Melissa Bailey File Photo
Gary Holder-Winfield — who beat the City Hall machine to win a seat in the state legislature — plans to decide by the end of January whether to take on that diminished machine again by running for mayor.
If he does, the upcoming mayoral campaign will feature a debate on how the grassroots figure into school reform.
Holder-Winfield (pictured at the Capitol) said in an interview Sunday that he plans to create a formal exploratory committee within the next month to consider a 2013 run for mayor. Then, after consulting with lots of people, he plans to make a decision whether to run by the end of January.
“I’m seriously considering it,” said Holder-Winfield, who is 38 and represents Newhallville (where he lives), parts of East Rock, and Hamden in the state General Assembly. He chairs the legislature’s Black and Puerto Rican Caucus.
City government, Holder-Winfield said, has become “disconnected” from the grass roots on issues like school reform and public safety.
“If I run, I won’t be one of those people saying the mayor hasn’t done anything. He’s done some good things,” Holder-Winfield said. “It’s hard for [the DeStefano administration] to hear people. They become more disconnected than they need to be.”
“That observation just doesn’t wash,” responded the man Holder-Winfield would seek to unseat, 10-term incumbent Mayor John DeStefano, who has already started running for reelection. DeStefano called New Haven’s school reform drive a national model for connecting teachers and parents into the process.
“That’s not to say some things can’t be better,” he said. “But demonstrate in Connecticut and the United States anywhere where it is better.”
Holder-Winfield has been actively consulting people in the community about a possible run, as the Register’s Shahid Abdul-Karim first reported on Saturday.
He won his first term in the legislature in 2008 by assembling a grassroots coalition to oppose a City Hall loyalist hand-picked by the mayor’s team. That year City Hall controlled the Democratic Party’s vote-pulling operation; that has changed, although the DeStefano administration retains a powerful fund-raising operation reliant on city contractors and employees.
In his first term as a state representative, Holder-Winfield convinced his colleagues in Hartford to pass a bill outlawing the death penalty. A Republican governor vetoed the bill. Then a Democrat became governor, whom Holder-Winfield supported early and prominently, and that governor signed the bill outlawing the penalty.
Holder-Winfield also cosponsored a school-reform law that established “governance councils” of teachers and parents with real power to help turn around failing schools, a law New Haven has resisted. A state review found the city in open defiance of the law, which would give parents and teachers more say than they have now in New Haven’s weaker advisory councils. Click here to read about that.
The state two months ago arrested Holder-Winfield’s 2008 campaign treasurer on charges of stealing $4,270 from the campaign. Holder-Winfield said he’d been unaware of the theft and he worked closely with the state to make the case.
The Change Argument
Holder-Winfield said Sunday that Mayor DeStefano, a fellow Democrat, “eventually got there” in embracing school reform and community policing after Holder-Winfield and other community activists demonstrated for years and City Hall resisted the ideas. He praised some of the policies DeStefano now has in place. His critique: People at the grassroots don’t “feel part of the process” and don’t believe their ideas are welcomed because of years of being shut out of local government. Change can’t happen without grassroots involvement, he argued.
“You can say all you want about David Kennedy and his” national violence-reduction program, which failed here some years back and which is now returning here, Holder-Winfield said. “But if you don’t have the community involved, that is the core.”
He said he wasn’t criticizing the new police chief, Dean Esserman, but rather the record of his predecessors and City Hall. Violent crime has dropped dramatically in New Haven after DeStefano reversed course on community policing and brought in Esserman in response to a public outcry during the 2011 municipal elections.
Similarly, on school reform, “I don’t think [the DeStefano administration has] exhibited that they are open to hearing things outside of what they already believe to to be the case. I think it’s a problem,” Holder-Winfield charged.
New Haven’s school reform drive has received national plaudits for its success in working with the teachers union, rather than against them. It has had less success so far in convincing some parents and teachers and students that their voices count. Even the drive’s chief architect, ten-term incumbent Mayor John DeStefano, has openly criticized his own top school appointees for failing to “relinquish power” in order to allow grassroots autonomy in order for new ideas to thrive.
“You may change things to get some of your results. But unless people feel they’re part of what’s going on, they’re not going to participate in the way they need to participate to get the right results,” Holder-Winfield said.
“I don’t have to agree with [everybody]. I have to be receptive to them. As a state representative, I don’t always agree with people. But I listen to them. Even when you disagree with people, they know you’ve considered what you’ve said.” At the state Capitol Holder-Winfield has a reputation as the most active user of social media to stay in touch with constituents.
The Success Argument
Thomas MacMillan Photo
In response to Holder-Winfield’s criticisms, Mayor DeStefano touted his school reform drive as the very model of grassroots engagement.
“It’s always been about buy-in,” he said in a conversation Sunday.
“It started with buy-in with the New Haven Federation of Teachers, the most startling level of union cooperation which continues to this day in the operation of [High School in the Community] by the union. (Click here for links to 10 stories in a series about that experiment.)
“I think it has continued through very robust participation, everything form school-based climate surveys, where parents now grade their school and central office on school reform. I think it continued through New Haven Promise, where we’ve engaged families directly on the doors in terms of their kids’ futures. There was an extraordinary example of it last Saturday with Parent University, where hundreds and hundreds of parents came to Gateway Community College.
“We have here an outstanding initiative around school reform. I hate to see it being torn up because of people’s political ambitions. Its record speaks incredibly well for itself. It’s acknowledged as such nationally and in this state.”
Tactically, a big factor in a Holder-Winfield-DeStefano match-up would be the role of the the organized labor vote-pulling organization that helped elect a majority to the Board of Aldermen this term. That organization sat out the last mayor’s race. It has also maintained an independent distance from the mayor and debated whether to take him on in 2013. If they choose to support Holder-Winfield, that would increase his chances.
One of those labor-backed alderwomen, Jeanette Morrison, said it’s too early for her to say whom she’ll back next fall.
“I think everybody should run. It’s a democracy,” Morrison said. “I’m glad [Holder-Winfield] is taking that on. I want to see who else is going to take in on.”
All this talk about "buy in" has my head spinning.
Instead of talking about theories, how about looking at results?
At least half of our neighborhoods are not safe, people outside of East Rock and Westville can't find jobs, most schools are failing, and the city is nearly bankrupt.
There's no need for any other information here.
We don't need buy in, we need a radically different approach to governing.