Laura Glesby Photos
Mayor Justin Elicker, Tom Goldenberg, and Wendy Hamilton on Tuesday.
What do you call a registered Democrat running for office on the Independent and Republican lines?
Mayoral candidates offered different takes on that question — and whether the question even matters — at the final debate before November’s general election.
Two-term incumbent Mayor Justin Elicker and challengers Tom Goldenberg and Wendy Hamilton convened at the Shubert Theater on Tuesday night to answer questions from the Independent’s Tom Breen, La Voz Hispana’s Norma Rodriguez-Reyes, and Inner City News and WNHH’s Babz Rawls-Ivy.
The debate was organized by the Democracy Fund, New Haven’s local public financing program aimed at limiting campaign donors’ influence on local government and boosting the impact of small donations from city residents.
The event was the last scheduled mayoral debate before election day on Nov. 7 — and the first debate this election season to feature candidates running on a total of four different party lines, as well as one unaffiliated candidate.
Elicker is running for a third term as mayor on the Democratic and Working Families Party lines. He was formerly an alder and the head of the New Haven Land Trust (an environmental nonprofit now known as Gather New Haven).
Hamilton is an unaffiliated candidate with a background as an activist and philanthropist who petitioned her way onto the Nov. 7 ballot.
Former McKinsey consultant Goldenberg, meanwhile, is a registered Democrat who initially sought to run in the Democratic primary in September, yet did not collect enough qualifying signatures to make it onto the primary ballot; he’s instead running on the Republican and Independent Party lines.
As Tuesday’s debate made clear, Goldenberg would describe himself as a Democratic candidate running with endorsements from other parties.
But to Elicker, Goldenberg is simply the Republican candidate — a designation that matters, according to the mayor.
"Tom, You Took The R"
Some of the debate's attendees at the Shubert.
One concrete and relatively technical debate question morphed into a broader discussion about what it means for a candidate to associate with the Republican Party in an overwhelmingly Democratic city during a highly polarized moment in American history. Every elected office in New Haven is held by a Democrat. At the time of the September Democratic primary, New Haven had 33,377 registered Democrats, 15,362 unaffiliated voters, 2,657 registered Republicans, and 503 voters registered to minor third parties, such as Independent, Green, Libertarian, and Working Families.
The candidates on Tuesday night were asked whether they each would support a ballot measure in this November’s election that, if passed, would enact a set of proposed revisions to the city’s charter. The potential changes to city government hinging on this ballot measure include extending term lengths for mayor, alder, and city clerk from two years to four years each.
“I only need two years,” Hamilton responded, indicating that she doesn’t support the proposed charter changes. “In four years, we got three tax increases.”
Goldenberg also stated that he won’t be voting for the charter revisions. Even though he said he does support four-year terms for mayor, he disagrees that members of the Board of Alders should have longer terms.
“We’ve had four special elections [for alder seats] in the last year,” he said. He also cited the “amount of alders who do not regularly attend required meetings” as a justification for frequent elections.
Elicker, meanwhile, argued that spreading out elections by way of longer terms would spur more voter engagement and give leaders more time to focus on making political change. “We need to spend less time raising money and being negative about campaigning and more time focused on governing,” he said.
Referencing Goldenberg’s answer, Elicker said, “Republicans in New Haven are all in for ‘No.’ It’s not surprising, because Republicans don’t like governance.”
Goldenberg dismissed this notion. “Mayor Elicker is going to continue to call me a Republican and dismiss my ideas because of some party affiliation,” he said. (At this, Hamilton let out a giggle.)
“I think that we are all smart enough to judge ideas by the content rather than the label,” Goldenberg continued. “This is time to unify the city.”
“Tom, you took the R. You took the R,” Elicker said. “You could have chosen a pathway as an Independent, but you chose to associate yourself with a party that is anti-immigrant, that is anti-climate, that is anti-choice, that is promoting conspiracy theories, that attacked our nation on Jan. 6. You chose the Republican association and you need to own it.”
A sample Ward 1 ballot for the Nov. 7 general election.
Goldenberg later called Elicker’s characterization of him as a Republican “misleading.” He emphasized that he’s a registered Democrat, even though his name will appear on the November ballot on the Republican and Independent Party lines as their endorsed candidate.
The topic resurfaced later in the debate, after a question about how to increase voter turnout in New Haven, given that only 23 percent of eligible Democratic voters participated in September’s primary.
Goldenberg argued that “a lot of people feel left out of party politics. … We have a large political machine in New Haven.”
He added, “That’s why, when the Republican Party reached out to me saying, would you accept our endorsement, I said, ‘This is a space I want to be in.’ ” (On Wednesday morning, he clarified that he was referring to “the center” in this moment.) He said he told the Republican and Independent Party leaders upfront that he’s “pro-LGBTQ, pro-choice, pro-immigrant.”
Elicker responded with a swipe at the fact that Goldenberg had not qualified to get onto the primary ballot. “So if you don’t get enough signatures to get on the ballot, all of a sudden, you call the system ‘rigged.’ Sounds familiar,” Elicker said, alluding to former president Donald Trump’s denial of the 2020 election results.
Democracy Fund Debated At Democracy Fund Debate
Moderators Tom Breen, Norma Rodriguez-Reyes, and Babz Rawls-Ivy.
Only one of the candidates onstage on Tuesday night — the incumbent mayor — was actually a participant in the Democracy Fund’s clean financing program.
When each candidate was asked to defend their financing methods, Hamilton replied, “I didn’t want to spend $50,000 on a primary. The machine doesn’t want people like me.”
“I’m a big believer in clean government,” said Elicker. He touted the fact that his campaign has received far more New Haven-based donors than Goldenberg’s. “We need to be driven by New Haven residents.”
Goldenberg took the opportunity to call out some of Elicker’s donors, who include developers Yves Joseph, Carter Winstanley, Randy Salvatore, and Lynn Fusco, calling them “special interest donors.”
He noted that dozens of city employees donated to the Elicker campaign as well. “If I were a city employee, I would feel intimidated to give” to the mayor’s campaign, he said.
Elicker rejected these insinuations. “It is illegal to ask city employees for funding,” he said, insisting that he has never done that. He argued that Goldenberg was simply “cherry picking” donors to his campaign without reflecting the array of residents who have contributed.
Through the Democracy Fund program, Elicker has received public matching funds in exchange for limiting campaign donations to a maximum of $445 per person, a system designed to limit the extent to which campaign donors can later influence local government. (The Democracy Fund also requires participating candidates to take part in a debate like Tuesday’s.)
Goldenberg has opted not to participate in the Democracy Fund, and has contributed $55,000 of his own money to his campaign in addition to receiving individual donations of up to $1,000. Hamilton is running an entirely self-funded campaign with a total budget of under $1,000.
The full debate.
Party lines? Of any importance? In New Haven? Really? The only thing that matters is making enough believable empty promises to enough people who vote for you. Wait a couple of years. Give a few excuses, find a few distractions. Then repeat process. That's all that matters. And if a candidate focuses on anything else, even principles, that candidate will get run over by the candidates that do what's described above. Then be forgotten before you know it.