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Abdussabur: "I won't be looking to endorse anyone. I will not be looking to take on any position in City Hall."
Shafiq Abdussabur announced on Friday morning that he is no longer running for mayor.
The retired police sergeant, local business owner, and former alder is ending his campaign after falling short of the required number of validated signatures to make it onto the Democratic primary ballot.
Though disqualified from the primary, Abdussabur had the option of running in the Nov. 7 general election as an unaffiliated candidate for mayor. On Friday, he announced that he is choosing not to.
His announcement comes a few days before the Sept. 12 Democratic primary, where two-term incumbent Mayor Justin Elicker and former legal aid lawyer and federal prosecutor Liam Brennan will vie to become the party’s nominee. The Nov. 7 general election ballot will see Elicker on the Working Families Party line, Tom Goldenberg on the Republican and Independent Party lines, and either Elicker or Brennan on the Democratic Party line. Wendy Hamilton and Mayce Torres have also filed to run in November as unaffiliated candidates for mayor.
According to a campaign statement released on Friday by Abdussabur, “Despite his bipartisan commitment, he chose integrity over running as anything other than a Democratic candidate. And after heartfelt discussions with his team and supporters, he has made the difficult decision to conclude his campaign.”
Over the phone, Abdussabur elaborated, “This is not me going away. This is just me being respectful of people’s resources, both financially and their time.”
While Abdussabur’s campaign staff say they submitted 2,700 signatures to petition onto the primary ballot, the New Haven Registrar of Voters’ office found that only 1,406 of the signatures submitted on behalf of Abdussabur were properly submitted and belonged to registered New Haven Democrats.
Abdussabur contested this result by filing a lawsuit — which was ultimately dismissed by a state judge. He did not appeal this decision, but maintained that some signatures were illegitimately disqualified and that he should have made it onto the ballot.
Abdussabur ran on a public safety-centered platform. He proposed a host of policing-related policies, such as recruiting retired cops for walking beats, expanding collaborations between police and the community, and ensuring that those in police detention have access to showers, toiletries, and a full-time nurse.
Over the course of his campaign, he pressed Mayor Elicker to provide an in-person option for attending Board of Education meetings and urged the mayor to reverse a reorganization of the former Parks, Recreation, and Trees department.
He embraced both left and right-leaning policies — advocating for lenient drug enforcement policies and a Housing-First approach to homelessness intervention, while also criticizing Elicker’s decision to remove a statue of Christopher Columbus in 2020 and advocating for “prioritizing taking care of our own community” in the face of a potential influx of immigrants.
In the coming months, Abdussabur said, he’s planning to reflect on the last eight months of campaigning while spending time with family. “My grandson’s starting to walk,” he said with pride.
“I won’t be looking to endorse anyone,” he said. “I will not be looking to take on any position in City Hall.”
Rather, he said he will be “listening to community leaders to find out how I can best be able to serve the New Haven community.”
Thank you for being a candidate. One has to appreciate everyone who puts in the time and effort to try to run for public office in a democracy.
On the other hand, it has also become very clear that Abdussabur's team has been poorly prepared and took too many short cuts when they should have been playing by the rules.
The petition debacle is the latest example: Other news pages have published full pictures (incl personal information) of the petitions and it was obvious that the team simply failed to do their job properly. For instance, there were rows after rows of signatures who had their phone number in the address field. The registrars office did the right thing by applying due diligence! No point in crying foul!