Christine Stuart Photo
Another surprise jolted New Haven’s political landscape Monday as state Sen. Toni Harp announced she has reversed course — and decided to join the race for mayor.
Harp (pictured at the state Capitol Monday afternoon), long considered the leading potential candidate to unseat or succeed Mayor John DeStefano, had decided to sit out this year’s race. Even when DeStefano himself decided to retire after 20 years in office.
Harp told the Independent Monday that she plans to file official papers after all either at the end of this week or early next week to seek the Democratic mayoral nomination.
“I’m very excited. I think that will bring a different perspective to the political discussion about the city — where it is now, where hopefully we’ll be in the future,” Harp said. “And I honestly think that I have the ability to bring the city together, to make it a more positive place, where people feel better about being residents of New Haven.”
Her supporters are holding their first campaign organizational meeting later Monday as another Democrat, Henry Fernandez, has his official campaign kick-off.
Harp, 65, has represented half of the city as a state senator since 1993. As co-chair of the legislature’s Appropriations Committee, she is one of the most powerful lawmakers in Hartford and a leading voice on human-services issues. She has been co-chairing the Mental Health Working Group of the legislature’s Bipartisan Task Force on Gun Violence Prevention and Children’s Safety.
She was too busy doing all that work in recent months to consider entering the mayor’s race, even though she had always considered seeking the office one day, Harp said Monday.
Melissa Bailey Photo
Harp’s entrance shakes up the race in more ways than one: She is the top proven vote-getter. And she is a woman. All 49 mayors in New Haven’s history have been men. (Read about that here.)
Harp joins Fernandez, a former city economic development official; former Chamber of Commerce President Matt Nemerson; Alderman Justin Elicker; State Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield; and Newhallville plumber Sundiata Keitazulu in seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for the mayor’s job. Hillhouse Principal Kermit Carolina, another Democrat, has also formed an exploratory committee and was expected to make a decision in coming weeks about whether to officially join the race. The Democratic primary takes place Sept. 10.
It is expected that in coming weeks Harp’s entrance will actually shrink, rather than grow, the field, as some of the candidates may conclude they can’t compete with her for their constituencies.
But at least two candidates showed no sign of backing down in the face of a new presumed frontrunner.
“Politics is unpredictable,” Elicker said Monday when asked for his reaction to Harp’s decision. “I’m focusing on the only thing I can control — which is how hard I can work.”
Nemerson called the prospect of a Harp mayoralty a “disaster” for New Haven — because of the good job she does in Hartford.
“The next mayor of New Haven should be a strong executive who has urban policy experience and can attract private investment, jobs, and global attention. I am that person,” Nemerson said. “[Toni Harp] giving up her seniority and power on [the legislature’s] Appropriations [Committee] will be a disaster for the city. The citizens of New Haven will be better served by keeping an effective legislator where she is. Even if she is a fine mayor, the loss of her Hartford clout will be damaging.”
“I know Toni,” Nemerson added. “I like her a great deal. And a vote for me will guarantee that she and I will create a great partnership in the years ahead.”
As candidates began lining up to succeed DeStefano upon his Jan. 29 retirement announcement, Harp declared she didn’t plan to seek the office this year because she is happy in the state Senate, where she co-chairs the powerful Appropriations Committee. “I don’t think I’m going to be running, to be honest with you, unless I’m struck by lightning,” she said at the time.
Christine Stuart Photo
Harp was asked Monday what changed her mind. She was previously committed to backing Holder-Winfield (pictured at the Capitol Monday with Newhallville Rev. Boise Kimber).
“It seemed like there were a lot of people out there, and nobody was getting a lot of traction,” she said. “I thought, ‘I could throw my hat in and see how I would do.’ In the back of my mind for many years I considered running for mayor.
“I really do like my job here in the Senate. When it first came up when the mayor announced, I was in the middle of two major projects [the state budget deliberations and post-Newtown mental health task force]. After all of those things wound down, [I thought] maybe I do have time and see what people think.”
She said many leaders of African-American, women’s, and other community organizations have been urging her to run.
No Public Financing
Paul Bass Photo
Harp (pictured at a March press conference on a new New Haven coalition focusing on schoolkids’ trauma) will be the third candidate to decide not to participate in the city’s public-financing system, the Democracy Fund. Three candidates — Elicker, Holder-Winfield and Keitazulu — have signed up to participate. Fernandez and Nemerson have chosen not to. Participating candidates receive matching public dollars in return for limiting individual contributions to $370 (rather than $1,000) and eschewing donations from outside committees.
“I’m in late,” Harp responded when asked about the decision. And “there are going to be others in the race who are not doing public financing.”
She added that “it takes as much energy to do public financing as it does to raise money otherwise.”
School Reform For All
This photo, of Holder-Winfield with Harp and Toni Walker, appeared on Holder-Winfield’s Facebook page Friday.
Harp said she will emphasize in the campaign the need to reach older kids who have been failing in school.
The city has been going “in the right direction” with its nascent school-reform drive, she said. She’d like to expand the focus to students who reach high school and are failing. She spoke of teens who drop out and go to adult basic education—and read at the third-grade level. School reform both in the city and statewide focuses heavily on the youngest children, she noted; studies have shown that the biggest returns on investment come with reaching kids at the earliest ages. (Click here for an in-depth article on the subject.) But the city still has to pay attention to those who reach a more difficult age, Harp argued.
She said the budget her committee just approved starts that effort by funneling more money to adult basic ed, reading specialists, and special ed. Much more remains to be done, she said.
“They need help. We live in a world where you have to be able to read to take care of yourself. We have a school system and resource system in the state that focuses a lot in early years and not a lot later on,” she said.
“One of the things that we tend to do in our town and in our state is to throw away all of the older kids. I’m very interested in making sure that everyone who graduates from New Haven Public Schools can read at grade level and can write. I don’t think that we throw away the older kids because we weren’t able to capture their interests when they were younger. I know it’s easier to work with younger kids. But we’ve really got to understand that we have to see this throughout the continuum of education.”
Harp also praised the “reinvigoration” of community policing in New Haven after we “let it go for so long.” Back in 1989, when John Daniels ran for mayor on a community policing platform, Harp co-chaired the campaign committee that wrote it. Daniels won and instituted community policing along the lines of that platform.
Oh this is a game changer. If I were Gary I'd run away quickly and try and get her Senate seat. Though if she wins New Haven will lose a very, very powerful voice at the state level. The public financing piece yapped about ad nauseum in other comments is wildly overblown -- people want a competent mayor and will look past how they finance their mailings to get that mayor. Harp goes straight to the front for me!