Thomas Breen Photo
Urn Pendragon at an affordable-housing rally outside City Hall.
New Haven mayoral candidate Urn Pendragon took a third path from two of her opponents on the question of who should conduct the investigation into the shooting by Hamden and Yale cops of an unarmed couple inside a Honda Civic in Newhallville.
Mayoral candidate Justin Elicker last week called for the state to transfer the investigation to a state’s attorney from outside New Haven, the way it automatically does whenever a cop shoots someone to death. In this April 16 incident, a young woman was struck and injured by a cop’s bullet, but she survived. Elicker argued that the local state’s attorney has a conflict of interest because he deals daily with the local police on other criminal matters.
Incumbent Mayor Toni Harp, who’s running for a fourth two-year term, responded by supporting New Haven State’s Attorney Pat Griffin’s ability to oversee a fair investigation by state police. She said she’d prefer to have him do it than someone who doesn’t work here and doesn’t know New Haven.
Pendragon sided with activists who are calling for an independent, non-police, non-prosecutor investigator to take over the case.
“There does need to be a third party. That’s the only way to be impartial,” she said Wednesday.
Pendragon made the comment during an appearance on WNHH FM’s Dateline New Haven” program.
She also spoke of promoting a mandated 20 to 22 percent affordable-housing requirement on new development; training cops better on how to deal with the homeless; performing an audit of all city spending.
Toni Harp did an “excellent job” in her first two terms but erred in spending money on a business trip to China, raising her salary, and outfitting her office workers with new uniforms, Pendragon argued. “I don’t like how she’s managing the budget.”
If elected, she promised, she will slash the mayor’s salary, which is currently $134,013.
“I could definitely survive” on $85,000, she said.
Pendragon, 50, grew up in Virginia, North Carolina, and Oklahoma. She said her great-great uncle was legendary circus showman P.T. Barnum.
She has been homeless in Connecticut twice in the past decade, including when she first moved here and when she was laid off from a job, she said. She spoke of living in an SUV for 11 months off Route 15 in the Meriden-Wallingford area. She also spoke of transitioning to female six and a half years ago. Those experiences, she argued, help her understand important issues facing New Haven.
Listener Patricia Kane asked Pendragon what experience she has had to help her manage city government.
Pendragon replied that she said she studied government budgets when she earned her master’s degree at Southern Connecticut State University. She also said that she volunteered to “work the floor” and perform other supervisory tasks when she held non-management jobs at Radio Shack and in another tech support position. She currently holds two part-time jobs, one with a temporary nursing support agency, another at a local retail outlet, she said.
She is currently collecting signatures to qualify for an unaffiliated spot on the November general election ballot. She’s also lobbying alders and state representatives, she said, in hopes of winning the Democratic Party’s endorsement in the September primary. So far she has attracted three volunteers to her campaign, she said. At first, she had hoped not to have to raise money, she said, but she now has concluded she will need to.
Pendragon was asked to assess the odds of her winning this election and becoming New Haven’s next mayor.
“Forty to 50 percent,” she responded.
Click on the video to watch the full interview with mayoral candidate Urn Pendragon on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.”