Melissa Bailey Photo
As she launched another campaign for an aldermanic seat, Jessica Holmes vowed to fight for “transparency” in government decisions like removing Engine 8 from the Whitney Avenue firehouse, turning over a public school to a private company, and approving the city budget.
Holmes (at right in photo, with her partner Katie Poynter) fell just 48 votes shy of her opponent, Matt Smith, in a hotly contested special election for East Rock’s Ward 9 aldermanic seat last November.
Now, less than a year later, Holmes and Smith are preparing to give East Rock another vigorous exercise in democracy. As Alderman Smith seeks election to his first full term in office, Holmes vowed to challenge him again at the polls. The two tireless door-knockers are both seeking the Democratic Party nomination and are on track to face off in a Sept. 13 primary.
Holmes announced her candidacy for the Ward 9 seat in the garden of her Nash Street home Tuesday evening. In doing so, she became the latest union-affiliated candidate to throw her hat into the ring in an election year marked by contentious municipal labor negotiations.
Holmes, a 32-year-old stay-at-home mom, is a former organizer for UNITE HERE Local 34, which represents over 3,400 clerical & technical workers at Yale. She said she is friendly with other Yale union-affiliated candidates like Tyisha Walker in Ward 23 and Brian Wingate in Ward 29, but “I’m doing my own thing.” Those two candidates served lemonade from curiously similar dispensers, and drew a similar crowd to their campaign announcements last week.
Holmes served a concoction of blueberry juice and white tea made by her mother-in-law, kept cool in a white metal canister (pictured). Her event drew its own mix of about 30 neighbors, friends and Yale union affiliates. The event brought together people who knocked on doors for her last year, like Holmes campaign manager Hugh Baran, a full-time union organizer with Yale UNITE HERE Local 35, and Cristina Cruz-Uribe, a Yale graduate student and Ward 9 neighbor (pictured).
The rematch in East Rock comes so quickly because last year was a special circumstance: After Roland Lemar left the Board of Aldermen to join the state legislature, the neighborhood held a special election to fill the remaining 14 months of his term. Whoever wins election this year will serve a full, two-year term.
In a brief campaign speech, Holmes focused on two points: bringing “transparency” to government and serving as a better check and balance on the mayor’s power.
As Exhibit A on transparency, Holmes cited the city’s plan to take Engine 8 out of the Whitney Avenue firehouse and replace it with two Advanced Life Support (ALS) vehicles, station wagons equipped with highly trained medical personnel. East Rockers are worried that getting rid of Engine 8 will reduce response times to fires, putting neighbors in more danger.
Neighbors besieged the fire chief at a public meeting on the topic, only to find out the removal was already a done deal.
Holmes said Tuesday that Engine 8 is a prime example of “how decisions have already been made before people find out.” She said she envisions “a more democratic version of the city,” where neighbors are involved in decisions that affect them.
Thomas MacMillan Photo
Reached later Tuesday after an aldermanic Finance Committee meeting, Smith (pictured) agreed with Holmes’ critique. He said after city officials came to the neighborhood meeting at the Worthington Hooker School with “no numbers” to justify the plan, he and East Rock Alderman Justin Elicker held a public hearing before the aldermanic Public Safety Committee on the topic. The point of the hearing was to hold city officials accountable and to increase transparency, he said.
In her campaign speech Tuesday, Holmes also cited a lack of transparency around the plans for the Clemente Leadership Academy, which is the first city school to be turned over to a private management firm as part of the mayor’s school reform effort. District officials kept the deal under wraps, barred the press from a meeting with the company and parents at the 538-student school, then tried to hold an emergency meeting to approve the contract without giving proper public notice according to state law. School officials aborted the illegal meeting and waited until a later date to approve the deal, but revealed the company had already begun doing work at the school.
“The way they went about that was in poor form,” Holmes said. She said there should have been a public meeting before a decision of such impact was made.
Smith agreed: He said while he supports the deal to turn around the school, the plans “should have been put out there sooner, in a better way.”
