Alder Race Pits Native Against Newcomer

A race for an open alder seat in Newhallville and Prospect Hill confronts voters with a question: Who has greater perspective on a neighborhood — a lifelong resident who knows how it has worked since her grandparents’ time? Or a newcomer who brings an outsider’s fresh eyes?

Two active community members have filed papers to run as Democrats for the Ward 19 seat: Sarah Ofosu, 28, a Ghanaian immigrant, and Kimberly Edwards, 43, the current alder’s daughter. replace retiring incumbent incumbent Alder Alfreda Edwards, who has held the seat (with one six-month break) since 1999.

Whoever wins will represent an economically stratified ward that tips from East Rock’s hilltop estates to Winchester Avenue and surrounding streets in Newhallville below.

Ofosu said she first noticed that ​“gap” when she came to New Haven four years ago, interviewing for a job as an instructional coach for Teach for America. ​“There’s this inequity when it comes to education in this city and this state — something I wasn’t aware of,” she said. ​“Depending on where kids lived, their education experience was very different.” The problem so moved Ofosu, she said, that she accepted the offer and moved here.

Ofosu said she is running for office ​“to make people who are already living in New Haven more involved [or] to get them to stay, like I did.” After officially filing her papers Thursday, Ofosu sat outside the Hall of Records and ran through her life story and the planks of her platform.

Choosing to Make New Haven Home

At age 13, Ofosu immigrated to Germantown, Maryland, leaving her three younger siblings behind in West Africa. She graduated from Washington College, a small liberal arts college in Maryland, with a double major in political science and psychology.

Since then, she has worked at several of the big organizations in the education reform movement. Strongly believing in TFA’s mission of ​“mak[ing] education equitable,” she taught special education in Phoenix, Ariz., while earning her masters in the field. Then, she moved back to Washington, D.C., to oversee special education compliance in the KIPP Schools’ charter network. Most recently, she took a job as operations director for Relay Connecticut, a not-for-profit offering fast-track certifications to help paraprofessionals quickly get to the front of the classroom as teachers.

Ofosu argued that it’s an asset that she is so new to town.

“Moving here and having to form all these relationships helps me come at this position, asking, ​‘What are the conditions that need to be present for people to feel like they have a voice, to try civic engagement?’ Having gone through that process myself, I’m able to better relate to individuals who are moving here or maybe those who’ve lived here forever but just don’t feel like they have a voice,” she said., ​“Knowing that, OK, I’m coming at this as someone who wasn’t born here, it has forced me to really communicate to people to find out what matters to you.”

In other words, Ofosu hasn’t been able to take anything for granted in learning about her adopted home. As proof of the lengths she has gone to get involved, Ofosu cited her participation in the East Rock Community Management Team, her help running SoHu Blockwatch for the neighborhood south of Humphrey Street and attendance at many school events. Her early backers include several participants from Home Haven, a movement to help East Rock seniors age in place instead of nursing facilities: artist Louis Audette, musicologist Kerala Snyder and her husband Richard, and epidemiologist Nancy Ruddle.

Ofosu pledged that if they elect her, her neighbors can expect three results: ​“accessibility” to bring concerns to City Hall and share more information digitally about her record; ​“inclusivity” in her push to expanding participatory budgeting and transit options like a bike-share; and ​“transparency” in her demand for answers about how tax dollars are spent, particularly at the Board of Education.

“I’m the Seed”

Kimberly Edwards is a homegrown product of Newhallville. The youngest of seven children, she was raised in the same house her grandparents bought with income from their jobs at the Olin-Winchester factory.

“They planted roots here, and I’m the seed of that,” she said.

Edwards attended Lincoln-Bassett, Jackie Robinson (now combined into an interdistrict magnet school) and Wilbur Cross, and she spent summers at the Ulysses S. Grant Foundation.

From dragging her to Parent-Teacher Organization and Newhallville Neighborhood Corporation meetings, Edwards said, her mother taught her the importance of civic engagement.

“My mother, she didn’t go to Yale or Southern; in fact, she didn’t go to college. But I remember her and her friends, they did Girl Scout groups and things for the community,” Edwards recalled. ​“It made me see how a regular person can make change happen.”

She added, ​“A lot of people just don’t know the value of being involved.”

A mother of two, the younger at New Haven Academy, Edwards has worked as a customer service representative for Southern New England Telephone Company since 1996, back when caller identification was first introduced.

Speaking animatedly Thursday at a table outside Koffee?, Edwards waved at passersby she recognized and repeatedly apologized to a reporter for her ​“straight talk.”

Edwards said there was a time when she didn’t want to follow in her mom’s alder footsteps until something clicked recently. ​“I almost felt like it was my duty. You see some people that want to run for office just because they’re looking for the next big thing to do,” she said. ​“There’s nothing wrong with being ambitious. I just want positive change, that’s it. What’s working, let’s make sure it keeps working, and what needs to be changed, let’s fix it.”

Asked about her platform, the candidate said she cares about reducing the tax burden on homeowners ​“by getting more out of properties” — she pointed behind her, toward Yale — ​“that aren’t taxed”; connecting youth with jobs by pressuring businesses to hire locally; adding more police officers and outreach workers to the city’s workforce; and calming traffic out to East Rock.

Edwards said she considers her years in Newhallville to be her best asset.

“All I know is New Haven; all I know is my neighborhood,” Edwards said. ​“I think that’s the best asset you could ever have: It’s familiarity with the people, familiarity with your surroundings, knowing which streets have a certain kind of crime, knowing which neighbors are going to call it in and which neighbors are doing what they need to do. You know the issues, whether you’re politically involved or not. You talk to the police when they come by, talk to the neighbors: it’s a network.”

Mayor Toni Harp, State Sen. Robyn Porter and, of course, her mother have all lent her endorsements.

While sharing the current alder’s last name is a big plus, Edwards said she wants voters to know that she’s her own person. ​“I ask a lot of questions; I look for clarity. I’m not saying she doesn’t, but I’m a little more analytical,” she said, comparing herself to her mom. ​“I don’t mind standing out.”