“We are Ward 8!” came the victory cry when a diverse team of vote-pullers helped incumbents beat back a challenge in Wooster Square and East Rock, as Democrats elected new neighborhood leaders citywide Tuesday.
Voters went to the polls to elect Democratic Party co-chairs in seven of the city’s 30 wards. (Click on the play arrow to see the victorious Ward 8 slate celebrate.)
The ward co-chairs elected Tuesday become members of the 60-person Democratic Town Committee, which will endorse a host of Democratic candidates in a busy election year. After the election, they’ll meet Thursday to decide whether to reelect DTC Chairwoman Susie Voigt. Voigt at this point has no known challenger.
The two most watched and hotly contested races were in Dwight’s Ward 2, where incumbent Greg Smith joined with union activist Frank Douglass to form a winning ticket; and Ward 8, covering parts of East Rock and Wooster Square, where incumbent Randall and Carmen Rodriguez fended off a challenge in a decisive victory.
In Ward 2, Douglass received 137 votes and Smith, 102. Deborah Davis came in third with 80 votes, and Mark Griffin fourth with 60. (Those totals were from the machine tallies. There weren’t enough absentee votes collected to change the outcome.)
Both teams of candidates pledged to revive that ward’s languishing voter turnout. They also vowed to help neighbors struggling with foreclosure, jobs, and the impending departure of Shaw’s supermarket.
After the results came in, the winners and losers quickly united. They both said they’d like to work together toward common goals of boosting voter registration and rebuilding the neighborhood ward committee.
By far the busiest activity Tuesday took place In Ward 8, where Randall and Rodriguez won with 309 and 306 votes, respectively. Karri Brady came in third with 217 votes and Lisa Siedlarz got 211.
Brady and Siedlarz (pictured, left to right), two block watch chairs from Wooster Square and East Rock, pledged to do community organizing on a ward-wide level. They conceded the race at the polls, even though at least 163 absentee ballots remained to be counted. Absentee ballots poured in from the Winslow-Celentano elderly high-rise and the Farnam Court projects. Both sides agreed almost all those votes were for Randall and Rodriguez.
In other results:
• Rafael Ramos (112 votes) and Jose Torres (96) defeated Joan Forte (52) and Diane Ecton (28) in Fair Haven’s Ward 14.
• Zoning board chair Cathy Weber (117) and Barry Fuqua (90) defeated Essie Lucky-Barros (60) and Mark Barros (57) in Newhallville’s Ward 20.
• Gwendolyn Newton (59) and Taiwan Richardson (56) defeated Kim DiBenedetto (29) and Marcia Kelly-Barham (24) in Newhallville’s Ward 21.
• Gina Phillips (69) and Robin Ing (64) defeated Cordelia Thorpe (53) in Dixwell’s Ward 22.
• Darrell Brooks (125) and Patricia King (109) beat back Alan Felder (38) in Ward 26.
All the results listed above were from the voting machines. Absentee ballots were not expected to affect the outcomes.
Wooster Team Reelected
In these small-scale races, where not many voters know there’s an election — or what the election’s about — voter turnout is typically weak. In some neighborhoods Tuesday, a passerby wouldn’t know there’s an election, because there weren’t many signs around.
Ward 8 was another story. Large lawn signs and full-color posters announced Brady and Siedlarz’s candidacy. Randall and Rodriguez’s team kept a lower profile in terms of signs, but kept their headquarters hopping with support from a wide range of activists and neighbors. About 700 of the ward’s 1,900 registered Democratic voters turned up — by far the highest in any ward.
Brady called the voter turnout a success, even though her ticket lost.
A combination of factors led the incumbent team to sweep to victory at the polls Tuesday.
• Ward connections. Randall and Rodriguez are steadfast allies of Ward 8 Alderman Michael Smart. Randall, who’s been co-chair for six years, helped Smart topple a party-endorsed candidate and win a seat on the Board of Aldermen in 2003. Smart, a popular alderman, has not been touched by a challenger since then. Rodriguez joined as co-chair in 2006. The three (pictured) operate closely as a team. Together, they reached support from the Spanish-Speaking community, from the Farnam Court projects, and from middle-class liberals.
“We won because we had a lot of people who came together across the ward,” Randall said.
• Diversity. In the words of attorney Michael Jefferson (pictured with Rodriguez and Randall), who managed the victorious Ward 8 campaign, the election was “a referendum on diversity.” The ticket was made up of a white man and a Hispanic woman, allied with a black man, Alderman Michael Smart. Their opponents were two white women.
Campaigners made diversity a central issue as they went door to door. They said the ward co-chairs should reflect the diversity of the ward.
“The people have spoken,” Jefferson declared after Tuesday’s results came in. “The people appreciate diversity in this city.”
• Independence. Several supporters said they were motivated to work the polls Tuesday to protect Smart’s aldermanic seat. Ward co-chairs control whom the party nominates for alderman going into a primary.