Smith, a 36-year-old lifelong East Rocker, works as a graphic designer and lives on Orange Street. He said in his six months as alderman he has worked hard to promote transparency. For example, during the sale of the old Lovell School, Smith headed a committee that vetted four proposals. While bids are usually kept under wraps, Smith distributed them to a neighborhood email list and compiled feedback. “There was never a more transparent land sale in the history of this city,” he said.
Holmes said Smith “has done a pretty good job” on local issues in the ward. She said she’s running because she thinks she could do a better job and better tackle broader issues facing the city.
Holmes said she’s “not sure” how she would have voted on the $475 million city budget approved last week, but she said her expertise in health care would be an asset to the broader discussion.
“I’d like to think I would have spoken up” about holes in the budget, she added, including an $8 million in projected labor concessions that haven’t been secured.
If elected, Holmes said, she would encourage Mayor John DeStefano to “bargain in good faith” with the city’s municipal unions, many of which are engaged in bitter contract negotiations. She said the mayor has raised the question of “whether or not unions are reasonable. In my experience, they usually are,” she said. She said she finds it “troubling” that the mayor says otherwise.
Her event Tuesday drew members of a slew of union affiliates.
James Carr (at right in photo with Sarah Eidelson), a member of the executive board of UNITE HERE Local 35 at Yale, said he worked on Holmes’ campaign last year, when she received the endorsement of the executive boards of both Locals 34 and 35. Carr said he owns property on Nash Street and lives in Morris Cove.
Carr cited Holmes’ experience in community organizing: When she worked as a secretary at the Yale Medical School, Holmes took a leave of absence to take a year-long “union internship” with Local 34. She worked on the community benefits agreement that was leveraged through the opening of Yale’s Smilow Cancer Center. After getting her masters in Public Health, Holmes worked on a not-for-profit health fund in Atlantic City. The fund was managed by a joint board of union and management in casinos; her job was to come up with health care plans that would save the companies money while maintaining good benefits for the workers.
Holmes’ experience leaves her well-positioned to “push the issues of the community” instead of being “bamboozled by the mayor,” opined Carr. He added that if she is elected, he hopes she might lobby Yale to hire more New Haven residents and get rid of the box on job applications that shows if applicants have a felony record.
Carr took a seat early at the event next to Sarah Eidelson, a rising Yale senior. Eidelson, who lives in the Dwight neighborhood, said she recently completed an unpaid internship with the Connecticut Center for a New Economy, the union-affiliated not-for-profit community organizing group.
Adam Patten, the lead organizer for Local 34, sipped on blueberry-white-tea punch with Yale graduate student Steve Poland, a fellow Ward 9 resident who knocked on doors for Holmes last year. Patten said he was there in a personal capacity, not on behalf of the union. He said from the standpoint of union ties, his decision to support Holmes wasn’t obvious — Smith has a brother and sister in Local 34, as well as three other siblings who are former members of that union.
Patten said he believes in Holmes’ organizing skills because he’s seen them at work. He met Holmes back when she came to New Haven in 2003 as a clerical worker at Yale; he was working with the clerical workers union. He said he likes how she thinks of broader issues beyond just tending to the needs of East Rock.
Attendees noshed on couscous, vegan cupcakes and carrot-ginger salad.
Holmes is the fifth candidate to emerge in recent weeks with support from Yale labor organizers. Tyisha Walker, a Yale union steward, is challenging Alderman Yusuf Shah in West River; Yale union representative Brian Wingate is taking on aldermanic President Carl Goldfield; Frank Douglass is gunning for Alderwoman Gina Calder’s Ward 2 seat. Similar labor-activist support has coalesced around two incumbents running for reelection, Claudette Robinson-Thorpe of Beaver Hills and Dolores Colon of the Hill. More candidacies are expected as Yale union activists emerge as the main organized group to mount candidates independent of the Democratic Party machine controlled by the mayor.
