Sam Gurwitt photo
Rhonda Caldwell and Laurie Sweet.
With the blessing of the state’s Working Families Party (WFP), a state representative, and local politicians and residents, two candidates officially launched a joint Legislative Council campaign Friday with a three-point platform: get Hamden’s finances under control, ensure greater police accountability, and improve racial equity in the town at large and in its schools.
The candidates, Rhonda Caldwell and Laurie Sweet, are running for at-large seats on the council. They are both registered Democrats, but they are running as Working Families Party candidates to try to oust Republicans from the council.
Hamden’s charter reserves two at-large council seats for minority parties. Traditionally, those seats have gone to Republicans, with Democrats garnering a large majority of votes. WFP candidates are also eligible for those seats if they garner the most votes of any non-Democrat candidates.
Caldwell and Sweet decided to run for the town’s council after witnessing how Hamden handled the shooting of Stephanie Washington in April. They were both active in the protests that took place in the weeks following the incident.
“I’m deeply disappointed by the inactivity of the Police Commission following a tradition of not investigating complaints,” said Sweet as she read a speech to the 30-odd friends and supporters gathered in her living room with plates of chicken-salad finger sandwiches and madeleine cookies.
Kerry Ellington and Josh Wyrtzen.
Kerry Ellington, a community organizer from New Haven who was one of the leaders of the protests that followed the shooting, showed up to voice her support for Caldwell and Sweet.
“I think they are two residents of Hamden who are invested in undoing the racial injustices in Hamden,” Ellington said. “They’re devoted to those groups who often get left behind in policy.”
Caldwell and Sweet announced their run in July. Read more about that here.
“More Voices”
The Hamden Legislative Council is composed of nine district seats, one for each district, and six at-large seats. Two of those at-large seats are reserved for minority parties. On the ballot, voters can choose up to four candidates from the at-large slate.
Typically, Democrats win the most votes among at-large candidates, meaning they get four of the six at-large slots. In the 2017 municipal election, Lauren Garrett was the top at-large vote-getter, with 6,562 votes, followed by John DeRosa with 6,510, Mick McGarry with 6,402, and Berita Rowe-Lewis with 6,312, all Democrats. Betty Wetmore and Marjorie Bonadies, both Republicans, took the minority party seats with 3,515 and 3,386 votes respectively.
Caldwell and Sweet would need to get more than the Republican at-large candidates to win seats on the council. They would not need to garner as many votes as candidates running on the Democratic ticket.
WFP both fields its own candidates and cross-endorses candidates from other parties. In 2016, it helped Josh Elliott win an upset victory in the Democratic Primary for Connecticut’s 88th Connecticut House of Representatives District. Elliott was there on Friday to endorse Sweet and Caldwell.
State Rep. Josh Elliott.
WFP candidates fill minority party slots in other towns and cities in Connecticut. Hartford’s City Council, for example, is composed of five Democrats and three WFP members.
WFP Connecticut Organizing Director Zack Campbell said that in Hartford, the WFP council members do provide a balance with the Democrats, adding “a populist, anti-corporate lens.”
Some people have said that running on a third-party ticket could backfire and split the Democratic vote, providing an opening for Republicans to nab additional seats. Sweet, Caldwell, and the WFP leaders who are backing them said they’re not concerned that that will happen.
Hamden has enough Democrats, said WFP Connecticut Political Director Sarah Ganong, that “the numbers make sense” for a minority-party run.
“I don’t see the concern about adding more voices,” said District 5 Council Rep. Justin Farmer, who showed up to Sweet’s house, which is located in his district, to support the WFP ticket. He said that he thinks they are giving people the opportunity to vote for values. He sometimes hears from people who say they don’t want to vote for a Democrat, so they say they’ll have to vote for a Republican. The WFP candidates, he said, could offer an alternative.
Stop The Spending
Many parts of Caldwell and Sweet’s platform revolve around racial justice. Caldwell is a leader of Hamden Anti-Bias Anti-Racism (ABAR), which aims to end race-based inequities in Hamden’s schools. Sweet works with Cuban and Caribbean asylum seekers, and took a trip to the U.S. Mexico border last fall to protest the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown.
In one part of their platform, they tout a classic rallying cry of conservatism, as do many of Hamden’s Democrats: fiscal responsibility.
“Rhonda and I plan to work to stop the spending that has been going on for 30 years,” said Sweet to the crowd of supporters. “It’s quite simple. You spend what you bring in. If that’s not enough, you get creative and you research ways to bring in more money.”
“Our town’s fiscal crisis can no longer be ignored or swept under the rug for the next elected official who often just merely change seats in this town,” said Caldwell. “Often, the crisis has consumed our entire town, having every working family be forced to make the difficult choices in their household finances while continually being hit with increased demands for more property tax payments without any lucid plan of action as to when these requests will stop.”
Caldwell is an asset manager for the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority, working with the Low-Income State Housing Portfolio. She reviews and approves the budgets of 18 different housing authorities throughout the state, including Hamden’s. As someone who looks at budgets and audits quite frequently, she said she had a bit of a shock when she read Hamden’s most recent audit, which showed that Hamden has over $1 billion in net liabilities.
“When the budget comes out, you know I’m going through it with a fine-toothed comb,” she said.
On one wall, above a table of food, hung a map of Hamden with each of its Legislative Council districts filled in with a different color. On Saturday at !0 a.m., they would be out walking throughout those colored patches bringing their message to voters’ doors.
Watch the launch party speeches below.