Candidates Dolores Colon and Doris Doward at Trowbridge Square Park rally.
Allan Appel Photo
Jason Bartlett addresses challenge candidates at the Hill Museum.
(Updated Feb. 29) In a park and then in a pencil museum, separate groups of politicos gathered in the Hill on the same day to rally voters to show up for one of the most obscure, historically least competitive elected positions in town: Democratic Party ward co-chair.
The gatherings took place Saturday. Competing slates of candidates for the positions organized the rallies in advance of March 5 primaries for party co-chair seats in eight different wards, four of them in the Hill.
In most years, elections for those positions go unchallenged. Each of the city’s 30 wards has two Democratic (and two Republican) co-chairs who help get out the vote and officially nominate candidates for city, state, and federal positions at the party conventions.
A challenge slate called New Haven Agenda organized this year to field a competitive race in order to offer an alternative to the UNITE HERE/Yale-union backed majority that dominates the party and the Board of Alders. They’re challenging the majority’s positions on issues like support of Tweed New Haven Airport’s expansion.
At 9:30 a.m. Saturday in Trowbridge Square Park, a slate of UNITE HERE-backed co-chair candidates, many of them incumbents, showed up along with Mayor Justin Elicker and elected state officials
They were all aided by seven kinds of donuts and hot coffee steaming in the frigid morning air. The mission: Inspire neighboring voters who had never heard of the position candidates were running for.
New Haven Agenda’s slate “made their argument in September and November” declared Democratic Town Committee Chair Vincent Mauro, Jr. “questioning [party-backed alders], and all those alders won.” He was referring to the fact that the two organizers of the New Haven Agenda slate were active in unsuccessful November elections: Tom Goldenberg, as the Republican and Independent Party mayoral candidate, and Jason Bartlett as an operative backing Goldenberg and other challengers.
But, look, Mauro added: “We got coffee and donuts, and that means we are taking it seriously.”
Meanwhile on the other side of the Hill in Krikko Obbott’s soaring Hill Museum on West Street, the competing New Haven Agenda slate convened for a meet-and-greet.
Ward 4 challenger Joe Fekieta with his anti-litter sculpture.
In the center of the museum’s cathedral-like entryway, Ward 4 co-chair candidate Joe Fekieta, an artist, displayed a sculpture of tall artificial flowers emerging from litter. It was the object of much discussion among the 20 or so people gathered.
Fekieta is a friend of Obbot and a resident of Adeline Street. The sculpture is in the museum only coincident with the co-chair campaign.
However, litter, Fekieta added, is a major issue for him. The sculpture, titled “Renewal One Million A.D.,” features artificial flowers emerging from genuine chip bags, crushed bleach bottles, wrappers, and even a few condoms, that Fekieta gathered all from near his house.
“It was easy,” he said.
He’s inspired to run, he said, to help address that pervasive, demoralizing litter issue, among many other quality of life concerns like illegal car racing down many of the streets of the Hill.
The last time an organized newcomer slate sought co-chair seats was in 2012, when UNITE HERE-backed candidates won control of the party (after winning control of the Board of Alders) with a collective agenda of more good paying-jobs for New Haveners, community policing, affordable housing, and pressure on Yale to contribute more to the city.
The 2024 New Haven Agenda slate lacks UNITE HERE’s level of organization or resources, with a crew of candidates who are largely new to organized politics. That’s the point of the effort, said Goldenberg, the group’s treasurer, and chair Bartlett: To bring in new blood and new ideas to local politics and government.
Back at Trowbridge Square Park, where the clip-board carrying candidates and their volunteers were about to set off knocking on doors, Mayor Elicker attributed the opposition slate’s challenges to bitterness over November losses: “We overwhelmingly crushed their opposition, not because they are weak, but because we are strong, with New Haven values.”
Goldenberg countered that his group is motivated by principles like broadening democratic participation and involving people not tied to “special interests.” “Even if they don’t win, they bring forth their experiences of their lives in the city,” he said.
The March 5 primaries are set for Wards 3, 4, and 6 in the Hill; 7 in Downtown; 12 in Quinnipiac Meadows/Bishop Woods; 18 in Morris Cove; 28 in Beaver Hills; and 30 in West Rock/West Hills. Here are the candidates in those eight races (with UNITE HERE-backed candidates listed first, then New Haven Agenda candidates): (UPDATE: The Ward 30 candidates originally backed by UNITE HERE have disassociated themselves from the slate and say they are running an independent campaign.)
Ward 4 candidates Jennifer Chonna and Howard Boyd address the Trowbridge crowd.
• Ward 3: Angel Hubbard and Clarence Cummings vs. Inez Alvarez and Martha Dilone.
• Ward 4: Jennifer Chona and Howard Boyd vs. Joseph Fekieta and Earl Ali-Randall.
• Ward 6: Dolores Colon and Doris Doward vs. Jason Bartlett and Stephen Rabin.
• Ward 7: Christine Kim and Polly Gulliver vs. Dawn Bliesener.
• Ward 12: Theresa Morant and Sean Matteson vs. Carlena Taft.
• Ward 18: Rose Chatterton and Chris Avallone vs. Sharon Braz and Zelema Harris.
• Ward 28: Gary Hogan and Jess Corbett v. Ephrat Lieblich.
• Ward 30: Iva Johnson and Alberta Witherspoon (not UNITE HERE-affiliated) vs. Perry Flowers.
Kudos to this group. Not easy to get people excited about co-chair elections, but competition is better than yet another uncontested seat.