Patten was asked what labor organizers hope to achieve by getting a slate of Yale union-affiliated candidates onto the Board of Aldermen. One theory is that the unions would use their aldermanic allies to apply pressure to Yale during contract negotiations. Patten said contracts for Locals 34 and 35 at Yale don’t expire for 18 months, and that’s not on the aim of this year’s elections. (Aldermen serve two-year terms starting in January.) Rather, he said he hopes that Holmes, along with the other group of union-affiliated candidates running in other wards, can accomplish a broader goal: Figure out how to create economic development that lifts New Haveners out of poverty.
“It’s not about contracts, not about negotiations,” agreed Hugh Baran, Holmes’ campaign manager. He said while some may see the union-affiliated candidates as an attempt to influence municipal labor deals, there’s a bigger issue at stake: “Government should be doing more to help” working families. He said the community benefits agreement that came about from the cancer center is a good example of an action labor would like to see aldermen take.
Labor-affiliated candidates “share a lot of values,” Baran said, but he knows from experience that “nobody’s going to tell Jessica what to do.”
Holmes and her daughter, Evie.
Holmes described herself as a “pro-labor person.” She said over the last year she has gotten involved with CCNE’s “grassroots community agenda.” She also lobbied on behalf of the health care plan Sustinet, which was another priority of local labor activists.
“Ideologically, we line up,” Holmes said of CCNE and the Yale unions. “But I have my own ideas, and I am my own person. … I still think for myself.” She said she has worked with both Walker and Wingate through union organizing and on President Obama’s campaign, but she’s not coordinating campaigns with them. “I’d be happy to work with either of them, but I’m doing my own thing.”
“I think of East Rock first,” she said.
Holmes, who’s been in New Haven a total of five and a half years, said she’s made some headway since she announced her candidacy last year as a virtual unknown.
Thomas MacMillan File Photo
Smith grew up on Pearl Street with five brothers and three sisters; his family is well-known and well-liked around town. When he ran for office last year, he was already active around the neighborhood, and had helped organize a summer festival in the neighborhood. Since his election he has issued frequent reports on neighborhood news and snow removal tribulations.
Holmes said she some longtime East Rock voters were skeptical last year when she announced she was running for office and planned to stay in town. When she launched her first campaign, she had just arrived back in town after a three-year hiatus. She wasn’t visibly involved in neighborhood activities; few people had heard of her.
Since then, she has joined an outreach committee of the Elm City Market and helped organize a kid-friendly event with the Friends of East Rock Park. She said she has become a “full-time volunteer” for various causes.
“People asked if I was invested in the community,” Holmes said. “They’ve had some time to see that I am.”
Her partner, Poynter, helps train aspiring principals as the director of school leadership development at Achievement First, a charter school group. The couple is raising their 18-month-old daughter, Evie, in a house they rent at 31 Nash St. On Tuesday, Poynter declared them “lifers” in New Haven.
Smith plans to formally announce his candidacy on Saturday at the State Street Farm Market on State and Mechanic streets.
He said he plans to focus on his track record as a responsive alderman and his vision for building on his work at the board, including expanding the city’s recycling effort.
Asked about the labor connections surrounding his opponent’s campaign, Smith called himself “an independent voice. I’m there to represent my constituents in East Rock, and how we can best move the city forward.”
As for the emerging citywide slate of labor affiliates, Smith said: “The rolling out of candidates is great: it’s great for discussion, it’s great for debate. I’m sure it’s going to make for an interesting summer.”
the whole Lemonadegate is quite funny. Let's see how many candidates use the same lemonade container, I can't believe Melissa dedicated an entire sentence to describe where Jessica's iced tea was.Hilarious.
I have actually met Jessica, and she is a smart and likable person, I am glad she is running. Matt Smith is ok (I don't really know him) but at the BOA meetings he aligns with all the rest of the Mayor's people. I remember when he was running he repeated constantly he'll be his own person and make his own decisions, well, he either thinks Mayor Desteffano's ideas are all great, or he doesn't have a mind of his own.
I hope Jessica wins, the whole Union conspiracy theory that the Independent is trying to push so hard is meaningless to me. I don't count someone out just for being a union member or believing in collecting bargaining.