Melissa Bailey Photo
Aspiring DTC Chair Chris Randall talks to new DTC candidates.
The jolt of competition from last year’s elections has carried over into a new set of political contests that could shake up New Haven’s Democratic Party establishment.
The continuing spread of democracy could be seen Wednesday night at the Hall of Records at 200 Orange St., where new faces emerged seeking to become official members of the Democratic Town Committee (DTC).
The meeting, which drew about 25 town committee members and 45 onlookers to the basement hearing room, centered on upcoming elections for so-called ward co-chairs, the 60 people who make up the DTC. Those 60 people, two from each ward, are key in shaping the political landscape by giving endorsements for aldermanic and mayoral candidates. They’re also responsible for choosing to develop active organizations of neighbors to work on campaigns and address other neighborhood issues, if they choose.
New Haven’s DTC — the largest in the state — currently meets only a few times per year for the purpose of endorsing candidates in primaries and general elections. In one-party New Haven (which last elected a Republican mayor in 1951; where no Republicans even ran for any of the 30 seats on the Board of Aldermen in 2011, let alone won any), winning Democratic primaries or endorsements is often tantamount to winning office.
New DTC members will decide whether the party will become independent of Mayor John DeStefano on public policy matters and at the polls.
The starting gun goes off next Wednesday, when petitions become available for the ward co-chair positions. Candidates for contested seats face election a March 6 party primary. After the election, they will chose a party leader.
As city officials laid out the rules for the primary race, political newcomers scribbled down notes, asked questions, and in several cases announced their candidacies.
Voigt.
Also throwing his hat in the ring was Wooster Square’s Chris Randall, who said he’ll make a second run for DTC chair. That creates a potential four-way race to replace DTC Chair Susie Voigt, who is believed to be stepping down when her two-year term ends in March. Read about the other candidates here.
Randall, who declares himself fiercely independent of City Hall, is already on the DTC, serving as co-chair of Ward 8 in Wooster Square. Two years ago, he and his co-chair — with help from neighborhood and labor activists and independent-minded aldermen — beat back a challenge to their seats. After a vigorous celebration on the Conte/West Hills School gym floor, Randall led an impromptu revolt to topple Chairwoman Voigt.
The effort fell short: Voigt beat Randall by a vote of 41 to 8.
Randall’s latest quest comes in a new landscape, after a labor-backed coalition upset 14 City Hall-backed candidates in a spirited campaign season last year. New aldermen took office on Jan. 1. The coalition now holds a supermajority capable of challenging Mayor DeStefano’s agenda.
The momentum brought a sizable crowd to the basement hearing room Wednesday.
Jeanette Morrison, who defeated City Hall’s Alderman Greg Morehead in Ward 22, sat in the front row, taking notes, as Democratic Registrar of Voters Sharon Ferrucci led the group through the primary process.
Petitions become available on Jan. 18. Candidates can run alone or in a slate with another co-chair in the same ward. If they want to run as a slate, they have to sign a “consent form” and return it to the registrar’s office. The candidate, or slate, then has two weeks to collect signatures from 5 percent of registered Democrats in the ward. Petitions are due back to the city clerk’s office on Feb. 4 at 4 p.m.
If more than two candidates in a given ward want to be co-chair, they will square off in a primary on March 6, open to all Democrats. Candidates who raise over $1,000 must file campaign finance reports with the city/town clerk. Voigt said typically only half of the city’s wards have primaries. In some wards, Democrats settle the question of who’s running before a primary takes place.
Two new jolts of democracy are already hitting Westville and East Rock.
Ward 25 candidate Janis Underwood and Ward 9 candidate Cristina Cruz-Uribe.
In East Rock’s Ward 9, Cristina Cruz-Uribe said she plans to run for a seat left vacant by Paul Wessel, who stepped down last year. Cruz-Uribe, a Yale graduate student who studies ethnomusicology, emerged as a dogged door-knocker for Jessica Holmes in Holmes’ primary victory over Ward 9 Alderman Matt Smith, who subsequently left office to work for City Hall. Holmes ran as a Yale union-backed candidate with a goal to engage more East Rockers in the political process, including the many transient and Yale-affiliated voters in that neighborhood.
Cruz-Uribe said Holmes’ campaign signed up 300 new voters for the primary. She personally knocked on “hundreds” of doors. She said running for co-chair is a natural extension of her work on the campaign, which “inspired a whole bunch of East Rock residents” to get engaged in politics.
