Harp (left): Bloomberg (right) gets cities.
On a week when opponents have attacked him on race, presidential hopeful Mike Bloomberg has picked up the support of New Haven’s most prominent African-American elected official of the past two decades.
Former Mayor and State Sen. Toni Harp has swung her support to Bloomberg in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination after her first choice, California U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, dropped out.
Harp told the Independent Thursday that she concluded that of all the candidates still in the race, Bloomberg understands cities and the need for building generational wealth in low-income communities of color.
She pointed to the fact that in one of his first campaign events he rolled out a plan to build African-American wealth, and held the event in the Greenwood area of Tulsa. That community was the site of an infamous 1921 riot and massacre by white Oklahomans who destroyed an economically thriving business district known as the “black Wall Street.”
“They burned it down and murdered at least 300 people,” Harp noted. “He rolled out his initiative for the African-American community there. I think that really shows that he’s connected to the economy of the African-American community in ways that other candidates are not.” Bloomberg on Jan. 19 unveiled a “Greenwood Initiative” that targets discriminatory policies that have held back African-Americans in the financial, electoral, and criminal-justice systems. He promised to spend $70 billion in the 100 most distressed neighborhoods in the nation. And he promised the plan would help 1 million African-Americans buy homes and 100,000 black-owned businesses get off the ground.
Harp also said Bloomberg’s record as mayor of New York factored into her decision as well, along with his ability to take on President Donald Trump.
“I believe that he can win, and he is someone who has been the chief executive officer of our most important city in our country. It is one of the greatest cities in the world. He has shown that he can do that well,” Harp said.
“I think we need someone who can handle those issues far better than they are currently being handled. I think that he is the one person who is talking about homeownershp for people and developing wealth for communities, generational wealth. He has seen and speaks to how so many people lost housing in the past decade. We’ve seen it here in New Haven, in Newhallville and other neighborhoods. He has a plan to create generational wealth ; that is something that resonates with me.”
In 2018, Harp participated in a Harvard/Bloomberg city management class with 40 mayors that covered topics including deficit-reduction efforts and city executive management furloughs. “He has invested his own money in developing municipal leaders,” she said. As mayor, Harp called public attention to Bloomberg Philanthropies’ “What Works Cities” initiative.
Bloomberg has been steadily picking up support from black elected officials across the country this week. He has closed in on Joe Biden’s lead among African-American voters in nationwide polling.
At the same time, an embarrassing audio was released of him defending “stop and frisk” policing involving millions of stops of black and brown New Yorkers under his tenure as mayor. A federal judge eventually ordered the practice curtailed; this week Trump helped distribute online a damaging recording of Bloomberg speaking of the need to “throw them against a wall and frisk them.”
Harp said stop-and-frisk was “a mistaken policy” in New York. She noted as well that Bloomberg has apologized for it. More importantly, she argued, he has recognized the “economic impact” of enduring structural racial discrimination and developed plans to spur homeownership and wealth creation in response.
Harp said she has not discussed doing work with the Bloomberg campaign; she’s open to volunteering time. “It depends on whether or not they ask me,” she said. “If not, I’ll vote for him.”
The Bloomberg campaign has gotten off to the quickest start in setting up Connecticut operations in advance of the April 28 Democratic primary. Click here to read a previous story about that, and click below to watch an interview with Bloomberg’s Connecticut campaign director Brett Broesder.