2 Dems Seek Progressive Mantle

While Bernie Sanders was pulling off a left-Democratic victory in Nevada, two local candidates with similar roots in progressive politics summoned supporters to separate fundraisers on the same day — for the same seat.

The two candidates — Justin Farmer and Jorge Cabrera — are eyeing the Democratic nomination this year for the same seat, representing the 17th State Senate District, with similar working-family and social-justice-oriented pitches.

And they’re in part tapping the same pool of core Hamden progressives, some of them veterans of past Bernie Sanders campaigns, to get them there.

Saturday morning, as Sanders was piling up a victory in the Nevada Democratic presidential caucuses, Farmer, who is currently a Hamden Legislative Councilman, stood on the grass outside the Keefe Community Center for a campaign event and rallied an energetic group of 70-plus people, most of them young, for environmental sustainability, better public transportation, and tax equity.

In the afternoon, union representative Jorge Cabrera stood among the Democrats of Hamden’s existing General Assembly delegation at a very different type of campaign event and talked workers’ rights and opportunities, fighting for municipal aid, and progressive taxation.

In January, Cabrera announced that he is running for 17th District seat, which includes Ansonia, Beacon Falls, Bethany, Derby, half of Hamden, and parts of Naugatuck and Woodbridge. In 2018, he came 77 votes shy of unseating Republican George Logan in what amounted to one of the hottest races of the election cycle. Now, he’s trying again.

Last week, Justin Farmer announced that he is exploring a run as well, complicating Cabrera’s path to the general election ballot.

Some supporters of the candidates at Saturday’s events said a primary will push both candidates to develop thorough policy platforms and will make whoever wins the Aug. 11 primary a stronger candidate. Others argued a primary stymies the momentum the party needs to nab a senate seat that it came oh so close to flipping two years ago.

Some said it could go either way, and the key to whether the primary helps or hinders the Democrats is whether the discourse stays squarely in the realm of policy, and does not devolve into personal attacks.

Like Snoop Dogg, ​“He Just Pops Up”

As cars, trucks, and the Ct Transit 238 bus rushed by on Dixwell Avenue about a dozen yards away, Farmer addressed a semi-circle of mostly young faces.

“I’m an activist elected official,” he said as he ended his speech. ​“So I’m going to close out with a chant.”

“YES!” someone called from the crowd.

“So when we fight …” Farmer called.

“… WE WIN!” the crowd thundered.

“When we fight …”

“… WE WIN!”

Six days after he announced his exploration of a run, he had a large crowd of supporters who had already vowed their time and money to help get him elected.

Farmer represents Hamden’s fifth Legislative Council district. As his supporters said over and over throughout the morning, he shows up to every event, everywhere, every time, whether it be meetings in Hamden, rallies on the New Haven Green, or hearings in Hartford.

“Like it’s always been said, Justin is everywhere,” said Seth Poole (pictured above) in a speech. Poole ran for New Haven mayor this fall. ​“When I think about Justin, I think about Snoop Dogg and how he just like pops up. I’m like, ​‘Dude, how’d you do that?’”

Many of the people in Saturday’s crowd had met Farmer through political activism. Groups showed up from the Democratic Socialists of America as well as from the pro-Green Deal Sunrise Movement. Members of both said that neither group has made an endorsement, but that many members are excited about Farmer’s potential run.

Yale student Ben Levin, who is a member of the Yale Endowment Justice Coalition, came with a group of other Yale students and gave a short speech. Hartford-based community organizer Ashley Blount showed up, too. She said she sees him every time she goes to the Legislative Office Building in the Capitol.

Addys Castillo said she lives in the 17th District and has never been involved in Hamden politics before. ​“But when Justin told me he’s running, I’m here 100 percent.” Castillo, who works for Citywide Youth Coalition in New Haven, said she met Farmer through her job. She said he doesn’t simply align with party politics. ​“That’s not Justin. He’s aligned with the community.”

Though Saturday’s crowd showed the enthusiastic support Farmer has among certain people in his own Legislative Council district and among issues-based organizers in the New Haven area, Castillo was one of only a few people who spoke with the Independent who actually live in the district Farmer is vying to represent. Many more did not.

