Paul Bass Photo
David Lee points the candidate to a squatter’s den.
Dixwell, Bryan Anderson was telling gangbanger-turned-street-outreach-worker WIlliam “Juneboy” Outlaw, “is an old stomping ground for me.”
On Tuesday afternoon Dixwell Avenue was a renewed stomping ground for Anderson as well. He ran into Outlaw outside the city government’s neighborhood “Opportunity Center” outpost. Anderson was on the Avenue for the New Haven leg of his trip, capping a daylong swing through the Third U.S. Congressional District to announce his 2018 candidacy for the seat currently held by fellow Democrat Rosa DeLauro.
“Change is needed — no knock to her,” Outlaw said of DeLauro. “She’s been around too long. I’ve never seen her in Newhallville.”
Anderson proceeded to tell Outlaw about the job he had at the old Elm Haven projects (now Monterey Place) up the street, working with addicts and running a food pantry with the tenants council.
Outlaw took Anderson’s campaign flyer. “I’m going to put this on my Facebook page,” he promised. “You are going to get that seat!”
A Long Road
Anderson with Juneboy Outlaw.
After close to a half century in the politics business, Anderson, a 62-year-old former New Haven alder and housing authority director, knows it won’t be quite so simple to seize that seat from a popular 14-term incumbent from his own party — who last had a serious opponent when the first President Bush was still in the White House. And he knows he can’t count on established Democratic vote-getters, who have long relationships with DeLauro, to help him get there.
He was reminded of that fact repeatedly along the campaign trail Tuesday. He first announced his candidacy in the morning outside City Hall in Milford, where he serves as an alderman now. The city’s mayor, Ben Blake, made sure to proclaim his support for DeLauro. (DeLauro is indeed running for a 15th two-year term, according to campaign manager Jimmy Tickey. “Rosa is totally focused on defeating the dangerous agenda being pursued by many in Washington D.C.,” Tickey said.)
“There’s no better friend of Milford than Rosa DeLauro. During tragedies and disasters, she’s here with a steady hand and a tireless work ethic bringing comfort and support to those in need,” CT News Junkie quoted Blake as saying. ““I would hope Bryan would reset his sights on running, winning, and serving on our Board of Aldermen where he can make a positive difference.”
While Anderson finished his day in New Haven, New Haven Mayor Toni Harp issued a statement promising to work hard for DeLauro’s reelection next year.
State Democratic Party Chairman Nick Balletto echoed the theme: This is not the time for Democrats to try to knock off elected fellow Democrats, not when the party is barely holding onto the State Senate and battling the Republicans running Washington. “I don’t think we have the luxury after last November to continue fighting with each other,” Balletto told the Independent.
Anderson called that argument “a paper tiger.”
“The real issue is the fact that there are unmet needs in the city of New Haven, surrounding suburbs, the Naugatuck Valley and Shoreline towns,” Anderson said. Then he resumed his first steps on the year-long trek to prove the skeptics wrong through shoe-leather retail politics, drawing on a mix of positions on issues and personal connections.
Familiar Turf
Anderson started his New Haven swing at 317 Dixwell, the house where his mother grew up. Accompanying the candidate were a former state senator from West Hartford, a cousin from Derby who’s experienced in campaigns, and a couple of fellow 2016 Bernie Sanders supporters concerned with issues like single-payer health care and the influence of big money in politics. Anderson used the house at 317 Dixwell, a combined hair-braiding salon and apartment house, to point out that his family lived in the neighborhood for five generations. (His mother’s side, at least. His dad grew up in the Valley. Anderson himself grew up in Hamden.)
It turns out that the house was one of the properties the Water Pollution Control Authority (WPCA) has targeted in one of its periodic foreclosure-filing tears to collect on debts of as little as $1,000 (or sometimes even less). Anderson called the WPCA’s tactics, which drive already struggling families deeper into financial holes, “one of the biggest injustices going on in New Haven. Why isn’t anyone preventing this from happening?”
Next Anderson popped in next door at the Freedom Temple Holiness Church, where Pastor Dorothy Mewborn told him she would never forget how, as a realtor, he helped her congregation buy the building, at a good price, in 1999.
He spoke with Clarence Phillips Jr. about Phillips’ late father, a building inspector for city government …
… as former Westville Alder Sergio Rodriguez pulled up to offer a warm greeting. Rodriguez and his wife got married in Anderson’s home; Anderson officiated. Rodriguez, who chairs the board of the city’s public-financing Democracy Fund, was careful not to have his embrace of Anderson interpreted as a campaign endorsement.
“I’m here as a friend,” Rodriguez said. “In politics you make lots of friends. I know them both [DeLauro and Anderson]. They’re both friends.”
Anderson made a connection, too, with Samuel McCallum. He knew McCallum’s father Nathaniel, the former bishop in charge of the House of Prayer up the street. Samuel, who is 56 and unemployed, promised to “go all out” as a volunteer to help Anderson get elected.
Peace & Sewage
When no personal connections presented themselves, Anderson asked the people he encountered — such as Asvin Mandania, owner of the Maddie Packy liquor store — what issues they want to see their Congressperson address.
“Peace,” replied Mandania, who previously ran the old Broadway Liquors near Tower Parkway.
That gave Anderson an opening to push one of his three top campaign positions: Ending the war in Afghanistan, bringing the troops home, taking the lead along with other nations toward a negotiated peace. He spoke of how after 17 years, the war has served as a message to young people that war is “acceptable.” (Anderson’s other top positions: He’d co-sponsor a “Medicare for All” single-payer bill that DeLauro did not support; and he’d push for job-creation efforts like new infrastructure spending.)
David Lee, who lives above the liquor store, was concerned with issues closer to home — namely the squatters living in the abandoned optometrist’s office next door (“They go to the bathroom outside”). The clogged sewer causes the block to reek from human sewage every morning. “We call and call LCI [the city’s anti-blight agency]. Nobody comes out,” Lee complained.
The candidate nodded and listened.