(News analysis) Toni Harp tried to save her mayoralty by scaring black voters into thinking her opponent planned to fly police drones into their bedroom windows.
It didn’t work.
The drone attacks — including the above flyer, sent this past weekend to black and brown households — represented Mayor Harp’s home-stretch strategy to fend off a Democratic primary challenge from Justin Elicker.
Paul Bass Photo
Mayor Harp with supporters Tuesday outside the Ward 2 polls in Dwight.
Harp, who is African-American, focused almost her entire campaign in the final weeks on black and brown voters. Her campaign repeatedly portrayed Elicker, who is white, as a threat to “our” (black and brown) neighborhoods. Her campaign accused Elicker’s wife (a federal prosecutor) of conspiring with President Trump and New Haven’s Democratic town chair to destroy her through an FBI investigation of misconduct by her administration. She spoke publicly, such as at last week’s candidate debate, about his detachment from “those neighborhoods that I represent,” characterized as low-income communities of color.
And she argued on the campaign trail, including in the flyer at the top of this story and in a TV ad, that Elicker’s support for the city police department’s consideration of using aerial drones to track illegal dirt bike riding on city streets is a covert strategy for spying on black and brown neighborhoods.
Meanwhile, African-Americans involved in civic life reported being threatened with retaliation and condemned as race traitors for not backing her reelection, in some cases being reduced to tears.
That strategy bombed on Tuesday when voters went to the polls and Elicker decisively defeated Harp 7,198 to 5,150.
Thomas Breen Photo
Elicker supporters Ray Jackson and Tainia White outside the polls at Lincoln-Bassett School in Newhallville.
Not only did Elicker trounce Harp in predominantly white, high-voting districts where she chose not to campaign. He picked up hundreds of new votes in predominantly African-American wards where Harp trounced him the first time the two squared off in a mayoral election, in 2013. Many other African-Americans who voted in 2013 stayed home this time. Elicker, who campaigned throughout the city, won two out of three predominantly Latino Fair Haven wards this time — wards where Harp trounced him in 2013.
Racially diverse districts that were previously heavily pro-Harp flipped to Elicker (Ward 21) or went to the mayor with a mere eight-vote margin. Harp’s strongest district — Newhallville’s Ward 20 — favored her over Elicker 530 – 14 and 696 – 84 in the 2013 primary and general election; Tuesday her victory there narrowed to 348 – 163.
“The strategy missed the mark,” observed New Haven State Sen. Gary Winfield, who represents and lives in Newhallville. “A lot of people thought [the drone flyer] was a cynical move.”
Winfield endorsed Harp’s 2013 mayoral bid; this year he stayed neutral.
“I think New Haven is a city made up of a lot of different types of people, racially, ethnically. When you’re running for a citywide position, your strategy should be to appeal to them all,” Winfield argued.
Thomas Breen Photo
State Sen. Winfield: “Cynical move … missed the mark.”
Independent reporters interviewed voters throughout the day at polls from Morris Cove to Beaver Hills to the Hill to Downtown to Westville to Newhallville. Yes the occasional white voter revealed clear racial prejudice in voting for Elicker. (Read about that here.) Some voters, white and black and brown alike, were motivated to support Harp because of her long record as a successful African-American leader promoting policies that save young lives, house the poor, and develop the city — a record that will be her legacy long after people have forgotten about this one election.
The larger number of voters who either stayed home Tuesday or chose Elicker — black, brown and white voters alike — to a person offered the exact same message when interviewed: They wanted change. They were fed up with taxes. They were fed up with the shenanigans at the Board of Education, under a superintendent Harp had personally brought to town over widespread opposition. They had a sense that city government was broken, whether in handling lead paint code enforcement or watching the books or cutting unsavory deals.
Not a single voter all day mentioned drones. Not a single voter all day expressed fear that Justin Elicker will send white storm troopers and surveillance aircraft into their bedrooms.
Skeptical voters in Newhallville “were concerned about the fact that taxes went up 11 percent. They were concerned about things going on in the schools with [Superintendent] Birks and others,” Winfield observed.
