nothin Ghost Of ‘79 Haunts 2011 Primary | New Haven Independent

Ghost Of 79 Haunts 2011 Primary

2011 mayoral candidates Graves, DeStefano, Dawson, Kerekes.

(Analysis) An incumbent white liberal mayor faces multiple challenges in a primary, one from the black community, one from a white candidate. None of the challengers can get 50 percent of the vote. But they carve up the incumbent’s base — and knock him out of office.

That happened the last time more than two Democrats ran for mayor in New Haven — way back in 1979.

Most voters and politicians under 50 don’t remember that election. But its ghost — or at least its math — hovers over the spirited four-way Democratic mayoral primary taking place in New Haven Tuesday.

NH Register Photo

Logue.

Back in 1979 incumbent Mayor Frank Logue faced energetic challenges by deposed Police Chief Biagio DiLieto and Hank Parker, the state’s first African-American treasurer. Riding a wave of anger from the East Shore, DiLieto won the primary (the equivalent of a general election in one-party New Haven) and slipped into the mayor’s office with just 47 percent of the vote.

In this Tuesday’s primary, liberal 18-year incumbent Mayor John DeStefano is running hard to hold onto his seat against three challengers: two African-American candidates, attorney Clifton Graves and former Alderman Tony Dawson; and citizen budget watchdog Jeffrey Kerekes, who’s white and has picked up noticeable support on the East Shore, among other pockets of the city. The challengers seek to capitalize on public dissatisfaction over a record-setting pace of murders in town amid continuing problems in the police department; tough economic times; a general anti-incumbent mood in American politics; and a perceived lack of openness and democracy in city government and politics.

Also, Democratic aldermanic primaries are taking place in 16 of the city’s 30 wards. Many of those races, too, are hotly contested, and pit loyalists of City Hall against labor-backed or independent challengers. One of those races, too (in Dixwell’s Ward 22), involves four candidates.

Click here to find out where to vote Tuesday and who’s running, and to link to stories about the aldermanic campaigns.

By all accounts DeStefano holds many advantages against the divided field in the mayoral primary: An overpowering financial advantage fueled by donations” by city employees and contractors (he had a 17 – 2 fundraising lead over all his opponents combined in the most recent reporting period, with more than $425,000 gathered and counting); the only sizable paid campaign staff; far higher name recognition; considerable support for his new school reform drive; a network of campaign supporters built up over decades; and the ability to boast of being the only Connecticut mayor to grow his city’s grand list amid a recession in 2010.

So why’s he running so hard?

Much of the reason can be found in the anti-incumbent fervor sweeping the nation (some might say the world), combined with tough economic times and a rise in New Haven murders.

The brawl of 79 may offer clues, too.

Disco Era Doings

Virginia Blaisdell Photo

DiLieto (at left) on primary election night 1979.

Drawing too many parallels between different elections, especially two elections 32 years apart, is tricky business.

The immediate parallels to 1979 have to do with math. No challenger could get 50 percent of the vote against the incumbent mayor, Logue. But with three serious candidates in the race, no one needed 50 percent. DiLieto won with 47 percent.

DiLieto had run in 1977, as well, and lost. No third candidate emerged that year.

Not only did the third candidate — Parker — change the math. He also drew directly from the incumbent’s base. Logue had won office in 1975 with a coalition of white liberal and black reformers looking to oust the Democratic Party machine. When Parker, an African-American, entered the 1979 race, he siphoned votes from Logue. Parker obtained 4,582 votes, or 16 percent of the total. (Lots more New Haveners voted in those days.) Logue’s vote total dropped to 10,775, or 37 percent. DiLieto was able to win with 13,506 votes, or 47 percent.

Click here for the City Clerk’s office’s official breakdown of the 1979 results.

