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Tony Dawson aims to hire more people to round up voters in Tuesday’s primary, now that he has become the second mayoral challenger in New Haven history to qualify for the city’s clean elections program.
Dawson, one of three men challenging Mayor John DeStefano in a Democratic primary Tuesday, qualified to receive a $23,420 check from the city’s Democracy Fund, according to the fund’s administrator, Robert Wechsler. The fund is designed to limit the influence of special interests and provide public money to level the playing field with non-incumbent candidates.
To qualify Dawson’s campaign had to gather at least 200 contributions of between $10 and $340 from registered voters in New Haven.
Dawson collected 224 qualifying contributions, Wechsler said. In doing so, he qualified for a 2‑to‑1 match of the first $25 of each of those contributions. That earned him a $6,420 in matching funds. By qualifying for the Democracy Fund, Dawson will also get a $17,000 public grant, Weschler said.
Dawson is the second mayoral challenger ever to receive money under the program. Jeffrey Kerekes, who’s also running in Tuesday’s primary, is the first. The third challenger, Clifton Graves, opted not to participate.
Because Dawson qualified so late in the game, it remains to be seen whether he’ll get the money before the primary.
“Will they actually get the check [before the primary]? I don’t know. Probably not.” Wechsler said. He said the decision remains up to the city’s controller. The controller’s office usually cuts checks on Friday and requires that requests be in by Wednesday, he said.
Reached Thursday, Dawson said the money will “help me with making sure I get some people to help me out on Election Day” as well as “paying down expenses.” If he doesn’t get the check in time, he can use it to reimburse expenses incurred during the primary.
Dawson said his campaign “tried very hard in this economy to do this process. It was a tedious one, but we did it and I thank the voters for allowing me the opportunity.”
He said qualifying for the program “proves that the people of New Haven are treating my campaign very seriously. They feel that it’s important that people participate in the Democracy Fund rather than take money from contractors or people who work for the city of New Haven.”
Kerekes and Dawson haven’t maxed out their taxpayer-supported matching funds. They can ask for more matching funds, so long as they submit a new batch of contributions from different registered voters in New Haven. They can make additional requests for funds until they reach the cap on how much the Fund will pay each campaign, which is $125,000 per election cycle.
This money would better spent on after school program