Harp’s failed campaign strategy was particularly striking given how it contradicted the approach she has taken in winning elections for 32 years. She won her first race, for alder, against an incumbent who’d been arrested for welfare fraud; Harp refused to mention it in the campaign. She won her State Senate seat in 1992 against an incumbent who was arrested for stealing an insurance check his dead sister had intended for her daughter; Harp refused to mention it. In the mid-1990s, as Harp emerged as the city’s leading African-American politician and arguably most popular elected official, party insiders tried to take her down through a backroom party delegate primary; she united people throughout the city (especially women) to overcome the challenge. She won a crowded mayoral race in 2013 by campaigning to voters of all backgrounds with a unity message. She never lost an election in 32 years.
Until Tuesday. When she unleashed the drones.
“I did not see the enthusiasm in the African-American community,” the Rev. Samuel Ross-Lee, an unaffiliated voter, observed Wednesday. He noted that “a lot of people have done” campaign ads like Harp’s. He also noted that Elicker campaigned negatively against Harp as well. He characterized Elicker’s attacks on Harp’s administration as corrupt based on the FBI subpoena and controversial no-bid and inside deals as “racialized” “if not racist.” “It happens so much to black mayors,” Ross-Lee remarked on a post-primary discussion on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program. (He was joined by SCSU political scientist Jonathan Wharton, who argued that the primary represented a “wake-up call” about the desire for generational change in New Haven.)
Paul Bass Photo
At Dixwell’s Prescott Bush senior complex, Elicker shows Binkey Reynolds and her grandson Carter a campaign photo of his own family: “That’s my 4-year-old daughter. She always looks a little grumpy.”
But Elicker also made a point to campaign heavily in predominantly black and Latino wards. He picked up support there not just from Harp enemies with an axe to grind, but grassroots people seeking change. His first, and most important, hire was a talented 20-something progressive campaign manager of color. Rather than play to white racist voters with code words, he embraced sanctuary city policies and highlighted supporters of color in his promotional materials.
Elicker showed up. Everywhere. And that mattered.
It mattered, for instance, to Marcella Monk Flake. Flake (at left in photo), a retired 37-year public-school teacher and member of a prominent local musical family, supported Harp in 2013. This time she not only supported Elicker; she volunteered for the campaign. Harp’s role in the chaos at the Board of Education — in her third term Harp gained control of the school board and announced she would try to fix the schools’ dysfunction — weighed heavily in Flake’s decision to jump ship.
So did Elicker’s outreach.
“I love Elicker. He’s a uniter,” Monk Flake argued as she worked a campaign table Tuesday outside the Ward 25 polls at Edgewood School. “I’m very impressed by his transparency, his genuineness of spirit. He moves easily among all people. He’s committed to seeing this education thing work. He’s going to fight to make sure his child is going to get a good education.”
Monk Flake said she encountered a voter walking into the polls who told her, “I’m voting for ‘the black.’” This voter was white, she said.
“I said, ‘The black? What does that mean? I’m glad I’ve learned enough not to judge someone on their skin color.”
Harp TV ad
Civil rights-minded white voters also pressed Elicker on race. Outside the 200 Orange St. polling station in downtown’s Ward 7 Tuesday, Elicker encountered one such voter, who said she was undecided.
“Do you feel you’re in touch with the black community?” the voter asked Elicker.
“Yes and no,” Elicker responded. He spoke of how he’s working hard to be accessible to all voters. He said he’s “actively committed” to working with all parts of the community.
“I think race is an important issue in New Haven,” Elicker told her. “We have to acknowledge that.” He added that he has found that “people are frustrated. They want results. Most people I talk to, they don’t care what I look like. They want more opportunities.”
Assuming he wins the general election and becomes New Haven’s next mayor, Elicker will have the chance to prove whether or not he can produce those results.
Meanwhile, New Haven will continue to wrestle with race. The results of Tuesday’s primary did not refute the reality that the city has racial divides. Just like the country. Just like the human race.
But that’s only part of our story, and only part of the story of Tuesday’s primary. The election showed that we’re not just a city with racial polarization. We’re also a city — 32 percent African-American, 30 percent white, 30 percent Latino, 5 percent Asian according to a 2017 Census bureau estimate — that cherishes our diversity. Whether the issue is immigration or union-busting or naked appeals to racial fear and division, most New Haveners vote to seek solutions that unite us in the interest of the common good. Even if it’s not always easy to get there.
Fear of Elicker lost. I saw plenty of fear in Elicker's mailers. They seem to have worked.