DiLieto’s base was the East Shore. He lived there. He drew support from Italian-Americans angry that Mayor Logue had ousted DiLieto as police chief after an investigation found that DiLieto had authorized illegal wiretaps of Black Panthers and white liberals and radicals. The East Shore is one of three areas of town (the others: East Rock and parts of Westville) where the white challenger in the 2011 primary, Kerekes, picked up early support. Like DiLieto, Kerekes aims to ride a wave of resentment or dissatisfaction; DiLieto capitalized on resentment against hippies, liberals, black activists; Kerekes looks to tap into anti-incumbent, anti-tax anger and dissatisfaction with the way government has been run.

Kerekes, like DiLieto in 1979, benefits from having other candidates in the 2011 race — specifically, black candidates. His voters and their voters don’t generally overlap; in fact, it’s believed that many of Kerekes’ votes would go to DeStefano otherwise; and the same with those of the black candidates, Graves and Dawson. Graves and Dawson early in the campaign said they recognized that it was fratricidal to have both of them on the ballot, because they would divide black votes. (That’s why Tony Dawson has attacked Graves rather than Kerekes.) But neither of the two could convince the other to drop out.

More Prominent Field

To State Sen. Martin Looney, the differences between 2011 and 1979 are more striking than the similarities.

The fundamental difference is that you had a much more high-profile race in 1979,” said Looney, who worked for Logue at the time. You had DiLieto, who had come so close the time before.” DiLieto had lost to Logue by just 243 votes in the 1977 primary, two years before, Looney noted. (Looney, who has an encyclopedic memory for local election results, rattled off that figure without pausing.) It was clear there was going to be a rematch. There was going to be a clash of the titans.” (Looney ran for mayor against DeStefano in 2001; he endorsed DeStefano this year.)

As a former police chief, DiLieto had citywide name recognition when he ran in 1979. He was popular. He had money. He had organized help from, among others, the Teamsters, cops, and the old patronage-driven Democratic Party machine looking to get back into power. A former Republican town chairman also arranged to have many of his party members register Democratic to vote for DiLieto in the primary. (That chairman was rewarded with a city job, which he held until going to jail on corruption charges.) DiLieto would go on to serve for 10 years and build a formidable patronage and fundraising base; he brought a young John DeStefano into city government and became his political mentor, eventually bequeathing to DeStefano fund-raising practices and ward-level relationships that continue to this day.

And the black challenger in 1979, Hank Parker, was also a prominent figure, not just in New Haven, but statewide. He was Connecticut’s treasurer, the state’s highest-ranking black official. For years he had been one of the city’s most prominent civil rights leaders. He had run for mayor before as well.

By contrast, two of this year’s challengers — Kerekes and Graves — have never run for office before. They have been active in civic groups and local issues, but they began with limited citywide name recognition. Dawson was an alderman for 16 years but has little organized support or money in the race. Graves does inherit an organized vote-pulling team connected to State Sen. Toni and architect Wendell Harp.

Undertickets & Moot Hands

As in 1979 and 1980, New Haven and America face tough economic times and anti-incumbency stirrings from the grassroots to national levels. The challengers this year are banking on the degree of those factors looming even larger in 2011.

The engine for change” votes might come as much from the aldermanic races as from the mayoral races. Yale’s pink-collar and blue-collar Local 34 and 35 are backing a slate of candidates in about half of the city against City Hall and party establishment-backed candidates. The union message is: New Haven needs more democracy and more voices independent of the mayor on the Board of Aldermen, as well as a return to community policing. The other slate’s message: In tough economic times, the city needs to back the administration’s pro-jobs, pro-growth, school reform agenda.

While the unions have not backed a candidate for mayor, they are delivering an anti-City Hall message. A change” message.

The aldermanic races are going to be driving turnout. That’s the wild card in this deck,” observed Looney.

On the one hand, many voters drawn to the polls to support an anti-City Hall aldermanic candidate are believed to be likely to pull a mayoral lever for an anti-City Hall candidate, too.

On the other hand, aldermanic races so often tend to be about individual personalities, their connection to their neighbors, and ward-level issues.

Which leaves us where all political punditry and insider mathematics leave us: with one hand” and the other hand.” All of which becomes moot when the polls open Tuesday morning.

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