During the campaign, Brady and Siedlarz declined to say whether they’d support Smart if he runs again in 2011.
“With Carmen and Chris, you know who they’re going to endorse,” reasoned budget watchdog Harry David (pictured).
He called Smart “one of the few remaining independent aldermen on the Board of Aldermen.” David said he switched his party affiliation from independent to Democrat so he could join the fight for Smart’s team. He said he did it “in order to save Michael from not being endorsed.”
David gave up his Chapel Street loft Tuesday for that cause, too. His home became a beehive of activity, as labor activists, aldermen independent of City Hall, and neighborhood volunteers pulled votes for Smart’s team.
• Labor, aldermanic support. Just past 7 p.m., longtime Yale union activist Gwen Mills gave directions to a team of vote-pullers making their last dashes to voters’ homes before polls closed at 8 p.m. She was joined by Yale union activist Anita Seth and fire union President Pat Egan. Aldermen Jorge Perez, Jackie James-Evans, and Al Paolillo all pitched in for Smart.
Mills (at right in photo, with James-Evans and Smart) said the union activists’ support stems from a years-long relationship with all three parts of the incumbent Ward 8 team. Rodriguez and Randall have taken part in the Yale unions’ campaigns, including a 2003 march to get Yale to hire more Latino workers, and a 2005 march to pressure Yale-New Haven Hospital to accept a community benefits agreement concerning the proposed cancer center.
“Part of Chris and Carmen’s strength,” she added, “is their relationship with Mike [Smart].”
Smart has been there for the unions, too, Mills said. She gave two examples: Smart voted in 2003 for a proposal to make Yale pay a “fair share” of taxes, and in 2004 to revoke Yale-New Haven Hospital security officers’ powers of arrest.
Together, Smart and his co-chairs make a strong team, she said.
Smart’s team’s opponents mounted a smaller field operation. The campaign for political newcomers Brady and Sieldarz was run from Brady’s Court Street living room. The campaign got help from Ward 9 Alderman Roland Lemar, three of Smith’s siblings, and other East Rock activists. By 7:30 p.m., Matt Smith (pictured), the 35-year-old campaign manager, was packing up shop. He sat with city Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts, who along with other party machine vote-pullers took the day off to help Lemar. Smith said he already knew his candidates probably didn’t win.
“We’re political neophytes,” he said. Smith was running his first-ever campaign. Brady just moved to New Haven two years ago to take a job at Yale. Siedlarz is a life-long New Havener, but her support didn’t appear to extend far beyond the East Rock sliver of the ward. Alderman Smart had a stronger network of supporters across his ward, Smith said.
“After six years, you have the time to cultivate those types of relationships,” he said.
Smith said he wasn’t sure what would come of his elections complaint that cried foul over fishy signatures. The state has agreed to investigate it.
• State representative race. The last factor was a brewing race for higher office. The election in Ward 8 drew citywide attention because of its implication for the city’s only competitive state representative race. Ward co-chairs will guide the nominating process for Democratic candidates for the 96th state representative seat, which is being vacated by longtime State Rep. Cam Staples.
East Rock Alderman Lemar, who’s officially running for Staples’ seat, worked closely with Brady and Siedlarz’s campaign after the women decided to run. That pitted him against Smart — a potential candidate in the state representative race. The co-chair race was seen as a matchup between Smart and Lemar, but supporters on both sides downplayed the role of the state rep race.
Mills said the state rep race was not a factor in her and other union activists’ support Tuesday — the union leadership has not decided whom they’ll back, if anyone, in the race for Staples’ seat.
Smart said he was taking it one race at a time. Now that he got his co-chairs reelected, he’ll turn his attention to the chance to seek higher office.
“I’m strongly considering” running for Staples’ seat, Smart said after the vote. He acknowledged that his co-chairs’ victory boosts his chances at winning a party nomination. Ward co-chairs in a handful of wards will send delegates to a Hamden-New Haven convention, where Democrats will endorse a candidate for the 96th District seat.
“I’m going to keep my options open,” Smart said.
New Face In Fair Haven
Allan Appel Photo
Rafael Ramos was re-elected to his eighth year as a Democratic Party co-chair in Fair Haven’s Ward 14. His running mate, Jose Torres, known affectionately as “the night watchman,” was successful in his first attempt at elective office.
Ramos described Torres (in middle of photo) as a longtime committee member. Yet what has endeared him to the community is his nightly personal patrols of the neighborhood with his dog Tiger, said Ramos.
No ordinary dog, Tiger is a pit bull. The duo nightly check on houses and safety in Torres’s neighborhood around Chambers and Ferry streets.
As Torres’s daughter Stephanie congratulated her dad, he said issues that mattered most to him are, of course, safety, and finding more things for local kids to do.
Zak Stone and Allan Appel helped report this story.