New Haven Independent

“Subtract 45 from 204,” he said .

The answer pleased him. The 45 represented the number of votes Morehead, Ward 22’s alderman, estimated that he received from Yale students. The ward includes four Yale residential colleges.

Overall, Morehead had received 204 votes at the polls. (An inconsequential 49 absentee ballots remained to be counted.) That meant that 159 votes from people who live in the Dixwell neighborhood. His opponents, Lisa Hopkins and Cordelia Thorpe, won 98 and 23 votes on the machines, respectively.

So that meant that Morehead would have won the election even without the Yale vote. He wanted to know that because of the main charge against him in the campaign: That he was a “puppet” of the City Hall-allied Democratic machine and its allies at Yale. That outsiders were determining who should represent the Dixwell neighborhood.

“I,” declared Morehead, once the math was done, “am the real people’s choice!”

“They’ll try to say I won from Yale. It was from the community.”

In the three minutes before the polls closed, three last-minute Morehead voters wearing “Calder” T-shirts raced into the school to vote. Two made it. One, Doug Bethea, discovered his name wasn’t on voting lists. (The group had been working in the Dwight neighborhood to help elect Gina Calder in Ward 2’s Democratic primary.) Meanwhile, Eliezer Greer, organizer of an armed citizens patrol in the Edgewood neighborhood, stopped by Wexler-Grant to offer his best wishes to Morehead (pictured).

Morehead won the seat in a special election in May. In Tuesday’s Democratic primary he faced a spirited challenge from one of his neighbors on Frances Hunter Drive, neighborhood organizer and affordable-housing consultant Lisa Hopkins. A third candidate, Cordelia Thorpe, was also on the ballot. But she didn’t campaign extensively. She said she’s planning to campaign more aggressively in coming months; she’s running against Morehead as an independent in November.

Click here for a story on the issues in the race.