Sam Gurwitt Photo
Weruché George.
A Democrat is taking on a Democrat for one of Hamden’s state legislative seats, but on an independent line — with a focus on her experiences as an immigrant and without taking shots at the incumbent.
Weruché George is challenging incumbent Michael D’Agostino as a petitioning candidate for his seat representing the 91st State House of Representatives District.
D’Agostino has served in the legislature since 2013. There is no Republican running in the district after Tom Figlar, who planned to seek the seat, dropped out of the race over the summer.
George is a Democrat, but did not decide to run in time to get on a primary ballot. Instead, she collected the signatures she needs to get on the Nov. 3 general election ballot as a petitioning candidate without the backing of a party.
Standing outside her home one day last week, a campaign sign planted nearby in her lawn, George said she wanted to run because she thinks the legislature needs the voice of someone who has experienced the marginalization and inequality that she hopes to combat.
“I was thinking of everything that had played out in 2020, and realized that we do need a stronger voice in this time,” she said of her decision to run. “Mike is a great guy … but I believe I have more of what it takes to address the real issues that affect almost 40 percent of the population of Hamden.”
“You have to experience it to understand it and fight it,” she said.
By “it,” she was referring to the massive inequalities in Connecticut, especially the inequities that Black and Brown residents and immigrants face.
George knows what it’s like to be an immigrant in Connecticut. She immigrated from Nigeria straight to Hamden in 2005, when she was 28 and a single mother of two kids. She filed for asylum. At first her application was denied. Eventually a judge allowed her to stay, and she became first a resident and then a citizen.
Though she has never been undocumented, she said, she knows how it feels to be unsure of one’s status in the country and to be unable to work or take care of oneself.
“That informs the work I do today, and now speaks to why I would want to be involved in legislation,” she said.
George got a bachelor’s degree and then a master’s degree at Quinnipiac University. She just finished a second master’s in human rights at Columbia University in May. In 2015, she started an organization called Weruché Inspires International, which aims to empower women and has taken on a number of projects over the years.
A few years ago, George and the organization worked with domestic violence survivors in Kenya. Through the organization, she is currently helping elderly immigrants with their expenses. She is also fundraising to ultimately open a domestic violence shelter in Connecticut.
George participated in the 2019 Emerge Connecticut program, which trains Democratic women who want to run for office.
She said that the events of 2020 spurred her to get into politics. For instance, when a young black girl was cast as a slave in a play at West Woods Elementary, George said it showed how much improvement the education system has to do to serve a diverse student body and do justice to histories that have previously been ignored.
“Then I found out it’s not enough just to stand on the streets and advocate,” she said. “You have to be able to fix the things that are wrong with the system.” So, she decided to run for office.
She did not do so until it was too late to try to get on the primary ballot, and she only had one day to collect the signatures she needed to get on the general election ballot as a petitioning candidate. On Aug. 26, the state approved her petition.
She did not manage to collect enough donations to qualify for matching public dollars under the citizens’ election program, so she is fundraising on her own.
George said she thinks the state should mandate overhauls of school curricula to make them more reflective of the diverse student bodies in many districts in the state. “There’s a definite need for change for the current curriculum,” she said. The state would require that boards of education carry out their own rewrites with state guidance — the state itself would not craft the curriculum.
She said her second major priority would be closing the pay gap between men and women. Though wage discrimination is illegal on the books, she said, it still happens.
Under current state law, employees can file complaints with the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities if they believe their employer is paying them less than their colleagues based on their gender. Still, women make 83 cents to every dollar a man makes in Connecticut, and the gap is much larger for Black women.
“They still do it and get away with it,” said George. There has to be a different method of enforcement, a different way that we address it.”
She said she does not know exactly what that better form of enforcement would look like. But she added: “It is something that only a woman can push, because we are the ones dealing with it currently.”
George said her third priority area would be improving healthcare for marginalized communities, specifically Black women. The healthcare that Black women receive is often worse than that of other residents. She said the state needs to investigate why that is.
“I speak as a person who has been through these things,” she said. “It’s not just about reviewing bills from a distance, but about what you have been through.” She said she is not yet sure exactly how she would propose changing the healthcare system or investigating its problems. “The intention, the ‘what,’ is what’s driving this and then we get to the how eventually.”
Fight For State Aid Continues
In D’Agostino, George is taking on a formidable opponent with a history of fighting hard for Hamden’s interests in the capital.
“As always, I tend to be very Hamden focused,” said D’Agostino. “I want to make sure the town is receiving all the resources and support from the state.”
In the last few months, D’Agostino has focused on making sure bonding for the Keefe Community Center and one of Hamden’s fire stations get the governor’s signature. He also fought to unlock about $4 million in unspent bonded funds to fix residents’ foundations that cracked after the Newhall remediation project.
He said the next session will likely be dominated by discussions about how to keep the state afloat after the financial hardships brought on by the pandemic. There will be a significant deficit, and that will mean cutting services.
Cuts to state aid and state services disproportionately affect towns like Hamden, which has a very high local property tax rate and a lower-income population than many towns. While some towns can afford to lose aid, Hamden cannot.
“We also need to move the conversation to a more equitable taxation system so we’re bringing in the proper revenue from the people who have gotten the most out of what the state has to offer,” he said. While Hamden has a mill rate of 51.98, Greenwich has a mill rate of about 12. D’Agostino said the state needs to flatten those inequities across towns. One way to do that would be to impose a statewide one-mill property tax that would redistribute funds from high-income, low-mill-rate towns to towns like Hamden.
D’Agostino said he agrees that school curricula need to change. Mandating changes at the state level, he said, could be complicated.
Education in Connecticut is highly localized, which has some benefits and a whole host of drawbacks, he said. He has been a champion of district regionalization in the past, which would help smooth over inequities in school funding across the state. The hyper-local culture of Connecticut’s school system could also make it hard to mandate curriculum changes.
Last year, the state did mandate that districts offer courses in African American and Latinx history, he pointed out, so driving change at the state level is possible. But if the legislature were to go further, he said, and try to take over the curriculum, “there would never be the votes for that in the legislature.”
Mandating a curriculum rewrite would only scratch the surface, he said. The slave play incident happened in Hamden because teachers do not have adequate training to teach a culturally inclusive curriculum, and there are not enough teachers of color.
He suggested creating more incentives to draw teachers to the state, since the pool of teachers of color in Connecticut right now is small. The state could give teachers breaks on mortgages, or on student loans. He said teacher’s school should also be free.
D’Agostino pointed to his record of fighting for progressive legislation that has aimed to eliminate the inequities that exist in the state.
“I think I’ve shown that I’ve been not only sensitive to these issues, but quite frankly responsive to them, and have done everything I can to address issues of equity and equality and racism both from a matter of criminal justice reform, education reform, economic reform, and other social policies that I’ve dedicated myself to in my time in the legislature,” he said.
He said he understands that he does not bring the perspective that George does, but said that does not mean he cannot champion those issues in legislation. “Somebody who’s lived those experiences brings a unique perspective, but that doesn’t preclude others from being fierce advocates for those issues regardless of their background.”