Graves Pounds That Sign Into The Ground

As a mid-afternoon voting lull settled on New Haven’s otherwise hectic primary election, Clifton Graves found himself face to face with a recalcitrant ​“Graves for Mayor” sign.

Graves is one of three Democrats challenging Mayor John DeStefano in a mayoral primary Tuesday. The Independent is taking turns following each of the candidates around. (Read farther down for a spin with DeStefano and with challenger Jeffrey Kerekes. Challenger Tony Dawson could not be reached Tuesday afternoon.)

While DeStefano and Kerekes took purposeful routes through the city during the morning, Clifton Graves found himself driving from one end of town to the other in a rented black Dodge Avenger during an afternoon slump in voting.

The mid-afternoon is traditionally the quiet time in New Haven elections; people tend to vote either before work or after they get out.

Indeed, after lunch, Graves found polling places to be mostly unoccupied. He traveled from Hillhouse High to Wooster Square’s polling, place Conte/West Hills Magnet School. It was a ghost town occupied by more campaign signs than voters.

Graves, accompanied by his brother Eddie, nevertheless tarried there a while. He fielded phone calls and greeted an old basketball coach. Then word came from Graves’ campaign HQ: get to Ward 30.

“There’s a lot of activity over there,” Graves said.

Half an hour later, after wading through crosstown traffic, Graves was at the Clarence Rogers School in West Rock, where the extent of the activity seemed to be that a few campaign signs were down.

Graves picked one up, couldn’t drive it into the ground barehanded, tried to prop it against a bush, then put it back on the ground.

“I’m going to have to hold my own signs,” he said.

After a few minutes of conferring with his campaign staff, Graves and his brother piled back in the car as staffers pounded signs with a car jack.

Graves circled back by Hillhouse Avenue on his way to the next stop, Dixwell’s Ward 22. On the way, he spontaneously pulled over at Prescott Bush senior housing complex off Henry Street, where he paid a visit to 90-year-old Ida Wells.

She’d already voted absentee, and wouldn’t say for whom. ​“For the best man,” she said.

Graves nevertheless took time to receive her blessing and pass some moments in conversation.

“Whatever happens, it’s God’s will,” said Wells, for decades a tenant organizer in New Haven’s housing projects. ​“Win or lose, you’re my favorite.”

Kerekes’s Last-Minute Opportunity

Robert Gorham had never heard of Jeffrey Kerekes. He had heard of John DeStefano. Kerekes tried to turn that to his advantage at the polls Tuesday.

Kerekes is one of three Democrats challenging Mayor John DeStefano in a mayoral primary today. The Independent is taking turns following each of the candidates around.

Kerekes, a first-time candidate who’s a psychotherapist/social worker by trade and budget watchdog by avocation, is hoping to emerge as the default candidate for people dissatisfied with DeStefano after his 18 years in office.

He prepared to make that pitch around noon today to Gorham outside the Wexler/Grant School in the Dixwell neighborhood, polling place for Ward 22. Gorham came to the polls genuinely undecided, he said.

Kerekes was walking back to his silver VW Passat when he encountered Gorham, who was on his way inside.

“You just come from voting?” Gorham asked Kerekes.

No, Kerekes replied. ​“I’m running for mayor.” He said he was running to end the influence of ​“special interests.”

“You got a card?” the man, Robert Gorham, asked. ​“Maybe I’ll try you out.”

Kerekes asked him to walk to his car with him. Along the way, he asked Gorham his concerns.

Jobs, said Gorham, who’s 55 and unemployed.

The city missed a ​“lifetime opportunity” when it spent $1.5 billion rebuilding schools without tapping more local people into jobs, Kerekes claimed.

He handed Gorham a doorhanger from the trunk of the VW.

“What [ballot] line are you?” Gorham asked.

“D” Kerekes said.

“Put it on there,” he said, handing the hanger back to Kerekes. Kerekes wrote ​“Line D” on the hanger and handed it back.

“Yeah, I’m going to vote for him,” Gorham said as he walked toward the polling place. ​“The mayor of New Haven, he’s not doing his job.”

