Candidates Make Retail Sales

Two mayoral candidates won ​“leaning” voters one at a time through retail politics — making sales pitches with different leadership visions to small clusters of New Haveners a mile away from each other.

Incumbent Mayor Justin Elicker made his successful pitch on Whalley Avenue en route to knocking on doors, while his challenger for the Democratic nomination, Democratic primary challenger Karen DuBois-Walton, made hers over a glass of fruity sparkling juice.

DuBois-Walton joined a ​“meet and greet” gathering Saturday morning at the home of Jamie Mills and Maureen Murphy on Cleveland Road in Westville. In a question and answer style group discussion DuBois-Walton made that the case that she is the best leader to open the city back up and pursue ​“equity”-based policies in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Hours later, Elicker opened the doors to his campaign headquarters at 506 Whalley Ave. and was joined by 25 supporters to canvass the surrounding area. Elicker asked voters for a second term to put into place some ideas that got put on hold while his administration focused on saving lives during the worst public-health crisis in a century.

“Do Something About The Violence”

On Hobart Street Elicker talked community policing with father-daughter James and Semaj Grier and Sharron Brown (pictured at the top of this story.)

“I don’t want to vote for you unless you’re going to do something about the violence,” said Brown.

The trio said some local police officers lack a commitment to getting to know the communities they police.

“We need neighborhood friendly cops who know the people in their community,” said James. The group asked that Elicker do something to improve community policing.

“Our department is working to be more community driven with officers that know the community and get trained in things like deescalation,” Elicker responded.

To address violence, Elicker told his listeners, he plans to increase youth engagement programming through a ​“summer reset plan” funded with federal pandemic-recovery aid.

Elicker also discussed his proposed plan to create a Community Crisis Response Team to send social workers and mental health workers instead of cops to some emergency calls for help.

James said he wants youth programming to keep kids off the streets and cops who know the people in neighborhood. He told Elicker that he often hangs on the corner of his street talking to friends and has been racially profiled many times. ​“I’m a working man who doesn’t get into stuff. I got two daughters, but an officer that just comes into this neighborhood could think I’m trouble,” he said.

At the end of the conversation the trio told Elicker they will support him this election. After Elicker left, they confirmed to a reporter that the discussion persuaded them to lean in his direction.

“The Mayor For This Moment”

At the Westville house gathering, DuBois-Walton met with a group of about 30 neighbors looking to learn more about her candidacy.

Host Murphy and Mills arranged the gathering to meet and engage their new neighbors. They moved into the home this past August.

The two said they already planned to vote for DuBois-Walton in the Democratic primary. They wanted to give their neighbors a chance to hear her out.

DuBois-Walton told the neighbors said the city needs the right leader to ​“reset” and reopen after the pandemic.

“I am the mayor for this moment,” she said.

“My fear is he [Elicker] doesn’t have the plan or the ability to open us back up in ways that will make us as a community smarter and a community stronger and a community that’s more equitable,” she said.

If elected, DuBois-Walton said, she would aim to fill the many department position vacancies that are ​“key positions that we need in our city.” The city has had an exodus of employees in recent months.

Her plan to reopen would include offering quality early child-care partners and opportunities for families to return to work, she said.

DuBois-Walton criticized Elicker for often leaving the Board of Alders to make the difficult choices that a leader should make.

Neighbor Ian Skoggard asked DuBois-Walton how she would go about getting money from Yale.

“Yale is the elephant in the room, so I got to ask,” he said.

Skoggard said he plans to base his voting decision on who can get Yale to commit the most amount of money to the city.

DuBois-Walton’s plan would be to ​“reset our relationship with Yale,” to be built on mutual understandings rather than transactions only, she said.

(Elicker has had a team negotiating with Yale and is expected soon to announce increased annual voluntary contributions.)

Neighbor Charles Collier made a suggestion to DuBois-Walton: to push the New Haven Police Department to recruit only in New Haven or have officers move to New Haven if hired. The goal would be to have officers that are apart of the communities they are policing.

