Thomas Breen Photo
A west side ward that went heavily for Toni Harp the last time she faced Justin Elicker in a mayoral election appeared to be tightening, at least in the first six hours of voting.
That’s Ward 27, a creatively concocted district that begins in Beaver Hills, skims through West Hills, winds through part of Westville Westville, back to a slice of Amity.
In the four-way Democratic Party mayoral primary in 2013, Toni Harp collected 257 votes in Ward 27, more than double her three opponents’ totals combined. Elicker received just 51 votes there in that primary. In the 2013 general-election head-to-head match-up, Harp collected 449 Ward 27 votes to Elicker’s 211.
Now three-term incumbent Mayor Harp is facing challenger Elicker Tuesday in an another Democratic mayoral primary.
According to Elicker volunteer Rebecca Wiener (pictured at top) — who had been camped out at the ward polling station, Mauro Sheridan Science, Technology & Communications School with campaign materials since 6 a.m. — the 145 Ward 27 voters who had cast their ballots by 12:30 p.m. appeared to be pretty evenly split between Harp and Elicker. Her impression gibed with the impression of one of Harp’s active backers working the polling place as well.
That tightening would comport as well with a ward committee tally that Harp won by only one vote.
Even though she’s an Elicker supporter, Wiener said, that split sounds just fine to her. She said she feels lucky to have two qualified, intelligent, and dedicated public servants running for mayor. And even though she believes Elicker will be more prudent with city finances, she said she is happy to see an engaged citizenry grappling with what will continue to make New Haven a great place to live.
“From my perspective, that’s a good thing,” she said about seeing plenty of Harp and Elicker supporters hitting the polls. “It shows a lot of engagement and interest.”
Some voters at the school had shown up at the wrong polling place. Because in the past Mauro Sheridan was the voting place for Ward 26, not Ward 27. This year the Ward 26 spot was moved to Davis Street Arts & Academics. Mayra Santiago (pictured), a retired special needs teaching assistant who used to work at Hill Central, said that she plans on voting for Harp for mayor. She, just like York, is a Ward 26 resident, and had to drive from Mauro Sheridan over to Davis to cast her ballot.
“First, she’s a woman,” Santiago said about why she wanted to reelect Harp. “Second, she’s really strong” on housing, jobs, and public safety. She said she’s been particularly impressed by how Harp has worked with the local labor unions to make sure that New Haven residents have access to good paying jobs at Yale University and Yale New Haven Hospital.
When asked what she would like to see Harp do if reelected, Santiago said, “Continue with the hard job of rebuilding New Haven.”
John Cotten Sr. (pictured), a Ward 27 resident who lives on Diamond Street, said he voted for Harp for a slightly different reason.
“I know her real good,” she said, “and I think she’s doing a great job.” His son is a pastor in Newhallville, he said, and the mayor showed up to a neighborhood festival his son helped host on Bassett Street last weekend. “To me,” he said, “she’s doing good on everything.”
Ward 27 Democratic Committee Co-Chair Henry Lowendorf (pictured with carpenter’s union member Ian Heinz at a Harp campaign tent outside Mauro Sheridan) said that he has heard from his fellow Westville/Amity neighbors “a certain amount of dismay at the tone of the mayoral campaign” as of late. Both sides have resorted to pretty pointed attacks as the primary has drawn near, he said, and he’s heard quite a few grumbles from his neighbors about how unnecessary those swipes have been.
Besides that concern, he said, neighbors in his ward bring up the same issues that he hears everywhere he goes in the city: “People are concerned about jobs, security, paved streets, the situation with the young, how the city hasn’t done as much for them as it could.”
“Tax increases and bad services,” he said, are complaints that probably go back 100 years in this city, he said. He said that, as a Harp supporter himself, he tries to direct fellow voters towards the mayor’s many accomplishments: lower violent crime, higher graduation rates, greater access to good-paying union jobs.
He said that Elicker has promised many nice things to city voters, but, not being mayor, he hasn’t had to be held accountable to many of those promises, yet. If he’s elected, Lowendorf said, then voters need to make sure to hold him to his many campaign promises. “The issue for me really is where the rubber hits the road,” where promises made are followed up on and kept.
Meanwhile, back downtown in the basement of the municipal building at 200 Orange St., Kevin Arnold was overseeing a team of volunteers (pictured) that had started counting the first batch of absentee ballots for Tuesday’s primary.
Arnold, in his first year as the moderator overseeing absentee ballots, said that the City Clerk’s office had received 415 completed absentee ballots before Saturday. That was the first batch, which his team started counting at around noon.
The second batch, which would consist of absentee ballots received by the City Clerk’s office between Saturday and Tuesday, his team would start counting when the polls closed at 8 p.m. He did not have a count yet on the number of absentee ballots that the city had received between Saturday and Tuesday.