Clerk Challenger Sees Past Prison Time A Plus

A city/town clerk rematch is set to take place on Tuesday — as a veteran Democratic incumbent faces off against a Republican candidate hoping to represent his New Haven home following a recent stint in federal prison for his role in a West Texas wire fraud conspiracy.

Voters will have the chance on Nov. 7 to choose between five-term incumbent City Clerk Michael Smart and Anthony Acri, who said his time in jail helped spark his interest in running for public office — and even helped prepare him to process public documents, alderpersons’ legislation, and absentee ballots.

Those are the primary responsibilities of the city clerk, who oversees the office which files and maintains key papers like claims and suits against the city; land records like mortgages, quit claims, and liens; documents related to all notaries and justices of the peace; licenses like liquor permits and trade name certificates; and alderperson legislation and city ordinances, among other documents. The clerk also prepares and distributes absentee ballots. 

Smart, a lifelong New Havener who has worked as town clerk for the past decade and previously served as the alder for Wooster Square’s Ward 8, is hoping for another two years in the public facing job to continue ​“making sure our office is transparent” and that the public ​“understands the process of absentee” ballots, he said during a recent interview.

He said that the pandemic-era surge in absentee ballot voting taught him just how important it is for his office to be accessible and to clearly explain to voters how the absentee ballot process works. A goal of his for next term is making sure there’s ​“a huge turnout” of absentee ballots for the 2024 election. He said his office has worked hard to make the process easier for New Haveners, by staying open extra hours on the Saturday before the election and stationing four ballot dropboxes outside of 200 Orange St. 

“I like the people. I like dealing with the land records. I love dealing with alders,” and handling everything from meeting minutes to public notices, he said. He praised the team of colleagues that help him run the ​“library” of city documents, and said he hopes to soon fill his office’s three vacancies to get back to a fully staffed force of seven. 

In a separate interview with the Independent, Anthony Acri spoke not just about his candidacy for a government job, but also about his role in a broader scheme to defraud the U.S. government.

“I’ve been waiting three years for someone to ask me about that,” Acri said when asked about his criminal record. The matter didn’t come up when Acri first ran for New Haven city clerk in 2021, nor when he ran for state representative against Alphonse Paolillo in 2022. 

Acri declined to comment on the details of the case, though he said he did spend three years in a federal camp in Maryland for conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Acri was originally sentenced to five years back in 2016 after he pleaded guilty on that charge. Prosecutors reportedly said that Acri played a role in bribing a contracted project manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to help his company, Kikiktagruk Inupiat Corporation Development LLC, win construction projects at a West Texas military base. Read about that here.

Acri was based in Washington D.C. at the time. But he grew up on Russell Street in New Haven. He moved back to New Haven around the time allegations against him started pouring in, and he opened an auto repair shop in Branford, which he’s still running today. He now lives in Morris Cove, ​“where the taxes are too high.”

This is Acri’s third run for public office. During his time in New Haven, his only other political involvement was serving on the pension board. 

He said his main motive behind running for city clerk is to ​“bring some balance to New Haven” as a Republican candidate. ​“New Haven has forever been controlled by one party, and I’m just trying to bring a different point of view.”

As a degreed accountant with a master in business management, he said ​“running corporations from A to Z is what I’ve done my whole life.” In addition to the standard administrative work that comes with the job, he wants to use his fiscal conservatism to streamline operations within the office to cut costs — but that he ​“won’t know how to do that until I get in there.”

Before going to prison, he said, ​“I was always dealing with people in business — I dealt a lot with major corporations, CEOs, congressmen.” While locked up, ​“I got a better appreciation of people who were working hard in the streets to support their families.”

“It changed my perspective on what life is really about,” he said. ​“It’s not about big business and major networks and building big contracts. It’s really about everyday life.”

Hence his run for city clerk, in particular: ​“There’s mortgages, there’s deeds to properties, there’s all this paperwork, the majority of which probably stems from things that are happening to people who have lower income housing, families who have some stress financially, who are facing possible foreclosures.”

However, he said that as a Republican candidate, he hopes getting into public office will not just mean dealing with those daily nitty gritty issues, but will give him a chance to share his political standpoint with those in more influential legislative positions. ​“It’s not just keeping records,” he said. ​“You’re at alder meetings. And you can give input there.”

The input he wants to give: That the ​“city is in a downward trend.” Crime is out of hand; parental input is undervalued in the educational sphere; more cops and social workers are needed to jointly combat homelessness and mental health crises; and safe injection sites don’t belong in New Haven, he said. 

“I’ve never been involved, but I’m getting involved,” Acri concluded. ​“Because we need change.”