When people in Beaver Hills look for calmer streets or a cleaner park, they have a team of alders speaking up for them downtown.
Or, as some put it on Sunday, a “family.”
That was the message at a campaign event that took place Sunday afternoon by the playground at Beecher School. There, three Democratic alders — Jill Marks, Biran Wingate, and Richard Furlow — held a joint reelection campaign announcement. The three candidates, none of whom yet has an opponent, are raising money and campaigning for new terms under the auspices of a political action committee called Democrats in Action.
Joint announcements have become a trend this campaign season. Four candidates in the Hill held a joint announcement. Then came three candidates in the West River-Dwight-Edgewood area. Now Beaver Hills.
The idea is to promote the idea that alders from contiguous wards represent voters with common interests and can advance those neighborhoods’ interests better as a united front.
“It’s better to do this as a team,” Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker, who attended Sunday’s event, observed. She and her neighboring alders, Frank Douglass and Evette Hamilton, started the trend two campaign cycles ago. Walker said that it helps the full board deal with a neighborhood’s concerns when the local alders “figure out amongst themselves” what they want and speak with a single voice.
In Beaver Hills, the three alders noted, as in other neighborhoods, sometimes alders represent different sides of the same street. With redistricting, a constituent of one alder becomes the constituent of another in the next election.
Team Beaver Hills: Marks, Wingate and Furlow.
And they share common concerns. In the past two years, Ward 29’s Wingate proposed legislation and held a hearing to tackle vicious dogs after he witnessed the fatal mauling of a neighbor across the street. Ward 28’s Marks organized a new “friends” group to clean and keep clean Goffe Street Park. Ward 27’s Furlow (whose Dadaist-style gerrymandered district also includes slices of Westville, West Hills, Beverly Hills, and Amity) pushed for hearings on ideas to slow traffic to try to keep kids safer when they get on school buses and seniors safer when they cross the street. The three Beaver Hills alders have supported each others’ efforts.
At Sunday’s event, the alders also spoke of working together to create more employment opportunities for the neighborhood.
The Rev. Scott Marks, who’s married to Jill Marks, with WIngate at Sunday’s event.
“Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. Jobs,” Wingate declared, in summing up his top priority. He said he’d like to see industrial employers open new plants in Beaver Hills.
Furlow addresses the crowd.
The alders also collaborated on a well-attended public neighborhood meeting held last week with the mayor and police chief to air quality-of-life concerns.
Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison showed up in support, a day after announcing her own reelection bid.
“Like any family, we have disagreements. But we do a lot of good work together,” Tyisha Walker remarked to the dozens of supporters present at the event.
State Rep. Pat Dillon and State Sen. Gary Winfield lending support at the event.
The event ended on a family note, with Jill Marks inviting daughters and nieces up to join the candidates in a rousing final gospel number. Click on the video at the top of the story to watch them sing.
Click on or download the above audio file to listen to an interview on WNHH radio’s “Dateline New Haven” with Dixwell’s Jeanette Morrison and three of the Hill alder candidates about their tenures and their reelection campaigns.
Message received. "These seats are Union seats, they belong to us, and if you dare to run you'll be taking on much more than just one alder..."
So far how many contested elections? The upstart Ofuso in Ward 19 who is running for an "open" seat against Kim Edwards, (the incumbent's daughter), and then Abby Roth wanting her seat back in Ward 7 against Alberta Witherspoon. Am I missing any?
[Paul: Ward 1 has a general election contest http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/catalbasoglu_ward_1_run/. And so Ward 21 and 11 have potential primaries. We will cover.]