Elicker Crushes Harp In Mayoral Election

Justin Elicker is the next mayor of New Haven, after defeating incumbent Toni Harp by well more than a 2 – 1 margin in Tuesday’s election.

(Update Wednesday 7 p.m.) According to official results released Wednesday evening by the Registrar of Voters office, including absentee ballots, Elicker defeated Harp by 12,296 to 5,034 votes, or 69 to 28 percent. (The ward breakdown appears in the above chart. Two candidates collected write-in vote.)

Elicker, the Democratic candidate, captured 27 out of 30 wards against an incumbent who previously won 17 out of 17 elections for various positions over 32 years in New Haven.

His campaign was looking for that kind of broad mandate after a bitterly divisive campaign with explicit racial appeals to black voters to deny office to a white candidate who, in the argument of one prominent Harp supporter, was launching a white ​“takeover” of New Haven. Those appeals fell even flatter in nonwhite neighborhoods than they did in the Sept. 10 Democratic primary, when Elicker defeated Harp by 58 to 42 percent. Harp ran as the Working Families Party candidate in Tuesday’s general election.

“This victory is resounding across the city,” Elicker shouted at a victory party at the Next Door restaurant in Jocelyn Square.

The bar was filled with both long-time supporters— like Westville Alder Darryl Brackeen and NHPS Advocates co-founder Sarah Miller — as well as with high-profile local politicos who threw their support behind Elicker only after he won September’s primary — like New Haven Rising labor organizer Scott Marks.

“New Haven is a place where divisive rhetoric has no tolerance,” he said soon after arriving to a raucous applause just after 9 p.m.

Elicker said Harp called him to extend congratulations and offer her help for a smooth transition.

“I’m grateful to have her as a partner as we move forward into the next steps,” he said. He told the crowd Harp will be remembered for her decades of public service and for many accomplishments, such as creating YouthStat to support young people struggling with deep challenges, taking down a fence that separated two communities in Hamden and New Haven, rebuilding the Q House.

Voter turnout was 29 percent.

After the 933 absentee ballots and 163 Election Day Registration (EDR) ballots are counted, it’s possible Harp will match or come close to the 5,150 votes she won in the Sept. 10 primary, in which Elicker beat her 58 to 42 percent.

Elicker increased his margin in Tuesday’s general election, when Republicans and independents were eligible to vote.

Elicker also continued narrowing the margin in African-American wards like Newhallville’s Ward 20, which was supposed to be the heart of Harp’s base. She concentrated her campaign only on the black community with blunt racial appeals— and lost more ground to Elicker. Elicker even won Wards 22 and 27, two districts with sizeable African-American electorates that in the past always backed Harp.

Over At The Elks Club…

In a concession speech at the Elks Club in the Dixwell neighborhood, Harp congratulated her challenger and said she intends to continue ​“some form of public service.”

“I’m grateful in my heart of hearts for the ability that I’ve had to serve the people of New Haven,” she said.

Probate Judge Clifton Graves, Alders Yvette Hamilton and Frank Douglass, and Livable City Initiative Director Serena Neal-Sanjuro all showed at the subdued after-party.

They shed tears over the stinging defeat, attacked the Democratic ​“machine” that they felt had betrayed them and the challenger that they accused of making politics too ​“personal,” and tried to figure out what to do next.

Some of Harp’s supporters had already started plotting how to take back City Hall, saying they needed to get the ​“mongoose out of the chicken house.”

“We cede nothing!” Yasmin Amico, a Hamden resident and New Haven teacher who’d spent the day campaigning for Harp downtown, said after picking up the mic, as ​“Aint No Stoppin’ Us Now” came on the speakers. ​“We do not give up the fight! We march on tonight!”

But most echoed the message of Harp’s speech, that they’d be a part of New Haven’s continued rise.

“I appreciate her reminding us that we all need to work together,” said Shirley Ellis-West, a former Quinnipiac Meadows alder. ​“The foundation has already been set, and now we have to figure out how we can work together to build on it.”

Emma Jones, who first approached Harp about a general-election run and later became the chair of The People’s Campaign PAC, cried near the back of the bar.

She said she was feeling torn up about how she felt Harp had been smeared as racial fissures split the city. She tied Harp’s reelection campaign to the history of the civil rights movement.

“I will always hold in my heart what a wonderful servant she really is and how tremendous this community is,” Jones said. ​“That, despite the fact that many of us felt that there had been a division made within the Black community and a further schism between the white community and the Black community.”

“For me, that rolled back so many of the accomplishments that people like Martin Luther King made to get us to the place where we can have the right not only to vote, but the right to be in a world where we can contribute tremendously to society, that we will not be scandalized in our character, that we will not be punished in the process of trying to do that,” she added. ​“Mayor Toni Harp did so much for this community.”

Harp ​“is not going to be remembered for these past three or four weeks,” Elicker said in his victory speech, alluding to her negative campaigning. ​“Mayor Harp is going to be remembered for her 30 years in public service.”

Alex Taubes, a local attorney who worked as the campaign’s treasurer, said that, in 2020, volunteers could bring along voter registration forms as they fanned out to help take the Census.

With a different electorate? Another Harp supporter leaned over to Jones and whispered the rest secretly in her ear.

Democrats swept all the Board of Alders races as well. City Clerk Michael Smart won a fourth term. Board of Education President Darnell Goldson was re-elected as well.

See the candidates’ victory and concession speeches below.

Thank you to the 33 volunteers who reported results from the polls!