The group discussion helped neighbor Holly Treat to make the decision that she will be voting for DuBois-Walton, she said. Collier and Skoggard said the talk left them leaning more towards DuBois-Walton than when they arrived.

The group also discussed topics like improving early childhood education programming, policing, and environmental justice.

Neighbor Bill Carbone told DuBois-Walton that he has grandchildren in Guilford and Cheshire who returned back to school in-person in September. He said he fears the city’s choices to continue remote learning through the fall will cause a significant achievement gap, particularly with youth in grades K‑8.

“If this was a year or so ago, what would you have done differently with the Board of Education so our kids would have the same opportunity and the same equity with children that live in other communities in our state?” he asked.

DuBois-Walton responded that she would have worked with the city leadership to offer kids an option to return back into school in-person five days a week in September.

“Good leadership would be able to build trust with the workforce and parents,” she said. ​“So much of it was about experienced leadership and being able to build consensus.”

DuBois-Walton also used the occasion to familiarize people with her biography. DuBois-Walton, 53, came to New Haven to study at Yale. She worked at the Yale Child Study Center in the early years of its joint program with city cops to help children exposed to violence address their trauma. She ran the city’s housing authority for 14 years, until taking a leave to run for mayor. Before that, DuBois-Walton served as mayoral chief of staff and city chief administrative officer, overseeing line departments like police, fire, parks, and public works. She serves on the state Board of Education. In the past four years she has organized community-wide forums about how to respond to the Trump administration; and, with her husband, she has organized Storytellers New Haven, events at which a diverse group of people active in the community have shared personal life stories. DuBois-Walton and five fellow Black women in September launched a political action committee called Ella’s Fund aimed at translating this summer’s grassroots uprisings for racial justice into lasting state and local political power.

DuBois-Walton is taking on more than a century of history in New Haven by challenging a one-term incumbent. The last one-term mayor, Thomas Tully, was elected in 1929; he wasn’t on the ballot in 1931. No one-term mayor has lost a reelection campaign since 1917: His name was Samuel Campner. But Campner (New Haven’s first and only Jewish mayor) was actually a half-term mayor: As president of the Board of Aldermen (as it was then named), he ascended to the mayoralty in 1917 when the previous mayor died, and he served out the term.

Return Engagement

Elicker’s canvass team used the Minivan Touch app to door-knock in the neighborhood after his campaign headquarter launch.

“We have so much more to do,” Elicker said while pitching his campaign Saturday at the headquarters reopening. ​“Imagine what we could have done if the pandemic didn’t happen.”

The turnout for Elicker supporters included Alders Kampton Singh and Steven Winter, LCI neighborhood specialist Ray Jackson, and several ward chairs.

Elicker’s first term came during the ​“most challenging time in government,” he said. The pandemic magnified local health and safety concerns, economic struggles, and neighborhood violence and crime.

Wooster Square resident Erin Sheehan, 24, supported Elicker in 2019 and helped raise money for him. She returned Saturday to urge voters to support his reelection.

“I’m proud of how he handled the pandemic while prioritizing transparency with the community,” she said.

Saturday’s checklist talking points for canvassers encouraged conversations with neighbors about volunteer opportunities to support Elicker’s campaign, signing a form of support, and getting vaccinated.

While watering her grass Saturday, Caroline Ricchard said she plans to vote for Elicker again. ​“I think he’s done a pretty good job considering the tough situation he walked into,” she said. ​“He couldn’t do all that he wanted.”

Ricchard said if she votes for Elicker she would like to see speed bumps on Norton Street to fix the high pace Edgewood traffic. ​“I’m tired of seeing collisions from my front porch” she said.

After Sheehan rang the doorbell for a two-family home on Norton Street, a resident name Fernando (pictured above) came from working in his backyard to talk with Sheehan. Fernando said he recently moved to New Haven from Bridgeport because of the violence there. He has been disappointed with the similar crime problems he has encountered in New Haven. ​“Whoever is going to run needs to do something about this,” he said.

Sheehan said she plans to vote for Justin because of his willingness to listen to the community about issues like violence.

Fernando picked up two voter registration forms for himself and his wife.

“If he can do that, he’s got me,” he said.