Paul Bass Photo
Toni Harp and Justin Elicker both had volunteers working outside two polling places Tuesday morning where their opponents need to run up the score big to win.
Three-term incumbent Harp faces a challenge from Elicker in Tuesday’s New Haven Democratic mayoral primary.
Given past trends and campaign trail feedback this time, Newhallville’s Ward 20 and Westville’s Ward 25 will play key roles in the outcome. They are traditionally two of the largest-voting wards in the city. Ward 20, which is largely African-American, went overwhelmingly for Harp in her previous run against Elicker. Ward 25, which has a white majority (and where Harp lives), went for Elicker last time.
As of noon, according to party poll-watchers, Ward 25 had drawn by far the most voters in the city: 471. Ward 20 had drawn just 174, although in that ward the bigger turnout traditionally comes in the final three hours of voting, from 5 to 8 p.m.
Newhallville: Harp Country
Thomas Breen Photo
Harp supporters Yoshika Crews, Oscar Havyarimana, and Briana Hopes outside Lincoln-Bassett.
By 10:15 a.m., 115 ward residents had cast their ballots at Ward 20’s Lincoln Bassett School polling place. The ward has 1,704 registered Democrats.
“It’s really, really slow,” said moderator Deveria Peterson.
Most voters interviewed said they voted for Harp.
“I’m still not happy,” Ward 20 Co-Chair Barbara Vereen said upon hearing the updated vote count. “But I’ve got people out at the doors” getting out the vote for Mayor Harp, whom Newhallville’s Democratic Ward Committee endorsed this summer.
On the sidewalk outside of the neighborhood school, supporters of both Harp and mayoral challenger Justin Elicker greeted the occasional voter and confirmed the relatively slow morning turnout.
“Slowly,” Ward 20 Co-Chair Oscar Havyarimana said about the day so far. “But it’s still morning. In the afternoon, there will be a big turnout. I know most of the people” will come out to vote then, after work. He said that most voters he had spoken to that morning said they will be supporting Harp.
Yoshika Crews, a fellow Harp supporter, Hill resident, and executive board member on the carpenters union Local 326, confirmed Havyarimana’s story. “It seems a little slow here,” she said.
Havyarimana said that, whenever a Newhallville neighbor raises concerns about corruption or crime or taxes when taking about he election, he has a simple response.
“I ask people, ‘Think of 20 years ago,’” he said. “Think of what has been done for Newhallville, and think of what we have now. Do you want to go back to 20 years ago?”
Violent crime is at a 50-year low, he noted. “I see the progress.”
Ray Jackson (pictured), a Shelton Avenue resident and Elicker supporter, said that Newhallville still doesn’t have enough after-school programs and activities for neighborhood youth. He feels that Elicker will be more successful than Harp at providing neighborhood youth with those opportunities and that he will, just as he did when he was alder for Cedar Hill, stay in close contact with the community and make his presence felt.
“What we really need in New Haven is skill centers,” he said, places to train city youth and adults in everything from nursing to plumbing to carpentry to how to be a lab tech.
“Justin has always been a person who wants to get the youth into youth programs,” he said. “To give them a goal to work towards.”
Ray Richardson (pictured), a retiree who lives on Bassett Street, said as he left the polls that he voted for Harp because he believes she will continue to make the neighborhood safer. “A lot of young folks need something to do,” he said. He believes the mayor recognizes that concern, and called on her to visit Newhallville in person more frequently if re-elected.
Patricia Hicks, a Newhallville native who recently moved back to the neighborhood after spending the past three decades in North Carolina, said she supported Harp because she feels that the incumbent mayor is simply the right fit to represent this community.
“I just go with my heart,” she said.
Westville: Elicker Country
In Ward 25, which has the largest number of registered Democratic voters in town (1,951), Marcella Monk Flake and Shirley Joyner (pictured) were urging voters to choose Elicker.
Monk Flake, a retired 37-year public-school teacher and member of a prominent local musical family, said she voted for Harp against Elicker in 2013. “I’ve seen some good people going through horrible things. It broke my heart,” she said.
“I love Elicker. He’s a uniter,” Monk Flake argued. “I’m very impressed by his transparency, his genuiness of spirit. He moves easily among all people. He’s committed to seeing this education thing work. He’s going to fight to make sure his child is going to get a good eucation.”
Monk Flake was referring to the fact that Elicker’s daughter began kindergarten this month at a city public school.
“The president of the [school] board doesn’t send his kid to public school. Mayor Harp didn’t send her kids to public school,” Joyner put in.
Monk Flake said she encountered a voter walking into the polls who told her, “I’m voting for ‘the black.’” This voter was white, she said.
“I said, ‘The black? What does that mean? I’m glad I’ve learned enough not to judge someone on their skin color.”
Paul Bass Photo
Molly Wheeler sought to cast a vote that would count — for neither candidate.
Wheeler (pictured with daughter Miriam) had been “leaning toward Harp.” But “the lead issue catches my breath,” she said, referring to a series of court setbacks the Harp administration suffered after seeking to loosen enforcement of lead paint code enforcement. As for Elicker, “the people in my community who would be emboldened by an Elicker victory catches my breath — the people who feel entitled to the city.”
Poll workers informed her she could slip her ballot into an auxiliary bin and have it counted as having supported neither candidated. So she did.