Elicker Cruises To Democratic Primary Victory

(Updated) Mayor Justin Elicker crushed challenger Liam Brennan by more than a 2‑to‑1 margin in Tuesday’s Democratic mayoral primary, taking in 5,503 votes to Brennan’s 2,280 and winning every ward citywide in an election that saw roughly a 23 percent turnout.

The night’s big upset was in Fair Haven’s Ward 15, where challenger Frank Redente, Jr. defeated incumbent Alder Ernie Santiago by nearly a 2‑to‑1 margin. And in Morris Cove’s Ward 18, incumbent Alder Sal DeCola narrowly prevailed against challenger Susan Campion by a margin of only 34 votes.

According to Democratic Registrar of Voters office’s counts at all 33 polling places citywide, Elicker received 5,503 votes, or 70.71 percent of the total, to Brennan’s 2,280, or 29.29 percent percent of the total. 

Those tallies include all 7,403 votes cast at the machines as well as 380 votes cast via absentee ballot.

Turnout was low across the city: 7,783 voters in all 30 wards. That’s compared to 12,348 total votes cast in the last contested Democratic mayoral primary in 2019; and 7,765 in the less-contested 2017 Democratic primary.

According to the Registrar of Voters office, there are currently 33,377 registered Democratic voters in New Haven. That puts turnout in Tuesday’s Democratic primary at around 23.3 percent.

In addition to the city’s 33,377 registered Democrats who were eligible to participate in Tuesday’s primary, there are currently 15,362 unaffiliated voters, 2,657 registered Republicans, and 503 voters registered to minor third parties, such as Independent, Green, Libertarian, and Working Families.

In the six contested alder races Tuesday, when taking together machine votes and absentee ballots: 

Frank Redente, Jr. beat incumbent Alder Ernie Santiago in Fair Haven’s Ward 15 with 216 votes to Santiago’s 117.

Alder Salvatore Punzo won in the Annex’s Ward 17 with 185 votes to Camille Ansley’s 59.

Alder Sal DeCola won in Morris Cove’s Ward 18 with 364 votes to Susan Campion’s 330.

Brittiany Mabery-Niblack won in Newhallville’s Ward 20 with 217 votes to Addie Kimbrough’s 60.

Incumbent Alder Jeanette Morrison won in Dixwell’s Ward 22 with 196 votes to Anthony Geritano’s 35.

Incumbent Alder Adam Marchand won in Westville’s Ward 25 with 591 votes to Dennis Serfilippi’s 233.

That means that Elicker — a former East Rock/Cedar Hill alder and community garden nonprofit leader who first took office in 2020 and who was endorsed by the local Democratic Party at its July 25 convention — will be the Democratic Party’s nominee during the Nov. 7 general election. 

Elicker’s win comes four years after the last local Democratic primary for mayor in 2019, when Elicker won 58 percent of the vote (7,198 votes in total) over then-three-term-incumbent Mayor Toni Harp’s 42 percent (5,150 votes). In 2017, Harp defeated former city staffer and alder Marcus Paca 75 percent (5,788 votes) to 25 percent (1,977).

Ex-McKinsey consultant Tom Goldenberg is the Republican and Independent Party nominee for mayor in this year’s November general election, while Wendy Hamilton and Mayce Torres have also filed to run as unaffiliated candidates.

In remarks at his victory party at BAR on Crown Street, Elicker complimented Brennan for running ​“a positive campaign” and called him ​“a man of integrity.”

Elicker repeated in his remarks his campaign theme that New Haven has worked together to rethink public safety, create new affordable housing, boost state and Yale funding to the city, and support labor and tenant organizing during his tenure.

Tuesday night’s primary results affirmed that success, Elicker said.

“We won every single ward by a large, large margin. We did not do that alone. We do that by knocking on doors together,” he said. (Elicker did win most wards by significant margins. Ward 18 in Morris Cover was closer: He topped Brennan 336 to 297 on the machine vote, before absentee votes were counted.)

“We need to keep the fire on,” Elicker urged the crowd, noting that he faces a Republican (Tom Goldenberg) in the Nov. 7 general election.

At around 9 p.m., Brennan addressed a room full of campaign supporters at Rudy’s on Chapel Street to acknowledge his defeat.

