Paul Bass Photo
Beaver Hills. West Hills. The Village. Beverly Hills. Amity.
To Angela Russell, those neighborhoods are all part of “Westville” — in spirit, but not enough in reality.
Russell hopes to work on the reality part by becoming the new alderwoman representing creatively gerrymandered Ward 27, a swath of New Haven’s west side that resembles a thigh-high, snub-toed stiletto boot.
The 40-year-old home-day care operator announced her candidacy at the Edgewood Park gazebo Sunday.
Unlike several other recently declared candidates, Russell is running for an open seat, as of now. Incumbent Ward 27 Alderman Tom Lehtonen announced Monday he will not seek reelection.
Should an expected opponent surface, a Democratic Party primary would take place Sept. 13.
A couple of dozen of Russell’s friends, relatives and neighbors gathered Sunday at the gazebo for what felt like a church or family party — which was the point of the married mother of five’s announcement message.
She told the gathering about growing up in the Newhallville neighborhood.
“There was so much love,” she recalled. “We went to school together. We went to church together. Everybody looked out for one another. My parents were very hands-on people.”
Russell and her husband Keith, a corrections officer, have owned a home on Osborne Avenue off Whalley since 2000. That’s a pocket of the Beaver Hills neighborhood, in the easternmost part of Ward 27, behind the Whalley cemeteries, cut off from the commercial Westville Village center. The ward swings along Blake Street toward a sliver of the West Hills area beneath West Rock, and up Whalley and Fountain toward the Beverly Hills neighborhood and the Amity commercial strip to the Woodbridge town line.
Some of those areas, like Westville Village, are enjoying a “renaissance,” Russell noted. Some others, like Blake Street, are on hard times. And even though people like her call the entire concatenation of mini-neighborhoods “Westville,” the people in the different pockets can seem to live worlds apart.
“I’ve come to know some great and wonderful neighbors. But something is missing — a true family feeling,” Russell said.
“There are wonderful things that are happening in this ward. But there is also a recession. A lot of families are struggling. They don’t where to turn” for help. Her mission, if elected: Communicate often with people in all parts of Ward 27 and “revive what it used to be like as a family doing things together.”
Before Monday night’s meeting of the Board of Aldermen, Lehtonen told the Independent that he has decided not to run for reelection. He said he made the decision earlier this year and had been planning to tell his constituents. “This is the time to tell them.”
Lehtonen, a 61-year-old Sikorsky employee, said he will finish out the rest of his term, at which point he will have served over six years on the board. He was appointed to the board in 2005 after the previous alderman, Phil Voigt, passed away.
Lehtonen said he looks forward to spending more time with his family and is not yet endorsing a candidate.
Russell’s son Keith, 10, gives his inflatable Marvel Superheroes boxing glove a workout.
In addition to the children and relatives running around playing Sunday at Russell’s announcement …
Taneyah,3, and Tanirah Murphy, 4, tackle Scrabble Jr. at the announcement.
… and family friends’ children playing board games …
… the crowd included a familiar face from this already-busy campaign season: Hugh Baran (at right in photo). Baran works as an organizer for Local 35, the blue-collar Yale union. He has taken a leave of absence to manage a series of challenge campaigns against City Hall-aligned incumbent aldermen and quests for open seats.
So far, Baran said, he has signed on with Jeanette Morrison, a state employees union steward running in Dixwell’s Ward 22; former labor organizer Jessica Holmes in East Rock’s Ward 9; and Yale union veteran Frank Douglass, who plans a candidacy in Dwight’s Ward 2.
Competition appears to be flowering this spring on New Haven’s political scene. These candidacies are adding up to a labor-affiliated slate offering a concerted challenge to City Hall and the party establishment in the Sept. 13 primaries, combined with a slew of other related candidacies: Local 35 Executive Board member Brian Wingate in Beaver Hills’ Ward 29, Local 35 steward Tyisha Walker in West River’s Ward 23, and incumbent labor-affiliated alderwomen Dolores Colon in the Hill’s Ward 7 and Claudette Robinson-Thorpe in Beaver Hills’ Ward 28.
Like several of the other candidates on the informal slate, Russell stressed at her announcement that she’s her own candidate focused on her ward’s concerns, and she said she hadn’t formed a position yet on some of the major city issues. Asked how she would have voted on the new city budget — which organized labor protested for its emphasis on worker concessions — she replied: “That was a tough, tough call to make. There were so many sacrifices that needed to be made.”
Similarly, when asked if she supports Mayor John DeStefano’s reelection campaign or those of his Democratic challengers, such as Clifton Graves or Tony Dawson, Robinson replied: “I haven’t been focused on them yet. I’m focused on what Angela needs to do to become an alderman.” She did promise to “keep my eye” on the mayoral race, too.
Education is a major plank of her campaign, she said. She applauded the city’s school reform initiative. “There’s always room for improvement,” she continued. Her proposal: Draw in parents along with their children through the Promise program, and help them obtain their high school equivalency diplomas or slots in vo-tech schools. Russell, a 1988 Hillhouse graduate, spent three years running the Parents Leadership Training Institute before going into business for herself running the day care center at her home.
Neighbor Henry Lowendorf (pictured) said he came to support Russell Sunday in part because of her affiliation with the labor-organized slate, in part to see “more independence” from City Hall and labor-friendly votes on the Board of Aldermen, in part to see more advocacy for the ward, and in part to get more support for Peace Commission initiatives that come up for aldermanic votes. He said he disagrees with incumbent Lehtonen’s votes against nonbinding resolutions against the Iraq and Afghan wars.
Russell was asked if she would vote in favor of such resolutions if elected.
She said she hasn’t looked into that question enough yet.
“I will make sure I will hear everybody’s issue,” she said. If she ends up disagreeing on a matter with constituents like Lowendorf, she said, she will “make sure their voices are heard” anyway.
Thomas MacMillan contributed reporting.
Hm! I like her idea about the Promise - the City's education system definitely needs to do more to address the needs of parents who were left behind by the school system themselves. And the Board of Aldermen definitely needs to assert itself more in school reform. I'll be interested to hear more of her ideas about all of this.