him.) A similar roster and pitch failed to gain another mayoral challenger (who unlike Elicker is African-American and New Haven-born) many votes or any ward victories in 2017.

• Do voters care about ​“clean” elections and the role of money in politics? As in their first match-up in 2013, Elicker is limiting campaign donations and refusing special-interest money in return for public financing under the city’s Democracy Fund program; and Harp is not participating in the program. This time around some of her backers have been up front about collecting $1,000-a-person contributions for the incumbent as a thank-you for government contracts. (Read about that here. And click here to read how both candidates framed this issue at Thursday night’s debate.) Also, the Harp campaign has yet to account for the identities of $100,000 worth of campaign donors from the 2017 campaign, despite a state law requiring it to; and has once again failed to report the names of donors in this campaign. It’s unclear how much this issue influences voters.

• Do state legislators matter in city races? Harp won the 2013 mayor’s race with the early and prominent backing of her former fellow state legislators from New Haven, chief among them State Sen. Martin Looney. All but two of the legislators (State Reps. Toni Walker and Juan Candelaria) have sat out this election. It’s unclear to what extent that will influence the outcome.

Already Accomplished

Former Mayor John DeStefano used to fight hard against even the longest-shot primary challenges. But then he would state publicly that primaries made New Haven a better place: They brought to the fore public dissatisfaction over specific issues. They pushed him to produce results. They raised new ideas for how to run city government. They involved citizens in the political process. In one case (2001), a hotly contested primary led DeStefano to redefine his coalition and agenda.

This campaign has already produced a broader public discussion about affordable housing policy and economic development. It has pushed City Hall to move faster on pressing issues: In just the past few weeks, the long-delayed Dixwell Community ​“Q” House project finally broke ground; a delayed five-year plan has been released to address the city’s long-term structural deficit; the cops finally got a new contract after three years without one; and City Hall started cleaning house at the health department and drafted a new lead paint policy backed by new inspector positions (although it’s spending well over $100,000 on outside lawyers in a losing fight against a class-action suit on the subject and continues to present a garbled public message about its approach).

The campaign has clearly energized Harp in recent weeks to get business done, to explain her administration’s record, and to deliver a passionate and personal public presence.

So whoever wins next Tuesday’s primary, New Haven has already won.

Reminder: Tuesday’s primary may not be the last word. Elicker and Harp have each secured a spot on the Nov. 5 general election ballot, Elicker on an unaffiliated line, Harp on the Working Families Party Line. Elicker has said he will run in November even if he loses the primary; Harp has said she hasn’t yet made up her mind. Two other people, Wendy Hamilton and Urn Pendragon, have petitioned their way onto the November ballot as well.

Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch the full Thursday night candidate debate.