Alan Graham, a member of the Hamden Democratic Town Committee (DTC) in Farmer’s district, said he supports Farmer in his potential run for the state Senate, but if he runs, he would not be able to vote for him because he lives just over the line in New Haven/Hamden State Sen. Martin Looney’s district. Many of the young people who turned out in force to support Farmer would also not be able to vote for him if he runs, as many of them live in New Haven.

In 2017, five of the seven towns in the 17th District voted for Donald Trump. Hamden has the largest share of voters of any town in the district and is a consistently blue bastion; the Naugatuck Valley has more conservative voters. 

Many of Farmer’s supporters said Saturday that they trust him because he makes his progressive stances crystal clear.

Farmer highlighted a few key policy areas in his speech. He began with a story about waiting at a Ct Transit bus stop. Farmer does not have a car; he bikes, takes the bus or train, or gets a ride when he needs to get around.

“In a state that only has three million people, the fact that I can’t travel from one community to the other without taking a half day’s journey is something that we need to fix,” he said.

He said the state also needs a ​“Green New Deal.” He said it would involve training people to work on green technology, introducing Community Choice Aggregation (where municipalities rather than utilities control electricity sourcing), training people in retrofitting, and carbon pricing.

“But we can’t do any of this if we don’t change our economic structure,” he said, introducing his last point. ​“That means we need to tax the rich.”

“No Silver Bullet”

Elizabeth Hayes, the chair of the Democratic committee in Farmer’s Fifth District, stood outside the Keefe Center in the morning. In the afternoon, she took a trip farther north to the Counter Weight Brewing Company for a fundraiser where Jorge Cabrera’s donation forms sat on the table at the entrance.

Hayes does not live in the 17th District. She lives just over the line in Martin Looney’s district. She said she had donated to both Farmer’s and Cabrera’s campaigns, as had many of the people who showed up to both events.

Cabrera’s was a very different type of event from the morning’s rally. Politicians and politicos gathered in small groups sipping glasses of beer. There were no speeches, and people wandered in and out of the two-hour event so that at any given time, there were only about 30 people present. The crowd was older than the one at the morning’s rally.

State Rep. Josh Elliott, who represents Hamden’s 88th state House of Representatives District, had organized the afternoon event as a fundraiser for the whole Hamden slate. Elliott is one of the legislature’s more progressive voices. He won an upset primary in 2016 as an outsider candidate on a wave of progressive momentum that drew energy in part from the Bernie Sanders campaign. Unlike other members of Hamden’s state delegation, he came out in support of candidates in Hamden’s municipal elections this fall. On the day of the Sept. 10 Democratic primary, he stood outside of the Ridge Hill School with Cory O’Brien, a progressive Democrat and vocal critic of Mayor Curt Leng’s handling of town finances whose votes mostly aligned with Farmer’s. Later in the month, he endorsed Rhonda Caldwell and Laurie Sweet, who ran for the town council on the Working Families Party ticket. Sweet is now Farmer’s treasurer.

Five computers sat on the table outside of the second-floor room at Counter Weight Saturday afternoon. The suggested donation was five dollars for each candidate. Four of the computers were for Hamden’s Democratic incumbents: Elliott, State Rep. Mike D’Agostino, State Rep. Robyn Porter, and Sen. Looney. The fifth was for a hopeful: Cabrera. Farmer did not have a computer at the table, as he was not invited to fundraise there.

Elliott said he had decided to throw his support behind Cabrera back in December when it seemed that Cabrera was the only candidate who planned to run. He said that Cabrera has been doing the work he needs to do to run a successful campaign, and that he is now in a good position to challenge Logan.

Cabrera was drinking a glass of something light. He said his wife had grabbed it for him and he didn’t know exactly what it was; in general he prefers light beers.

“There’s no silver bullet,” he said of his approach to policy. ​“It’s not one issue. It’s all of the issues.

He talked about some of the same issues that Farmer had brought up earlier in the day. He said the state needs to fix its roads and bridges, and that the Waterbury branch of Metro-North’s New Haven Line needs significant improvements. (The Waterbury Branch runs through the 17th District.) He said the state also needs to improve its bus infrastructure.

