Paca Believes

Sunday morning Immanuel Missionary Baptist Church​‘s Associate Pastor Ron Smith — a former city clerk and 2015 mayoral aspirant — preached an impassioned sermon with the theme ​“Nothing is impossible.”

Those words had particular resonance for one visiting worshipper, Marcus Paca, whose campaign to unseat incumbent Mayor Toni Harp constitutes taking on the New Haven’s Democratic establishment.

As office-seekers often do, Paca is spending his Sundays in the run-up to the Sept. 12 Democratic mayoral primary election in part visiting houses of worship.

Paca was intending to campaign along with a team of supporters in Westville after church. However, an illness in his family put the Sunday afternoon’s door-knocking on hold.

He planned to return to the campaign trail Monday, welcoming kids back to school at 7:30 a.m. at The Edgewood School and 8:30 a.m. at King Robinson. In the afternoon, it’s on to senior citizens, with a noon‑2 p.m. meet-and-greet at the Mary Wade Home in Fair Haven followed by a 4 – 5 p.m. get-together at the Tower One East Complex.

In Smith’s sermon, the ​“nothing is impossible” theme related to news not political but angelic, in the gospel text that Elizabeth and Mary were pregnant with John the Baptist and Jesus.

“If you have the right relationship with God, then you face the storms and gales of life,” declared Smith, who served as guest preacher for the service. (The church’s pastor, Samuel Ross-Lee, was on vacation.)

“There’s nothing impossible for God. Nothing is possible.”

If it weren’t for belief in God and in Jesus, Smith said, he wouldn’t be at the pulpit on Sunday, and the streets would have more drugs and crime. He sermonized passionately against abortion; he spoke of the marvel of seeing his own son being born. Men must spend more time helping to nurture the young lives they help bring into the world, he said.

“Faith plays a major part in everything I do,” Paca said after services at the Chapel Street church, a longtime pioneering institution in the city and in particular the Dwight-Kensigton neighborhood.

Growing up in Newallville, Paca and his family regularly attended the Pentecostal Faith Temple Revival Center on Dixwell Avenue. That anchored him, he said, during a boyhood when many in his circle fell victim to the streets.

“I was fortunate,” he said. ​“People were praying for me.”

He described attending church on a regular basis (his home congregation is Church on the Rock in Wooster Square) as a spiritual refueling. ​“It gives me moral compass and direction in order to understand and help people,” he said

Sometimes he is asked to speak when visiting a church during the campaign, and sometimes not, depending on the pastor. He was at pains in talking to this reporter that people not think he is in some fashion using his church attendance to obtain attention or publicity. Sunday he sat quietly in the pews.

“It’s difficult to lead when you don’t have a moral center,” he added.

Like Paca, Ron Smith challenged Mayor Harp, in his case as an unaffiliated candidate in the 2015 general election. Paca has qualified for the ballots of both the Sept. 12 primary and Nov. 7 general election this year.

In his own case, Paca said, ​“The Bible says you should love God and then you love your neighbor,”

“People want to know their political leaders are grounded. And for me that’s based mainly in Christianity.”

That center need not be Christian or even religious, he explained, but there must be something spiritual out of which the direction and centering can emerge, he said.

Paca said his experience on the campaign trail is that his message is getting through, ​“resonating with residents” and that the city will make the right decision.

Paca took slight issue with one point of Smith’s sermon, in which the Smith argued that clergy have a particular role to play in the life of New Haven.

“The church has a moral responsibility to keep our young people alive,” Smith said.

Paca did not cavil with the role clergy often play in the city after, for example, a particularly painful murder our sustained interval of youth violence, when clergy march through afflicted neighborhoods or take a lead in mentoring and outreach programs. Still he termed that kind of response ​“reactive.”

“It’s the responsibility of all New Haveners, not just the clergy. Everyone has a part to play, preachers, parents. If everyone does their part, we’ll make a better New Haven. I believe my part is to become the next mayor of New Haven.”

Paca said the campaign he is mounting can seem ​“daunting and insurmountable,” but faith in God helps him keep pressing.

“I have faith and as a person who believes in his capability as a leader.” ​“I hear many residents want change and I’m there,” he added to make that change happen with what he termed ​“a progression of leadership.”

Meanwhile, Webstern Grant-Stovall is not giving up on the faith, either. The 27-year-old truck driver from Orchard Street wanted to run for mayor this year, so he gathered signatures to have his name appear on the Nov. 12 general election ballot. But he fell short of gathering the 122 certified signatures needed from registered voters. Still, he was out on the street Friday afternoon letting people know he’s still aiming for the mayor’s office, asking voters to write him in. (Sarah Ganong of the Working Families Party did make the Nov. 7 general election ballot. She said she’s running not to try to win, but to get 1 percent of the vote to secure her party a spot on future municipal balltos so it can cross-endorse progressive Democrats.)