When mayoral candidates squared off in a debate Tuesday night, the first news reports and punditry came not from reporters — but from elected officials.
News reporters posed questions to Mayor John DeStefano and challengers Angela Watley, Ralph Ferrucci, and Henri Sumner Tuesday night before an overflow crowd at Gateway Community College.
Meanwhile, State Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield and Beaver Hills Alderman Moti Sandman watched the action live — and posted reports to their networks of politically engaged “friends” on Facebook.
And at the dais, Mayor DeStefano checked his text messages from staff in between answering questions, as he crafted his debate-closing remarks based on real-time breaking news.
The Alderman-Reporter & The Activist-Reader
The debate — which was sponsored by the Democracy Fund, La Voz Hispana, and the New Haven Independent — began a few minutes after 8 p.m.
Using his BlackBerry, Alderman Sandman (pictured) posted his first live report at 8:10, and kept going. His posts have a circulation of 180 “friends” and politically engaged people in New Haven.
At first he declared it “embarrassing” to hear DeStefano’s challengers fumble to answer questions.
But by 8:26, Sandman, a mayoral ally, reported that challenger Angela Watley was “finding her legs. She has a few points she was preped on and did OK.”
That prompted an instant response from reader Rebecca Angeletti Turcio, a critic of the mayor. Like Moti Sandman, Turcio (aka “Cedar Hill Resident” to readers of Independent comment threads) was an early adopter of the web as a tool for political organizing and communication.
“you know they worked her hard for tonight,” Turcio posted on Sandman’s report. “She must be so nervous. But I just can’t seeing someone so green sitting as mayor in a city with so many problems and with the economy the way it is. But glad she is not the same ol same ol.
After Sandman declared the debate “great comedy” at 8:31, Turcio checked in again, reporting that she couldn’t find the debate on TV. Sandman conveyed information that had been announced in the room: That CTV plans to televise the debate later. (It is scheduled to air on Channel 96 Mondays at 9 p.m., Wednesdays at 9:30 p.m., Thursdays at 10 a.m. and 8 p.m., Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 6 a.m. and noon through Sunday Nov. 1.)
Sandman reported teletype style at 8:41 a.m. on a quote from challenger Sumner: “mr Henri’s answer about the towing policies ‘… I don’t drive’”. He returned to pundit mode at 9:03 when the candidates discussed whether New Haven should switch from an appointed to an elected Board of Ed. “elected BOE y/n? I say NO way!” Sandman typed, siding with DeSetfano and against the three challengers.
Sandman’s wife Miriam weighed in at 9:07: “is it almost over?”
First Pundit
State Rep. Holder-Winfield (pictured) weighed in as soon as he got home from the debate.
In the immediate aftermath of national debates, journalists convene chosen pundits to spin the significance of what just happened.
Holder-Winfield went directly on his own to the extensive network of followers he began building on Facebook and Twitter when he ran for office last year. He has continued cultivating that audience in office, filing real-time reports on breaking developments at the Capitol. He learned how to produce videos and mastered web media techniqueseven before he won office.
Tuesday night, Holder-Winfield not only offered a nuanced instant political anlysis. He sparked a virtual panel discussion.
He began by summarizing the debate with punctuation: “???”
One Facebook friend asked Holder-Winfield if he’d “won” the debate. He responded that he’d been watching, not participating: “noone won tonight. It was, in a word, sad”
Tom Ficklin, one of New Haven’s most active and followed new-media content-creators, offered an expanded analysis of the event which he’d just attended, too: “comedy, drama, tragedy or pathos.”
Holder-Winfield Facebook friend Khalilah L. Brown-Dean asked for more details about the event. Holder-Winfield summarized the challengers’ performances: “The Challengers responses: Ferrucci- Yale is bad, Summer-Never answered a question, Watley‑I don’t know but it’s bad and we should do something about it. (Probably why the details were so sparse)”
Then he offered an analysis of this debate’s significance to New Haven’s fledgling democracy. To Holder-Winfield, it showed the wrong way to take on established power. He spoke from firsthand experience: He beat the DeStefano political machine in 2008; he supported an aldermanic challenger to the machine in last month’s primary. At the same time, he is more of an independent political actor, able to work with coalitions to pass legislation, rather than a political outsider or reflexive opponent.
“Here’s a clue to people who don’t like Destefano… so what,” Holder-Winfield wrote.
“Get over it. These things just make him look better or like a bully beating up on weak kids. Neither will topple him. It is time that people got a clue. Running against Destefano because he is not nice is dumb and it shows.
“A vision is not articulating the problem (especially if you have to read it as you do the work of articulating it). I know that people clap for that kind of thing but even they know you have no idea what to do about it. It’s called a policy prescription. If you don’t have a single one for any issue you probably should not be in the race. I don’t know is an honest response — hell, used sparingly it is refreshing — but this is a debate for the title of mayor and when I don’t know is used like the hook to a song …
“YOU ARE NOT READY!
“There needs be a challenge but it should come from someone who understands that wether you like the Mayor or not the bigger issue is that all reigns end and he is getting long in the tooth so a legitimate challenger is needed if for no other reason that the passage of time dictates that the notion of succession planning become a reality in New Haven.
“In other words like him or not there necessarily must be a legitimate challenger.”
Mayor/ Reporter
Onstage, the mayor had an eye on text messages in between participating in the debate.
Tuesday night a vote with more national implications was taking place in New Haven: the teachers union was deciding whether to ratify a groundbreaking contract that would open the door to school reform, Mayor DeStefano’s number-one campaign issue this year.
That vote took place between 5 and 7 p.m. It was believed that tallying the votes would take more than an hour — past the time when the mayoral debate at Gateway was scheduled to start. So DeStefano (pictured at the top of the story before the debate with Henri Sumner) asked a staffer to text him the final tally. He wanted to report the numbers in his closing remakrs.
As it turned out, union officials finished the counting just as DeStefano arrived at Gateway prior to the debate. Teachers union President David Cicarella phoned DeStefano to report the overwhelming 842 – 39 tally in favor of the contract.
Still, DeStefano was toying with a different closing statement. During the debate, he reported later, he and staffers exchanged text messages about an alternate closing statement.
In the end, he focused on the contract vote — and broke the news.
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OMG Qualified contender to run for mayor, seriously!
And still a question why DeStefano “is doing the job”?