Ward co-chairs cast votes to endorse candidates ahead of party primaries for mayor and alderman. They also elect delegates (most often, themselves) to the Democratic state convention, where they’ll nominate candidates for high-profile races for U.S. Senate and governor. The nominations give extra weight to candidates going into a primary. Co-chairs also get to pick 25 people each to fill out a so-called ward committee, the tentacles of the party structure reaching out into the 30 wards.
Ward committees are supposed to serve as a gateway to political involvement in New Haven. Instead, they often meet just once a year, to nominate co-chairs or aldermen. People who try to participate often can’t find out how, where, when, or with whom. Candidates over the years have urged them to take a more active role.
“I’m eager to get folks involved in the process” and continue the organizing work that started with Holmes’ campaign, Cruz-Uribe said. The other co-chair seat is held by Matt Smith’s sister, Diane Cassella, who wasn’t present at Wednesday’s meeting.
Westville’s Ward 25, the site of one of the most competitive aldermanic races in town last year, again promises a spirited debate in the upcoming election. After his narrow defeat by union organizer Adam Marchand in the aldermanic race, Mike Slattery announced he’ll be running again, this time for co-chair. He’s teaming up with the current co-chair, Kathleen Krolak, who works for the city’s Economic Development Corporation. Co-chair Barbara Segaloff is not seeking reelection, Slattery said.
Slattery Wednesday chatted civilly with his new competition: Janis Underwood (pictured above with Cruz-Uribe), who teaches at a Wallingford public school, and Jim Berger, who teaches at Yale. Berger said both he and Underwood “worked hard” for Marchand’s election.
Slattery said if elected, he’ll “push openness as far as it can go,” circulating questionnaires of aldermanic candidates and holding “group readings” of important documents like the mayor’s budget and the latest report by the union-affiliated Connecticut Center for a New Economy.
Outgoing Ward 10 Co-chair Dick Lyons engages in friendly debate with incoming co-chair Ray Saracco.
In East Rock’s Ward 10, Co-chair and former Alderman Dick Lyons said he is ceding his seat to firefighter Ray Saracco. A lifelong East Rocker, Saracco held the seat once before, after toppling two City Hall-backed incumbents four years ago.
Saracco plans to run on a slate with current co-chair David Streever.
Streever, a cycling activist and an outspoken critic of the mayor, vowed to “promote transparency, neighborhood involvement, and identify Democratic candidates for office.”
“We’ll be doing outreach to get as large of an active committee as possible over the next few weeks,” he said.
In the East Shore, Jacqueline Kozin, an active Democrat who worked for Dan Malloy’s campaign against John DeStefano in the 2006 Democratic gubernatorial primary, plans to run alongside Nick Colavolpe for Ward 18 co-chair. Kozin, who most recently ran Kevin Lembo’s comptroller campaign, now works in his office. She lives on the street she grew up on, Douglass Avenue.
Ward 22 co-chair Thorpe.
In Dixwell, Ward 22 Co-chair Cordelia Thorpe (pictured with her co-chair Gina Phillips) said she is expecting a challenge this year from the insurgent, labor-backed forces that won at the polls last year. She and Phillips are members of AFSCME Council 4. They said they’re concerned that the Yale unions, UNITE HERE Local 34 and 35, will run competitors against them. “Are they against their own brothers and sisters?” Phillips asked.
Ward 22 Alderwoman Morrison, who won election with the support of Yale’s unions, said she does not yet know of any candidates who plan to run in her ward. She said she was taking notes to bring back to the neighborhood and inform people of how the process works.
“The town committee process, only a certain few seem to know about it,” she said. Morrison said she lived in Dixwell for 18 years before she ever heard about it. She said she wants to open up the process to new faces.
UNITE HERE organizer Hugh Baran.
Hugh Baran, an organizer for Local 35, handed out his card to the two co-chairs in Downtown’s Ward 7, which saw no contested election last year. Baran said he is moving into Ward 7. He said he hasn’t decided if he’ll run for co-chair and doesn’t know if any other candidates will emerge there.
The co-chairs, Nadine Wall and Alberta Witherspoon, said they plan to hang onto their seats.
West Rockers Cynthia N. Rogers and Beryl Karas.
Ward 30 Co-chair Honda Smith brought along three senior citizens from the West Rock neighborhood. Asked if she is running, one of them quipped: “I wish I could run.”
They said they were there just to learn.
Smith said she doesn’t know of any competition for West Rock’s two party seats.
“We’re not begrudging anyone if they want to run for office,” she said. “It’s a democracy.”