New Haven Independent

The race pits eight-term incumbent State Sen. Toni Harp (top photo), a Democrat, against Republican challenger Melissa Papantones (pictured below her). Both candidates live in the Westville neighborhood; the district covers about half of New Haven and part of West Haven.

In a year when most state legislators are running unopposed or barely opposed, the 10th District race is the only in New Haven providing what General Assembly campaigns are designed to promote: a thorough and clear debate on Connecticut’s biggest issues.

Same-sex marriage? Harp supports the recent State Supreme Court decision legalizing it. She would vote against a constitutional amendment to ban it. Papantones would vote for such an amendment.

“I have a lot of gay friends,” Papantones, an attorney specializing in insurance defense work, said during an interview Monday at Koffee? on Audubon. “I think, though, that the people of Connecticut should make that decision of whether marriage should be between a man or a woman or be available to all.”

A constitutional convention? Papantones supports the referendum on the Nov. 4 ballot to hold one. Harp opposes it. Papantones want to see such a convention lead to an amendment eliminating individual voir dire in jury selection.

The two candidates’ differences are especially stark on some of the leading health care issues facing the legislature.

Who Provides The Translation?

Harp, whose day job is working with homeless people at the Hill Health Center, has made health care a trademark issue of her eight terms in Hartford. She’s regularly seen at health events around town like last Friday’s unveiling of a City Hall exhibit of photos by local African-American women dealing with the high incidence of diabetes in the black community. Harp spent a day joining the program and contributing digital photos of her own, focusing on the high cost of fresh vegetables compared to less healthful, more fattening foods.

Before Friday’s event began, Harp discussed a health-care battle currently on her radar. Last session she helped push through a measure to fund translators for Medicaid patients. That’s an especially important issue for the immigrant community and Latino patients. Republican Gov. M. Jodi recently announced she was axing that effort as part of mid-year rescissions to the state budget; the cuts resulted from declining state revenues in the face of the global economic collapse.

“We’re going to see if we can change her mind on that,” Harp said.

Papantones said she supports Rell’s rescission. Families should provide their own interpreters, she argued. She said two of her immigrant grandparents always brought along relatives to the doctor’s office and that worked fine.

“We all have to make some sacrifices to get everything back on track” on the budget, she said. “It’s hard to have an army of people available to speak the languages we’re dealing with. It’s not just Spanish. It’s hard to find interpreters.”

“I know of cases where kids who are 8 or 9 are speaking on behalf of the parents with physicians. That doesn’t always work,” Harp countered. She said kids don’t always fully understand what doctors say, or don’t adequately communicate the message. That endangers the parents’ health, and can lead to costly health problems down the road, she argued.

Another difference between the candidates: proposed steps toward universal health care.

Last session the state legislature passed — and Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell vetoed — a bill to expand the state employees’ health plan so that small businesses, not-for-profits and local government workers could buy in.

Harp voted for that bill; she disagrees with Rell’s veto. Papantones said that she supports Rell’s veto.

“Health care is something we need to help people get if we can,” she said. “But we have to be responsible in how we go about it. We have to be careful not to buy into the European system…

“We had an au pair from England. Her mother had a chronic degenerative condition she was dying from. It was not as easy as you thought it would be” to get needed care.

The Value Of Power

As a Republican taking on a Democrat in a city in which the donkey is the official political religious icon, Papantones has an uphill climb. The Republicans didn’t even bother putting a candidate on the ballot against the city’s other state senator, Martin Looney. Papantones ran against Harp two years ago; she received only about 12 percent of the vote. She failed in a bid to qualify for matching funds for this year’s campaign. (Harp did qualify.)

Harp stresses her years in Hartford, in a majority, as a campaign selling point. Because of her seniority, and because the Democrats control the legislature, she can deliver for New Haven, she said. She co-chairs the legislature’s powerful Appropriations Committee.

Papantones turns the argument around as one of her own campaign’s selling points. She countered that one-party dominance endangers (small-d) democratic government. The Democrats are one vote short of a veto-proof majority in the State Senate. That’s one reason voters should send her, a Republican, to Hartford instead, she argued. “With a supermajority, the Democrats can pass the budget they want to,” she said. “It needs to be checked. You can say what you want about [former Republican Gov. John] Rowland. But there was a period before he resigned when he single-handedly kept taxes flat. Gov. Rell’s fought hard to keep taxes down as well.”

Papantones previously served as New Haven’s Republican town chairwoman, another lonely quest: The city hasn’t elected a GOP mayor since 1951. The Republicans have just one seat out of 30 on the Board of Aldermen.

None of that has deterred Papantones from trying to revive a two-party system. “Sometimes,” she said, “you need to put your name on the line.”