3 Vie For Open Newhallville Alder Seat

A three-way race is on to win an open alder seat in Newhallville, pitting a longtime Newhallville community activist and labor organizer backed by the ward committee against two neighbors who have vowed to keep democracy alive by petitioning their ways onto the primary and general election ballots, if necessary.

The three-way race is on to replace recently-resigned Ward 20 Alder Delphine Clyburn in this year’s elections.

Last week, Clyburn stepped down from her decade-long post representing Newhallville on the Board of Alders after she moved out of the neighborhood.

The sudden vacancy has prompted three challengers to jump into the fray to become Ward 20’s next local legislator. While that race moves ahead, Ward 20 Democratic Ward Committee Co-Chair Oscar Havyarimana has stepped up to finish out the remaining five months of Clyburn’s two-year term, a choice ultimately up to the mayor.

The three candidates for the newly open Ward 20 alder seat are Newhallville Community Management Team Co-Chair Shirley Lawrence, state legislative aide Devin Avshalom-Smith, and Shepard Street block watch captain and community gardener Addie Kimbrough.

On Tuesday night, at the end of a nearly three-hour meeting at Lincoln-Bassett School, the Ward 20 Democratic Ward Committee voted 17 – 7‑1 to back Lawrence at next week’s Democratic Town Convention. Avshalom-Smith came in second place in that advisory vote, and Kimbrough came in a distant third.

“I’ve lived in every neighborhood in the City of New Haven,” Lawrence told the roughly 50 people present at Tuesday night’s ward committee meeting. She said it was not an accident that she ended up in Newhallville, where she bought a house on Bassett Street in 2014.

“I moved over here with a purpose, to be in the struggle with the people,” she said. ​“We’re going to keep Newhallville rising to the state Delphine left us in. That’s with respect, and dignity.”

During separate interviews earlier in the day, Avshalom-Smith and Kimbrough told the Independent that they plan on petitioning their ways onto the Sept. 14 Democratic primary ballot if they do not win the Democratic Town Convention’s endorsement on July 27. They also both said they’ll petition their ways onto the November general election ballot if they do not win the primary.

Lawrence: My Mouth, Your Words

Lawrence, 57, has been a familiar face in New Haven public life for decades.

Currently the co-chair of Newhallville’s community management team, she works full-time as a pantry worker and desk attendant in the Yale dining halls. In 2017, she mounted an unsuccessful challenge against Bon Proto for president of Yale’s blue-collar union, UNITE HERE Local 35.

At that time, she told the Independent about the nationwide union organizing work she has done since first landing a UNITE HERE job at Yale in 1989. ​“My job was to identify people that had the potential to be leaders, train them on issues that press them the most, help them strategize, stand up for their rights and win,” she said in 2017. That experience taught her to be ​“inclusive,” and inspired her challenge to a union president incumbent who won his first 11 terms in office unopposed.

At Tuesday night’s ward committee meeting, Lawrence emphasized those same community and labor organizing credentials as making her the best pick to represent Ward 20 on the Board of Alders.

“I’ve been a community organizer working in this community and across the United States for over 30 years,” she said.

Born in Brooklyn and raised in the South Bronx, Lawrence moved to Dixwell Avenue and Bassett Street with her single mom and seven siblings in 1973.

After high school and a few years in college, Lawrence said, she threw herself into community service in New Haven.

She served six years as the tenant rights council (TRC) president at the former Brookside public housing complex. She co-founded a youth summer program in West Rock. And she spent years organizing with the Yale union-affiliated, grassroots group Connecticut Center for a New Economy (CCNE).

It was through CCNE that Lawrence first met Clyburn ​“at the doors” over a decade ago, she said. She helped train Clyburn during her first run for office, and served as her campaign manager for that successful 2011 alder bid.

Since buying her home in Newhallville in 2014, Lawrence said, she has advocated for the rights for seniors, helped distribute food to the hungry, offered support for families of victims of gun violence, and, during the pandemic, given out face masks.

“I want to make sure that the services that we get are not only real, but are ongoing,” Lawrence said Tuesday. She promised to ​“push harder for resident participation” at City Hall.

“The voice I’m bringing, it’s coming out of my mouth, but it’s going to be your words.”

Avshalom-Smith: Service Is An Obligation

During a recent interview on the enclosed front porch of a Starr Street house that his family has owned for the past six decades, Avshalom-Smith, 32, cited his late grandparents — Roy and Dora Smith — for instilling in him a sense of public service at an early age, and for being a key inspiration for his current alder run.

Although he grew up in Hartford, Avshalom-Smith spent most weekends and summers as a kid visiting his mom and his grandparents in Newhallville.

