Thomas Breen photo
Alder Cupo: "To know that there is a LGBTQ+-friendly affordable housing set of units [coming to] our city makes me believe that it is possible to win more."
Surrounded by elected officials and fellow Yale union organizers, Wooster Square Alder Ellen Cupo kicked off her reelection campaign by focusing on affordable housing initiatives the city has gained in the past few years — and the strip club her neighborhood pushed away.
Cupo joined roughly three dozen campaign supporters Saturday afternoon at Jocelyn Square’s Next Door pizza restaurant to formally announce her run for a third term as Ward 8 alder.
A second-generation Local 34 labor organizer and native New Havener who was first elected in 2019 — on the very same day she gave birth to her son Hunter — Cupo works as a senior administrative assistant in Yale’s Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department.
At Saturday's reelection campaign kickoff at Next Door.
Pizza, with a side of politics.
Cupo rallied her supporters with a rundown of her accomplishments on the board to date, and with words of enthusiastic praise from Mayor Justin Elicker, Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers, and City Clerk (and former Ward 8 Alder) Michael Smart.
The event took place at the same restaurant where Cupo announced her first run for office back in July 2019, albeit one pandemic, two children, and two terms worth of aldering later.
“A lot’s changed in four years,” she said with a smile.
Smart, Walker-Myers, and Elicker heaped praise on the incumbent Democratic alder for her balancing of Ward 8‑specific concerns around, for example, traffic calming on Chapel Street with citywide priorities around boosting access to affordable housing and good-paying jobs.
City Clerk Smart, Alder Cupo, and Alder Prez Walker-Myers.
“She’s a wonderful person. She’s a listener. Her heart’s in the right place. She understands the diversity of Ward 8,” Smart said. As the chair of the Legislation Committee, “she’s in a good place to be a voice for the entire city” and she’s adept at “building a consensus” with other alders and elected officials.
Walker-Myers lauded Cupo for “her commitment to her neighborhood [and] and her commitment to the city.”
“She’s able to get on board with other things that other neighbors care about” even outside of Ward 8, Walker-Myers said, especially around affordable housing and jobs. “Any issue you have in this city, the bottom line is, it goes back to jobs and wealth. Until we really figure out this poverty that’s going on here, we’re going to continue to be fighting for jobs,” she added.
Mayor Elicker (right): "We protect members of our team when they are attacked from the sidelines.."
“There’s not a strip club in Ward 8 because of Ellen’s advocacy,” the mayor said in reference to a proposal by the former owner of Scores and Key Club to build a strip club called Planet Venus in a vacant warehouse at 203 Wallace St. Cupo and Jocelyn Square neighbors organized in opposition to the prospective club’s zoning relief application, and the plan ultimately fell apart. Elicker also praised Cupo for joining him and citywide environmentalists in opposing the expansion of an Annex waste transfer station that falls within the far eastern bounds of Ward 8.
Cupo campaign supporters: Yale grad students, Local 33 members, and St. John Street residents Clare Cody and Avnika Bali ...
... Newhallville/Prospect Hill/Dixwell Alder Troy Streater ...
... and Next Door restaurant owner Doug Coffin.
The mayor said that a whole bunch of traffic calming measures, including raised speed tables, are coming to a Wooster Square stretch of Chapel Street thanks in part to Cupo’s advocacy. A Bus Rapid Transit network on Grand Avenue and a Shoreline East bicycle trail connecting downtown and the East Shore are also in the works.
During her time as a member and then the chair of the Legislation Committee, the Board of Alders has also passed an inclusionary zoning ordinance mandating that new residential developments set aside a certain percentage of apartments at below-market rents, and approved a rezoning plan and development agreement that will see the vacant former Strong School on Grand Avenue converted into 50-plus affordable, LGBTQ+-friendly apartments.
“We are a team,” Elicker said about Cupo’s collaborative approach to legislative. And, in perhaps an allusion to the three Democratic challengers running to unseat him in his bid for a third term as mayor, he continued, “When someone comes from the outside and says, ‘I can do things better,’ we have to come together as a team and show that we have done the work, we’re ready to continue to do the work, and we protect members of our team when they are attacked from the sidelines.”
During her time to address the crowd, Cupo also pointed to the strip club pushback and the Strong School redevelopment deal as highlights of her two terms as an alder so far.
“There was a threat to the quality of life in this neighborhood,” she said about the strip club plan and, thanks to community meetings and a letter-writing campaign and a rally she helped organize, the applicant ultimately withdrew.
As for the Strong School deal, she said, “To know that there is a LGBTQ+-friendly affordable housing set of units [coming to] our city makes me believe that it is possible to win more.”
She spoke more personally about growing up on Downing Street in Fair Haven, attending Benjamin Jepson and Wilbur Cross and ECA, trying to keep up with rapidly rising rents in her ward, and spending so much of her life surrounded by and working with Yale union organizers.
“In 1996,” she recalled, “I was 8 years old, and I found a $10 bill on the playground of my Benjamin Jepson Quinnipiac Avenue school. Like any good 8 year old, I did exactly what you think.”
“You pocketed it!” someone in the crowd shouted with a smile.
Cupo shook her head. “I donated it to the Local 34 strike fund, because I knew that people in New Haven were fighting. And I am part of a long legacy of fighters.”
I'm told New Haven is full of really smart people.
Many of them prove how smart they are by leaving comments on NHI.
We've been trying to "figure out this poverty thing" for decades, at least since Richard Lee attempted to build a "slum-free" city.
Why can't we figure it out?
Why does poverty persist in one of the smartest cities in the world?