Allan Appel Photo
The candidate with Basset Street resident Lossie Gorham.
Chris Mattei listened for nearly ten straight minutes. He leaned in, kept eye contact. But he didn’t say a word.
His interlocutor was Shelton Avenue resident Darlene Grant, who graphically described a bleak situation: She has a chronically derelict landlord, with trash overflowing in the back yard, mice running throughout the house. and a little child who’s been tested for lead and has alarmingly elevated levels.
When the exterminators do come, they stay for five minutes, and then are gone; yet the mice remain. She desperately wants to move out but with her federal Section 8 rent voucher she doesn’t know where to go, or to whom to turn for help.
Finally Mattei said that’s why he’s running for Connecticut attorney general: to serve as her voice.
Mattei — one of three candidates on the Aug. 14 Democratic primary ballot for the position of attorney general, who handles civil court cases including environmental and civil rights and consumer fraud matters; and offers legal opinions for state government — repeated that message during a Friday afternoon of door-knocking in Newhallville on both sides of the New Haven-Hamden border. He listened patiently to the trials of people living on Shelton Avenue and Newhall, Read, Butler, and Basset streets. (The attorney general does not handle criminal cases.)
For two hours Mattei aproached people onporches, on streetcorners, in their cars, or in one instance while they were rolling dice in a very active noisy game on the sidewalk in front of Chapman’s Liquors on Shelton Avenue. He chatted up people sitting on their porches relaxing, like a 67-year-old self-professed alcoholic who called himself “Bones” and who apologized for his halitosis, and a guy recently out of jail. He asked them to remember: “Aug. 14, Row C, C for Chris.”
In New Haven, the city which usually delivers the most Democratic votes statewide, Mayor Harp is backing the party-endorsed candidate, William Tong. Mattei — a former union organizer and federal prosecutor —has secured the support of two thirds of the city’s alders.
One of them, Newhallville’s Kim Edwards, wearing her union shirt, helped lead the way for Mattei Friday afternoon.They were also accompanied by Hamden Fifth District Councilman Justin Farmer. Why does he support Mattei?
“I’ve been stopped 30 times by the police in four years,” Farmer said. “We’re having a harder time trusting in the system. Chris is willing to talk to people to regain that trust.”
“I Didn’t Do It!”
On the porch with Darlene Grant and her family.
First up on the corner of Butler and Goodrich was Thomas Evans, a thin man, in middle age, but worn, and wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his face. As Mattei and the entourage approached, Evans called out, “I didn’t do it!”
For the next ten minutes, Evans unburdened himself with details of his marriage, his health issues, including heart attacks, and his incarceration, where he sustained a knife wound above the right buttock, the scar from which he showed Mattei. The candidate listened, leaned in, and when there was a break in the flow, simply said, “You’ll be all right. Don’t be lonely.” Then they hugged.
As the group moved on down the sidewalk, Edwards turned and reminded Evans, “You gonna vote for Chris Mattei, right?”
Evans nodded and said, “I enjoyed telling my story.”
When Mattei mounted the porch of Darlene Grant’s house on Shelton Avenue and identified himself, she was not shy in her approach: “You go after slumlords? We got one right here.”
“Tell me about it,” he said.
The dice players scattered, later, when a police car cruised by, but not when Mattei crossed the street.
When she finished her recitation of serious problems, Mattei told her that he’s the parent of young kids himself and is familiar with lead paint concerns. Then he stepped aside so that the local pols, Edwards and Farmer, could take down Grant’s contact info to get some housing and health relief.
Mattei said that under state unfair trade practices law, there’s a legal basis for Connecticut’s attorney general to pursue slumlords. (Traditionally criminal, not civilian, courts handle housing code violations.)
Mattei accompanied Edwards to a house with a tidy front yard and had a conversation through a closed storm door. The owner apologized that there was “a vicious chihuahua” behind the door.
“Ever have an attorney general [candidate] come in?” Mattei asked Sam Jenkins, the owner of Sam’s Unisex Barbershop on Basset at Butler, “Ever have an attorney general [candidate] come in?”
“You’re the first,” Jenkins answered as he continued to cut Clarence Randolph’s hair.
As Lossie Gorham, a longtime neighborhood activist, greeted Mattei, she told him she was out there on the porch only because she was awaiting a package.
“I’m thinking of moving to Georgia. I know you can’t outrun violence. The cops come through here so fast. They should be more visible. I don’t sit on my porch because I’m afraid something might happen. I do feel a prisoner in [my] home. The kids gather …”
“To me, the basic issue is jobs. I had a job when I was 14,” Mattei told her.
Then when Mattei said he is also concerned about the president, Gorham interrupted, “Don’t say his name!”
Mattei didn’t but he said a chief concern is concealed carry reciprocity legislation that is making its way through Congress. If it passes, “I’ll be in federal court the next day to file an injunction,” he promised.
“I’ll Be Back
With Butler Street resident Taqwetta Wares.
As the group circled back to upper Butler Street, in Hamden, where the tour begun, he heard about the desperate need for transitional and affordable housing from Christian Community Action (CCA) Director of Advocacy Merryl Eaton.
“You appear to be a kindred spirit,” Eaton said.
“I’m for people who don’t have a voice, One thing I’ve been saying is that there is highly concentrated poverty not only in urban areas but also the rural areas. And that may be one way to build a coalition.”
Mattei’s big take-away from the Newhallville tour: “It’s astounding how the need outstrips our capacity to deliver services here.”
"You appear to be a kindred spirit," Eaton said.
The white liberal differs from the white conservative only in one way. The liberal is more deceitful than the conservative. The liberal is more hypocritical than the conservative. Both want power, but the white liberal is the one who has perfected the art of posing as the Negro's friend and benefactor, and by winning the friendship and support of the Negro, the white liberal is able to use the Negro as a pawn or tool in this political football game. Politically the American Negro is nothing but a football, and the white liberals control this mentally dead ball. Through tricks of tokenism and false promises, and they have the willing cooperation of Negro leaders. These leaders sell out our people for just a few crumbs of token recognition and token gains-----MALCOLM X ( from his speech called, God's Judgment of White America)