“My grandfather was Uber Eats before there was an Uber Eats,” he said. He recalled how Roy Smith would deliver free meals and mow overgrown front lawns for elderly shut-ins across the neighborhood. His grandmother Dora would regularly host free fish fries for neighbors who couldn’t afford catering at funerals.

“I have an obligation to serve this community,” Avshalom-Smith said.

In 2007, he left Connecticut to attend college in Washington D.C. He’d spend the next seven years organizing with groups like AmeriCorps, Jump Start, and Greenpeace, as well as lobbying Congresspeople to support universal pre‑K.

He remembered one particular trip to Capitol Hill where he and fellow early education advocates won a meeting with federal legislators, made their pitch, and got a tepid response.

He left the meeting demoralized. A senior organizer told him not to get down. ​“The fight doesn’t stop here,” he remembered that veteran organizer saying.

Avshalom-Smith said he’s carried that moment and that advice with him ever since. ​“I don’t see setbacks as losses,” he said. ​“I see them as opportunities.”

After a stint studying and working in New Britain, Avshalom-Smith moved back to New Haven full time five years ago.

He’s been busy.

He has worked as CARE’s coordinator for the New Haven Health Leadership Program, founded the Newhallville Community Action Network, serves on the board for the Community Foundation’s New Haven Equitable Entrepreneurship Ecosystem and the Civilian Review Board, and is the secretary for the neighborhood’s community management team.

His current full-time job is as legislative aide for New Haven State Rep. Robyn Porter and as the clerk for the state legislature’s Labor Committee, which Porter co-chairs.

Avshalom-Smith said that his experience working for the state legislature has taught him about what goes into the drafting of new laws. It underscored for him the importance of clear communication and collaboration between legislators from different backgrounds and with different points of view. And he said it has shown him how vital it is to make sure that constituents have direct input on what laws are passed, and then hear clearly from their representatives about how those laws might affect their lives.

What are Newhallville’s top needs at this moment, from his perspective?

Housing, healthcare, and transportation support for the elderly, work and recreation opportunities for youth, good jobs for all, neighborhood cleanups, and overall economic development.

If elected alder, Avshalom-Smith promised to strike a balance between a local legislator’s two primary responsibilities: passing laws and representing the ward’s constituents at City Hall.

“My mission and my goal is always to leave a place better than when I came,” he said.

Is it a conflict of interest for a state legislative clerk and aide to serve as a city legislative representative? one Ward 20 committee member asked Tuesday night.

No, Avshalom-Smith replied. After several Newhallville community leaders reached out to him to run, he said, he checked in with the Human Resources Department at the state legislature. They told him he’s all clear to run, as his clerk job at the state legislature is to make sure proposed laws go through the appropriate process. He is not in elected office at the state.

Being an alder and working for the state legislature are two demanding roles, Ward 20 Democratic Co-Chair Barbara Vereen said on Tuesday. Do you really have the time to serve in both? How will you balance the two?

Avshalom-Smith said that, if elected alder, he would have to step down from the CRB and would likely have to give up some of his ​“extra-extra-curriculur” activities. He’s confident he’d be able to fulfill both roles well, he said.

“Service to me is not an opportunity,” he said. ​“It’s an obligation.”

Kimbrough: ​“Advocating For My Street,” & The Neighborhood

Kimbrough, 68, the third contender for the Democratic nomination for Ward 20 alder, also pointed to her neighborhood activism as bolstering her bid for the local legislative seat.

Kimbrough grew up in the Hill and in Danbury. She spent much of her adult life living in Newhallville. She moved to her current Shepard Street home seven years ago soon after retiring from her job in Wallingford.

She’s currently the block watch captain for Shepard Street, is a community management team regular, served on the city’s Census committee last year, and, in June of this year, founded a new community garden right across the street from her home.

Standing amidst beds of growing carrots, kale, tomatoes, and bell peppers, Kimbrough said she wants to be alder to further her work making Newhallville a healthier and safer place to live, particularly for the youth.

Kids need access to fresh food, and quality jobs and places to play, she said. The neighborhood’s trees need to be trimmed so that they don’t interfere with the power lines. The cracked sidewalks need to be fixed — just as she has successfully advocated for on the western side of Shepard Street. More speed bumps need to be put in place in the neighborhood. And residents need help buying and living in their own homes, so that entire blocks don’t fall into the control of megalandlords like Mandy Management, which owns a string of houses up and down her block.

Kimbrough pointed to the Shepard Street garden as a good example of what makes Newhallville a better place to live.

“It brings food, life, and, when gardens are in the right places, it brings up property values of houses.”

“I am advocating for my street,” Kimbrough said. She’d like to be able to do the same for the whole neighborhood if elected to represent the ward at City Hall.

