Winfield and Bartlett during Wednesday night’s debate.
How do you run against an elected official with the top statewide reputation for championing criminal justice reform — as not doing enough on criminal justice reform?Jason Bartlett gave it a whirl in a debate Wednesday night.
Bartlett, running as an independent, is challenging Democratic incumbent Gary Winfield for the 10th State Senate District seat, which represents swaths of New Haven and West Haven.
Wednesday night’s match-up over Zoom and Facebook Live was the pair’s only scheduled debate for the campaign before the Nov. 3 general election.
Bartlett, a former city government youth director and a former state representative, came ready with his slingshot.
La Voz Hispana Publisher Norma Rodriguez-Reyes, one of the debate panelists, posed the challenge to Bartlett directly: Winfield championed a controversial police accountability bill to passage this year. He led a successful years-long fight to ban the death penalty in Connecticut. He led the passage of racial profiling and immigrant-protection laws that are considered national models. If you agree with those goals, Bartlett was asked, how do you make a case against voting for Winfield?
“I don’t disagree with any of the goals,” Bartlett responded. But, he continued, Winfield didn’t “get the job done” on those goals.
He cited the police accountability bill that squeaked into law this year, and was Winfield’s signature piece of legislation.
The new law redefines “qualified immunity” to make it more possible to file suit against an officer who harms a citizen; bans the use of chokeholds and strangleholds unless it can be shown that such measures are necessary to save a life; bans searches of vehicles, even with an operator’s consent, unless probable cause of a crime exists; increases mental-health screenings for officers; and creates an office of inspector general to handle and potentially prosecute deadly use of force cases; and opens state officers’ disciplinary records under the state Freedom of Information Act.
Winfield had advocated those proposals for years and led the effort to pass the law this summer along with New Haven State Rep. Robyn Porter. They were honored for their role by activists afterwards.
“It was a very emotional response to an issue rather than a thoughtful one,” Bartlett said of the law during the debate,
He said the bill watered down the qualified immunity provision too much, and left it too confusing to have effect. He said key compromises — not fully banning chokeholds, for instance, or no-knock raids — left enough wiggle room for abuses to continue.
(Rather than criticize Winfield on the death penalty abolition success, Bartlett noted that he had voted to support versions of the bill when he served in the legislature.)
“That bill shows a failure. It shows the status quo. It was done so that Democrats could have something to show that they did in response to Black Lives Matter,” Bartlett charged. “It was a sop. It actually doesn’t speak to to the actual injustices.”
Bartlett argued that that reflects how Winfield has failed to stand up to judges or prosecutors as Senate chair of the legislature’s Judiciary Committee (or “Judish,” as he referred to it). He proposed taking on deeper structural barriers to reform by, for instance, reducing judges’ terms from eight to four years.
“I don’t know what police accountability law Mr. Bartlett … is talking about,” Winfield responded. He noted the intense police union opposition to the law, reflecting that opponents understood the provisions to have genuine impact. He also noted that the law was recognized as one of the toughest state legislative measures passed nationwide in the wake of the summer’s Black Lives Matter protests.
“The response of the police should show you it was not just a showcase,” Winfield said. “I am not afraid of police. I am not afraid of judges. I put forward a bill …. at a time when it is not happening across the country.”
Bartlett argued that police went after Winfield because he didn’t consult them when drafting the bill. He cited this open letter written by New Haven’s police chief making that case against the police accountability law.
Winfield called the chief’s letter ““inaccurate.” He publicly and openly invited the chief and other cops to consult on the bill, he said.
“Mr. Bartlett can glom onto what they want to say. It’s just not true,” Winfield stated.
“Why Did We Get Cut?”
The exchange reflected a theme that recurred throughout the debate (which you can watch in full above): Bartlett criticized Winfield for not bringing home more money for New Haven or making further-reaching changes in Hartford. Winfield responded that laws contain many pieces that result from compromise, that focusing on one element negates the hard work done behind the scenes to advance legislation that a suburban-dominated legislature isn’t inclined to pass.
For instance, Bartlett repeatedly hammered Winfield for the legislature’s decision to back a $534 million bailout of the city of Hartford’s finances in 2017 at the same time it cut New Haven’s funding by $9.5 million.
