Dozens of former elected officials stepped out of New Haven’s political history Sunday afternoon to say that they want to make history again — by helping elect Toni Harp as the city’s first female mayor and first African-American female mayor.
Twenty-one former aldermen elected as far back as 1969 crowded into the back room of Bentara restaurant on Orange Street to endorse Harp’s mayoral candidacy. Another 18 former aldermen signed on to the endorsement, according to the campaign.
Harp, an 11th-term state senator who previously served on the Board of Aldermen with some of the endorsers in the room, addressed the first-female aspect of her candidacy in remarks to the group. (Click on the video to watch some of her remarks.) Harp is one of seven Democrats seeking to succeed retiring two-decade incumbent Mayor John DeStefano.
“What I think is different about women — and it’s really too bad that it has taken 375 years for us to figure this out — women are collaborative. Women understand what it means to build consensus. Until we have a collaborative system that is based upon consensus, we don’t have a true democracy,” Harp said. “The people’s branch [the Board of Aldermen] has got to be equal. There has got to be that balance of powers.”
Gwen Newton addressed the African-American historical question. Newton won a Board of Aldermen seat from Newhallville in 1969. She was one of “The Magnificent Seven,” elected as aldermen on a slate allied with Henry “Hank” Parker, who was running to challenge the Democratic Party machine and try to become New Haven’s first black mayor. (New Haven elected its first black mayor, John Daniels, 20 years later.)
“They weren’t used to blacks having their own minds,” Newton said of party leaders at the time. “They had a few [African-Americans in office]; they were part of the establishment. They never asked our opinion.
“We fought each other behind the door. When we came out, we were unified,” she recalled of the Magnificent Seven, of which she was the only female.
Sunday’s event served as a Nick-at-Nite-style follow-up to an event three Sundays ago, when 18 current aldermen endorsed Harp’s candidacy. That group included many members of the Yale union-backed majority that dominates the current Board of Aldermen. Sunday’s group at Bentara included politicians were have been on that other side of that group — such as Marcus Paca, who lost his Edgewood seat to current Harp-backer Evette Hamilton; and Gwen Newtown’s daughter, Katrina Jones, who held a Newhallville seat until current Harp-backer Brenda Foskey-Cyrus beat her in 2011. Sunday’s group also included politicians who have been on opposite sides of political fights in the past.
That was the event’s main unspoken point — for the Harp campaign to try to rebut allegations that it is largely a creature of a labor-backed faction that currently dominates the Democratic Party, the new version of the establishment. The event was also meant to highlight the deep political relationships that Harp has cultivated over 26 years in elected office.
“I’ve been in politics almost 40 years,” said Tony Dawson (at right in photo), who as a Hill alderman served with Harp. Dawson ran for mayor in 2011 — against a candidate backed by Harp. “I have never seen this extent of endorsements from all sides. It says a lot about her name and who she is.”
“I wish I had this year ago!” Dawson (pictured with Jim Newton, another former Hill alderman and mayoral candidate) added with a smile.
Sunday’s event also followed a June 12 event at which most of New Haven’s Latino elected officials endorsed her. (Another Democratic mayoral candidate, Henry Fernandez, has assembled his own group of Latino backers, more focused on grassroots leaders rather than elected officials.) The Harp campaign has been scheduling these events to seek to present a sense of overwhelming early support and inevitability.
“After the campaign you’ve got to govern. This grouping makes that a good opportunity,” former Board of Aldermen President Tomas Reyes remarked at Sunday’s event. When he served with Harp in the late 1980s, Reyes worked with her on a plan to address a then-growing homeless problem by siting small facilities in neighborhoods throughout the city rather than plopping one or two large facilities in one or two neighborhoods. (Torrid opposition in neighborhoods like the East Shore killed that plan.)
The combined group of endorsers from the current and previous boards of aldermen include two parent-child teams: Gwen Newton and Katrina Jones of Newhallville; and Al Paolillo Sr. and Jr. of the Annex. Al Jr. serves now and participated in the June 2 endorsement. His dad (pictured) spoke movingly at Sunday’s event about serving in Vietnam in the late 1960s, where he found courage in the face of death among soldiers of all racial backgrounds. He said Harp’s candidacy reminds him of that. Then he promised to help “bring home” the vote this year on the East Shore.
The former aldermen appearing at Sunday’s event included Jim Perillo (also a former mayoral candidate), Marcus Paca, Liz McCormack (whom Paca unseated in 2009), Tomas Reyes, Linda Townsend-Maier, Gwen Newton, Al Paolillo Sr., Yusuf Shah, Tony Dawson, Esther Armand, Barbara Walker, Nathan Joyner, Joyce Poole, Gerry Garcia, Gerald Antunes, Greg Smith, Jim Newton, Katrina Jones, Shirley Ellis-West, Ellsworth Simmonds, and Michael Morand.
Also backing Harp, according to her campaign, but not present at the event: Charles Blango, Kevin Diaz, Wilie Joe Moore, Vinnie Mauro Jr., Robert Lee, Rosa Santana, Jimmy Jones, Bryan Anderson, Portia Jenkins, Willie Greene, Brian Jenkins, Sally Brooker, Vanessa Burns, Juan Candelaria, Joshua Moore, Teddy Glover, Mae Ola Riddick, and Raul Avila.
Michael Morand’s presence was significant in that he is often the public face in New Haven of the Yale administration — which in the past has not visibly been aligned with candidates backed by Yale unions. In former years, the unions have sometimes backed candidates in part to pressure Yale. But this is a new day: Yale and its unions have at least for now buried their historic animosity, last year reached an amicable contract without threat of a strike, and collaborated on a “jobs pipeline” program. While individual Yale-union-backed aldermen voted against a recent deal to sell parts of High and Wall streets to the university for $3 million, many others voted in favor.
Morand insisted his presence Sunday had nothing to do with his role at Yale. Instead, he held up a 1989 copy of the Yale Herald showing Harp endorsing him for alderman.
“For reportorial objective purposes of this event, I am ‘a citizen of New Haven and former alderman,’” not a former Yale assistant vice-president or current Yale spokesman, Morand instructed a reporter. “This doesn’t have anything to do with Yale.”
Harp was asked her opinion of the recent Wall and High sale. Two of her opponents, Fernandez and Justin Elicker, have come out against the sale.
“The real issue to me is it’s a short-term gain,” Harp replied. She said as mayor she would seek to close budget gaps with recurring revenue streams, not one-time revenues. That said, she acknowledged she had been on the Board of Aldermen the first the city temporarily sold the streets to Yale to close a budget gap, and she voted for it. “We were in desperate straits” back then, she said. Before she can say whether she would have voted to approve this most recent $3 million sale, she said, she would need to know “how desperate straits we were in” now.
Harp said. "The people's branch [the Board of Aldermen] has got to be equal. There has got to be that balance of powers."
So are you for the system of TERM Limits and Proportional Representation which would give True balance of powers.