DeStefano Courts The Sidewalk, Promise Votes

As Mayor John DeStefano toured polling places this morning in his quest for a record tenth term, he encountered two unmistakable conclusions: Turnout is higher in wards that also have aldermanic races. And all voting is local. Real local.

Like sidewalk local.

DeStefano faces a challenge from three separate opponents — Anthony Dawson, Clifton Graves, Jeffrey Kerekes — in a Democratic mayoral primary Tuesday. Sixteen of the city’s 30 wards also have contested races for the party’s nomination for alderman.

The Independent is taking turns following mayoral candidates on the trail.

DeStefano had his donkey tie on as he began a swing of polling spots Tuesday morning, driving his Prius and sipping Dunkin’s coffee from a silver thermos. At Wilbur Cross High School, he encountered a voter in a polo shirt and Desert Storm cap named Eric Mastriani. Mastriani told the mayor he’s doing a good job, then talked about what’s on his mind: The ​“v‑shaped crack” in the sidewalk in front of his house.

“It’s in bad repair. It’s in bad shape,” he said.

Some other voters walked by without acknowledging the mayor. ​“Everybody’s got their game face on,” DeStefano observed.

Because the East Rock School (Ward 9’s usual voting spot) is under construction, both Wards 9 and 10 are voting at Wilbur Cross this year. One of those wards, 9, has a primary. The other doesn’t. Both are generally high-voting wards. When DeStefano checked in at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, 104 people had already voted in 9, the ward with the aldermanic primary; just 54 had voted in 10.

Promise & Personality

That difference showed itself again as DeStefano stopped by Bishop Woods’s Ward 12 polling slot, the Ross/Woodward School. Only 54 people had voted. The ward has no aldermanic primary.

Unlike on a general election day, schools are open Tuesday, even as voters pour through them to cast ballots. DeStefano ran into sixth-grader Chris Butler at Ross/Woodward. He chatted him up about the new Promise program, under which Yale and the Community Foundation pay the tuition for qualifying New Haven public-school kids who get into state colleges.

“You going to college?” mayor asked.

Yes, Butler said. He knew all about Promise.

DeStefano has made Promise and his broader school reform drive a centerpiece of his reelection campaign. But despite the chatter with Butler, he said he doesn’t believe school reform will be the determining factor in people’s votes Tuesday.

“It’s people’s feelings of optimism and pessimism. That’s what drives these things,” he said. ​“Then it’s who they know.”

Is he optimistic?

“I feel comfortable with who I am,” he said, adding that it’s up to voters to choose him or not. ​“It’s their choice. They’re entitled to it.”

Term Limits’ Meaning

DeStefano’s swing revealed more campaign workers for him than for his opponents. He said his campaign has 10 headquarters around the city, dispatching vote-pullers and drivers and checking turnout against ​“ones and twos” (those marked as most likely supportive voters).

“I’ve been in campaigns where I’ve lost. You can feel that,” he said. He feels optimistic about winning Tuesday, he said, though he added, ​“I don’t think I’m going to crack 50 percent.”

On his way to check out Fair Haven voting, DeStefano swung through the Quinnipiac Terrace projects, the site of a revival near the river. Under DeStefano the housing authority rebuilt the once-devastated housing project into a colorful, well-kept, landscaped, mixed-income development.

DeStefano greeted a tenant sitting on his porch.

“I’m the mayor,” he said. ​“Just stopping by.”

The tenant said he used to live in the old projects. He indeed likes the new ones ​“much better,” he reported.

“People die when I tell them this is the functional equivalent of public housing,” DeStefano noted.

It took his administration 12 years to work through the federal approval process, the demolition, the contracting out of work, and the rebuilding of the project. DeStefano was asked if that could be an argument against term limits; his opponents point to his 18-year reign to argue on behalf of term limits.

“Term limits is just an argument about really me,” DeStefano responded. Voters get rid of people they don’t want, he said. Incumbents — like former Mayor John Daniels, for instance — knew when it was time to step down, he said. ​“Mayors have been good about getting out.”

A full day and evening of touring lay ahead — as does the verdict on whether he made the right call.