“Obviously this is not the result we were hoping for,” he said. But ​“this has been a great night, a grew few months.” He proceeded to thank more than two dozen family members and friends and campaign staffers and volunteers and petition gatherers by name, including campaign manager Abdul Osmanu. He also thanked Justin Elicker, who he said ​“ran a fantastic campaign. … His service to the city has been phenomenal. We should all be appreciative of people who are willing to do this.”

He then repeated a critique of a fundamentally unjust society and inadequate government that he put at the center of his campaign. 

“Our whole system of government is old. Today’s politics, from our city government to our Congress, is not meeting the needs of our citizens,” he said. ​“Our institutions have calcified. Our economic system is slanted to the owners of capital. Our political system is tilted towards insiders. … The commodification of housing has caused the cost to skyrocket. …

“We can give up and we can complain,” he continued. ​“We can throw in our hat and do nothing about this, or we can choose to adapt. We can choose to do something better. … That is what we have tried to do with this campaign.” He said his campaign has asked New Haven to envision ​“a more responsive city government. … I asked all of you to believe in local government.” And that belief should remain strong, he said. ​“The promise of self-government is still our best hope, and self-government starts at the local level. Local government is the government that touches our lives most closely. It is the one that can make the biggest difference” in people’s day to day lives.

“The fight does not end here,” he concluded. ​“A new future is on the horizon. It is ours to seize.”

Tuesday’s Democratic primary marked the culmination, for now, of a monthslong and hotly contested municipal campaign season that initially saw four candidates vying for the mayoral office. Only two ended up on the ballot; Tuesday also saw six contested alder races in wards covering the Annex, Morris Cove, Fair Haven, Dixwell, Newhallville, and Westville. And it was the first local election to use New Haven’s newly redistricted ward lines, which alders adopted in 2022 per the once-a-decade U.S. Census and then put in place this August.

Elicker has run on his record over the past four years, including leading the city through Covid, securing a significant bump in city funding from Yale and the state, launching the non-cop crisis response team COMPASS, expanding Tweed New Haven Airport, adopting an inclusionary zoning ordinance, increasing fines on megalandlords, supporting tenants unions, and allocating tens of millions of dollars of federal pandemic-relief aid to a hodgepodge of housing, climate resiliency, economic development, and youth engagement initiatives.

Brennan — a former federal prosecutor, legal aid attorney, and Hartford inspector general – campaigned around restoring public trust in local government by pledging to make it work more quickly and with a clearer purpose. He focused his campaign primarily on issues of housing, and in particular on the need to create more of it through a comprehensive overhaul of the city’s zoning code in an effort to address high rents and rising homelessness. He also called for universal pre‑k and higher teacher salaries, and for barring drug possession arrests and having a ​“community conversation” on how to police drug dealing.

Goldenberg and former Beaver Hills Alder and retired police sergeant Shafiq Abdussabur also spent months seeking to run in the city’s Democratic primary election for mayor. 

However, neither was able to successfully petition their way onto the primary ballot by gathering enough valid New Haven Democrats’ signatures. 

After failing to make it onto the ballot, Goldenberg promptly accepted the endorsement of the Republican Party instead. Abdussabur contested his petition’s rejection by the Registrar of Voters, first by suing the city (in a case that was thrown out by a state judge) and then by hosting a press conference where he doubled down on alleged inconsistencies in the registrar’s review of signatures. Instead of running in the general election as an unaffiliated candidate for mayor, Abdussabur subsequently decided to drop out of the race entirely.

Paul Bass and Laura Glesby contributed to this report. Click here and here to watch Elicker’s and Brennan’s primary night speeches, and here to watch Babz Rawls-Ivy, Michelle Turner, and Markeshia Ricks talk through the results live on WNHH.

An enormous thank you to the dedicated volunteers who reported results from the polls, including: Talia Weiss, Juliana Tedeschi, Matan Cutler, Katherine Jacobs, Claudette Kidd, Norma Rodriguez-Reyes, Finn Amber, Carmen Pajarillo, Kirsten Traudt, Mark Aronson, Allan Appel, Suzanne Boorsch, Rachel Mihalko, Anne Tubis, Jessica Tubis, David Weinreb, Mia Cortés Castro, Lior Trestman, Karen Ponzio, Lisa Reisman, Abby Roth, Jeanette Sykes, Max Chaoulideer, Jasmine Wright, Steve Werlin, Andrew Giering, David Sepulveda, Asher Joseph, Arev Torosyan, Vicky Blume, Alisha Crutchfield, and Liz Grace-Flood.