Clyburn: ​“Thank You. Thank You. Thank You”

At the end of Tuesday night’s ward committee meeting, Clyburn gave an energetic, at times tearful farewell to the ward she has represented for the past decade.

“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you,” she told the committee members in the room. She said that she has loved every minute of being alder. She is particularly proud of the time sh has spent walking the streets and knocking on doors, listening directly to community members and advocating on their behalf at City Hall.

“I love the doors. That’s where my strength is,” she said. ​“I felt that people deserved leadership that loved them, and that put people first.” That has always been her priority over the past 10 years, she said. ​“I don’t care if it was one person [in need], I went to bat for that one person.”

She then went on to thank at least a dozen Newhallville residents in the room, calling them out by name and by block, recalling the first time they met and how they each gave her strength to continue in the aldermanic role.

“I tell you this community has come up. It has risen. And I want you to know that I love it. I love it. I love.”

Now that Clyburn has stepped down from her Ward 20 post more than 18 months into her term, the City Charter mandates that the mayor select someone to fill out the remaining five months of her term. The mayor must pick between three names submitted to him by the ward committee.

At Tuesday night’s meeting, ward co-chairs Barbara Vereen and Oscar Havyarimana (pictured) said that they’ve submitted a list of three to the mayor, and that they’ve strongly recommended that the mayor pick Havyarimana.

A Cave Street resident, New Haven Rising co-founder, and animal technician at Yale, Havyarimana has served as the ward’s co-chair for a decade.

“Democracy stands for love,” he told the committee Tuesday night. ​“We should love each other, so we can move forward.”

Mayor Justin Elicker did not respond to a request for comment by the publication time of this article as to whether or not he has officially selected Havyarimana for the interim Ward 20 alder role.

Who Else Is Running, For What, So Far

The City Clerk’s office is keeping a running tally on its website of which candidates have filed to run for which offices in this year’s municipal elections. See below for a full list of candidates who have filed papers to run for various local posts so far. And click here to read about key upcoming dates on the municipal election calendar.

Mayor
Justin Elicker, Democrat (incumbent)
Karen DuBois-Walton, Democrat
Mayce Torres, Democrat
Elena Grewal, Democrat (exploratory committee only)

City Clerk
Michael Smart, Democrat (incumbent)
Anthony Acri, Republican

Board of Alders
Ward 1: Alex Guzhnay, Democrat
Ward 2: Frank Douglass, Democrat (incumbent)
Ward 3: Ron Hurt, Democrat (incumbent)
Ward 4: Evelyn Rodriguez, Democrat (incumbent)
Ward 5: Kampton Singh, Democrat (incumbent)
Ward 6: Carmen Rodriguez, Democrat (incumbent)
Ward 6: John Carlson, Republican
Ward 7: Eli Sabin, Democrat
Ward 8: Ellen Cupo, Democrat (incumbent)
Ward 9: Charles Decker, Democrat (incumbent)
Ward 10: Anna Festa, Democrat (incumbent)
Ward 11: Renee Haywood, Democrat (incumbent)
Ward 11: Kurtis Kearney, Democrat
Ward 11: Robert Lee, Democrat
Ward 11: Gail Roundtree, Republican
Ward 12: Gerald Antunes, Democrat (incumbent)
Ward 12: Yul Watley, Democrat
Ward 13: Rosa Ferraro-Santana, Democrat (incumbent)
Ward 13: Deborah Reyes, Republican
Ward 14: Sarah Miller, Democrat
Ward 15: Ernie Santiago, Democrat (incumbent)
Ward 16: José Crespo, Democrat (incumbent)
Ward 18: Salvatore DeCola, Democrat (incumbent)
Ward 19: Kimberly Edwards, Democrat (incumbent)
Ward 20: Devin Avshalom-Smith, Democrat
Ward 20: Addie Kimbrough, Democrat
Ward 20: Shirley Lawrence, Democrat
Ward 21: Steve Winter, Democrat (incumbent)
Ward 22: Jeanette Morrison, Democrat (incumbent)
Ward 23: Tyisha Walker-Myers, Democrat (incumbent)
Ward 24: Evette Hamilton, Democrat (incumbent)
Ward 25: Adam Marchand, Democrat (incumbent)
Ward 26: Darryl Brackeen Jr., Democrat (incumbent)
Ward 26: Joshua Van Hoesen, Republican
Ward 27: Richard Furlow, Democrat (incumbent)
Ward 28: Shafiq Abdussabur, Democrat
Ward 29: Brian Wingate, Democrat (incumbent)
Ward 30: Honda Smith, Democrat (incumbent)

Board of Education, District 1
Ed Joyner, Democrat (incumbent)