“Why did we get a cut of $9.5 million? And why did you stand for it?” Bartlett demanded.
“Lots of people who have an agenda would like to pull parts of the budget apart to show someone did one thing or another. A budget is a complete document. There are different sources of funding. That’s how these things happen,” Winfield responded. He added that he voted against the first version of the 2017 budget, then worked behind the scenes to improve it.
Similarly, in response to a question from Inner City News Editor Babz Rawls-Ivy about how to help small businesses struggling in the recession, Winfield said the budget’s already tight. He doesn’t envision a lot of money available for more direct aid.
“That’s a lot of excuses. When government wants to solve something, they come up with the money,” Bartlett shot back. He called for the creation of a small business fund and/or tax cuts and regulation cuts for small businesses. “Maybe we bond some to assist folks. It’s a pandemic … We don’t rely on a President Trump, who we know will not come to help us … We have to rely on ourselves… We have a rainy day fund …”
“Yes, we have a rainy day fund,” Winfield responded. But the state also has a deficit. And a cap on bonding. And pressing existing expenses needed to run the state.
“It’s pretty easy to say what we’d like to do,” Winfield continued. But it’s not so simple to say “we will find the money It’s not excuses. That’s reality.”
“I was a legislator,” Bartlett insisted. “I know what we’re capable of doing. We’re more than capable of helping people. We’re more than capable of reallocating resources.”
Incentives, & Escapes
Debate panel, clockwise from top left: Jason Bartlett; Moderator Tom Breen of the New Haven Independent; Mary O’Leary of the New Haven Register; Norma Rodriguez-Reyes of La Voz Hispana; Gary Winfield; Babz Rawls-Ivy of Inner City News.
The hour-long debate was a stark contrast to the recent presidential and vice-presidential debates. Under the gentle but firm prodding of moderator Tom Breen of the New Haven Independent, the candidates stuck to time limits. They didn’t interrupt each other. They answered all the questions asked, and offered genuine differences of opinions on substantive issues.
One example: affordable housing.
Asked by the New Haven Register’s Mary O’Leary how to best promote more affordable housing, Bartlett recommended working more with suburban towns to help them devise joint proposals that would receive state incentives. He floated using TIF (tax-increment financing), a controversial tool in which the state lends money with the expectation of being paid back by envisioned future profits. He criticized Winfield and other incumbents for focusing more on penalizing suburban towns through a state law aimed at enabling affordable-housing developers to bypass local zoning decisions in communities with barely any affordable housing.
Winfield shot back that it was hard enough to stop suburban lawmakers from gutting that law. “The reality is they don’t want affordable housing. They’re doing what they have to do to eliminate affordable housing,” he argued.
By the end of the debate, Bartlett’s criticisms were visibly annoying Winfield. When candidates got the chance to pose questions to each other in the debate’s penultimate act, Winfield finally turned the tables on Bartlett. He raised a controversy that dogged Bartlett’s years as city youth director: The failed attempt to construct an “Escape” youth center on Orchard Street, attendant with questions about how the money was spent.
Actually, Winfield’s question alluded to the Escape, but didn’t mention it specifically. Rather, he posed the question this way: “You have a tendency to come up with some good ideas. The follow-through is not always what one would expect. You’re attempting to malign my record. How would you possibly do a better job given your history of not always having the best follow-through?”
“I have excellent follow-through,” Bartlett responded. Since Winfield didn’t specify the “ideas” he meant, Bartlett rattled off successes instead: His work on a restorative justice program that led to a decline from 200 to 14 in the number of public school students expelled each year. The creation of a Youth Stat program that offered help and job-training to teens in trouble, a program that earned a shout-out from President Obama and that Hartford is now seeking to replicate.
Winfield subsequently did mention the Escape specifically in his final remarks. “It did not turn out the way it was supposed to turn out,” he noted.
A Republican, Carlos Alvarado, is also on the ballot in the 10th State Senate District race. He declined numerous invitations to participate in the debate, including an offer to propose a date and time that is convenient for him. He said through his campaign manager that he is too busy.