With his union background, he said he would look for ways of partnering with unions on job training. Some unions have their own training facilities, he said, like the carpenters’ union, that perhaps the state could take advantage of. He also said the state should hold businesses to their promises when they commit to creating jobs.

He said he would like to improve Connecticut’s tax system, for instance by raising the top marginal tax rate, closing the carried-interest loophole, and perhaps instituting a mansion tax.

He also said he would fight for more grant funding for the towns in the 17th District. He said he would convene a meeting with all of the chief politicians in each town to assess their priorities.

Cabrera is a union representative for UFCW Local 919, which represents most Stop & Shop workers. In April, he led workers while they were on strike after contract negotiations stalled. He spent sunrise to sunset driving around to the stores he represents, which include the Hamden and Ansonia stores, checking in on his workers to make sure they had what they needed and bolstering their morale.

Cabrera has been holding fundraisers throughout 17th District, not only in Hamden, but also the Valley. He, like Farmer, is trying to raise enough money to qualify for the Citizens’ Election Program, which gives candidates state funding for their campaigns. He said he’s still in the fundraising portion of his campaign, which he said is his least favorite part. ​“My approach is that of an organizer,” he told the Independent. He said he much prefers talking to voters at their doorsteps.

On Thursday, Cabrera appeared on WNHH Radio’s ​“Dateline Hamden” program to discuss his run. He said he will push hard for a government-run ​“public option” alternative health plan if elected. Watch the full video of the episode below.

Primaries Help? Or Hurt?

Like Hayes, Megan Goslin, one of the organizers of the Hamden Progressive Action Network (HamPAN), showed up to both events. Unlike Hayes, who said primaries often split a party, she said the primary could strengthen the platform of the winner.

“A primary in this particular case is potentially a really good thing in terms of nailing down issues,” she said.

Many of the people who showed up to both events said they had donated to both Cabrera and Farmer. Like Goslin, some said the primary has the potential to force the candidates to nail down their policy positions and ultimately make them stronger candidates come the general election.

In 2018, Sean Grace and Valerie Horsley also sought the Democratic nomination for the 17th District. Cabrera and others said it was a very clean race that focused almost entirely on policies and stayed away from personal attacks. Once the primary was over, Democrats rallied behind Cabrera.

Cory O’Brien said he donated to both Farmer and Cabrera, and he said the discussions that happen in primaries are important. ​“I think the discussions and the topics that will be raised with Justin are going to change the discourse of the race,” he said.

Others said they were surprised that Farmer had entered the race because it seemed Cabrera had created a clear path to win.

“It seemed that there was unity behind his candidacy this time,” said Looney of Cabrera. Though he had spoken at Cabrera’s campaign launch, which took place before Farmer announced his exploratory committee, Looney said he was not making an official endorsement now that there are potentially two candidates in the race.

D’Agostino, like Looney, said he had not expected a primary in the 17th. He said he’s not sure whether it’s a good or bad thing for the party.

Joseph McDonagh, a longtime member of the Hamden Democratic Town Committee, said he would prefer that Democrats avoid a primary this year. McDonagh had shown up to Farmer’s rally in the morning.

“I wish he wouldn’t run in the 17th,” he said of Farmer. ​“I love Justin. I think he’s got a great future, … If there’s not a place for Justin Farmer in Hamden politics, there’s something wrong with Hamden,” he said, adding that he doesn’t agree with Farmer on some issues, but thinks he adds an important voice to town politics.

In 2018, he supported all three Domcratic primary candidates financially. But now, he said, ​“a primary is a distraction.” After Cabrera emerged the frontrunner in the last election, he now has the name recognition that could give Democrats a real chance to beat Logan if they can unify behind a candidate. ​“I just think that Jorge has the best opportunity,” he said.

But not all who are backing Cabrera said the primary would do damage. Elliott said that whether a primary helps or hurts a party depends on how candidates conduct themselves. If the primary focuses solely on issues, then the winner comes away stronger. If it becomes personal, then the supporters of the losing candidate could have trouble getting behind the nominee.

In this case, he said it would help the party. ​“I think the primary’s good for them no matter who comes out of it.”

Republican incumbent State Sen. George Logan also spoke about his campaign last week in an interview on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline Hamden” program. Click on the video to watch the full interview, and on the video below it watch him play electric guitar at the show’s conclusion.