Allan Appel photo
Elijah Ratcliffe (right), with Goldenberg: “I just can’t rock with the Democrats or the Republicans.”
Mayoral challenger Tom Goldenberg secured a second spot on November’s general election ballot, after the Republican nominee won the unanimous backing of a local Independent Party caucus.
That was the scene on Thursday night at La Molienda, the eatery on Grand Avenue near Clinton, where the Independent Party — a libertarian-leaning minor statewide party that backed Ralph Nader for president in 2008 — convened its formal caucus and only New Haven event, according to party chair Mike Telesca.
Goldenberg, an ex-McKinsey consultant and registered Democrat, had already qualified for the Nov. 7 general election ballot after getting endorsed by the local Republican Party. He had tried to participate in September’s Democratic primary, but failed to petition his way onto the ballot.
Thursday’s endorsement means that Goldenberg’s name will appear twice on the general election ballot, on both the Republican and Independent Party lines.
Mayor Justin Elicker and former legal aid lawyer Liam Brennan, meanwhile, are set to square off on the Sept. 12 Democratic primary ballot for mayor. Whoever wins that primary will advance to the November general to run against Goldenberg and Shafiq Abdussabur, who has qualified to run as an unaffiliated candidate for mayor after also failing to make it into the Democratic primary ballot.
The 16 qualified Independent Party voters who gave Goldenberg their official endorsement Thursday expressed sentiments that ranged from libertarian to exhausted with mean-spirited factionalism. A plague on both your squabbling parties – Dems and Republicans, attendees intimated. We need people capable of listening to both sides, and of being not ideologues, but problem solvers.
The vote, over Peruvian-style chicken wings and Modelo beer, was unanimous and done by voice because the other mayoral candidate Telesca expected to attend, Abdussabur, did not appear.
Willie Holmes registers for the caucus vote.
“I’m not happy with the direction of either party,” said Willie Holmes, a Korean war vet, as he signed in to vote, and his sentiments were typical. “So I’m here to see what’s on the other side of the fence.”
After the vote Goldenberg expressed his thanks and said, “My candidacy is for the missing center of the electorate. I’m a Democrat but I accepted the Republican nomination. I want to represent the whole city and the Independent Party is that. This [endorsement] solidifies a centrist approach. With the polarization out there, lots don’t feel represented by either party. I want to represent them.”
That was certainly what Westvillian David Ortoleva wanted to hear, A Democrat who became a Republican in recent years, he said he had liked Trump’s policies but was so turned off by the narcissism and mean-spiritness of the man that two years into the 45th president’s term, he became an Independent.
But Biden didn’t please either. “I’m 74,” Ortoleva said, as he agreed to place a Goldenberg sign on his lawn, “and I never sat out a presidential election.”
Yet he did in 2020.
“I’m exhausted by both [Democratic and Republican] parties. They’re bringing the country down with anger and pushiness. We need a politician who listens to both sides of the issues.”
Elijah Ratcliffe is another Independent voter who said, “I just can’t rock with the Democrats or the Republicans.”
He grew up in New Haven, originally at the old Farnam Courts, then moved on Newhallville, and Westville, then to Brooklyn, New York, and finally to Georgia to be near his wife’s family.
But now he’s back in New Haven for the last 13 years.
Throughout all that he maintained what he described as libertarian values and has been an Independent Party voter since he first voted for Ralph Nader for president. He described his values as leaning conservative, with some skepticism about affirmative action, and a firm conviction that “every law-abiding American citizen should be able to do what they want, as long as they don’t bother me and my children.”
Candidate with Waterbury-based state Independent Party chair Mike Telesca.
As for specific issues in town that most bother him that he hopes officials like a hoped-for Mayor Goldenberg will deal with, what’s tops on his list?
“The open drug abuse on Ferry Street,” he responded. “Children have to walk over needles. I shouldn’t be afraid to wear sandals.”
Mike Telesca, the Waterbury-based head of the state Independent Party, was pleased with the evening’s proceedings. “Ballot access is what we care most about. And good government. The art of governance is the art of compromise,” he said.
He and Goldenberg’s senior advisor, Jason Bartlett, estimated the city has between 450 and 500 registered Independent Party members. You had to be registered as an Independent for three months in order to participate in Thursday night’s caucus vote.
Bartlett recalled that he was instrumental in establishing an Independent Party base in New Haven back in 2021, he said, when he encouraged Mayce Torres to run for mayor. She received 166 votes, or one percent of the vote cast, which, by the rules, was enough to legitimize the party and earn it a place on the ballot.
The mayoral race, however, is the only position for which the Independent Party will be running a candidate this year in New Haven, said Telesca.
After Goldenberg and the voters relaxed into their dinners, Bartlett was at pains to point out what in his view is an additional significance to the evening’s proceedings:
“Tom is now the Independent Party candidate. Shafiq now has to stop describing himself as an ‘independent’ candidate. He is an unaffiliated, petitioning candidate. Not an independent candidate. Shafiq should not be able to use the word, either with a capital or lower-case ‘i.’ My friends in the press should know the difference.”
Are NH voters able to sift through shifting sands of party allegiance and blurry platforms to make a decision that is best for us all in New Haven? I hope so but I am very concerned that people are not informed enough about who's who. How about a point by point comparison of the major candidates ??? Present the facts without the bias , and the NHI will be doing a great service to New Haven