Garrett Brings Finance Pitch To The Doors

Hamden mayoral candidate Lauren Garrett was in a hurry: She had 32 doors to knock before 3 p.m., and more to go in the evening. But when a voter answered, Garrett took her time, to listen and make her pitch.

Garrett went out canvassing with her campaign manager, Sean Grace, Thursday afternoon in the Legion Field neighborhood in advance of this coming Tuesday’s Democratic mayoral primary, in which she is challenging incumbent Curt Leng.

(Leng has also been out canvassing. Read about that here.)

Sometimes, sticking around with a voter paid off.

After a few knocks, Jane Bouvier opened her door and stood in the doorway holding the flyer Garrett had handed her.

Bouvier began by telling Garrett that she didn’t really see much of a difference between the two candidates.

It was time for Garrett to make her pitch.

“The real difference here is that we have a lot of challenges, and I think we need to come up with a plan to deal with those challenges, especially the debt and the pension,” she told Bouvier.

Garrett stayed at Bouvier’s door for the next ten minutes discussing various issues the town faces.

Bouvier said she has heard that Hamden does not get much funding from the state or from the federal government. She asked Garrett if that is true and what she would do about it.

“We get Education Cost Sharing (ECS) money, but we’re shorted by the state for sure,” Garrett replied. She promised that she would fight every day to get more money from the state. But economic development, she added, is going to be the best way to increase revenues for the town

“We need to start developing Hamden, to take the burden off taxpayers,” she said.

Next came another hot-button topic in Hamden: how to deal with the Quinnipiac students who live off campus. There’s house with students a few doors down, said Bouvier. They haven’t bothered her, but they hosted a party recently that kept her neighbor up. Some of the party guests peed on her neighbor’s lawn.

Quinnipiac needs to encourage more students to live on campus, Garrett replied. The town can help, she said, by encouraging development near the university.

As Garrett prepared to leave, she asked Bouvier if she knew whom she would vote for on Tuesday.

“Well, I’m leaning towards you,” Bouvier replied.

“So, a solid two,” Grace said as he and Garrett walked away from the house. That was the number that Garrett entered into her miniVAN app, the app that Democratic campaigns across the country use to organize canvassing efforts and keep track of voters. If the campaign records a ​“two” for a voter, that means the voter is leaning towards the candidate. A ​“one” means the voter is definitely a supporter. Garrett marked all five of the voters she spoke with Thursday afternoon as either a ​“one” or a ​“two.”

Grace and Garrett have been out canvassing for three months now. Garrett, said Grace, is the team’s strongest canvasser. She alone has knocked on over 10,000 doors, and has spoken to thousands of voters.

Thursday was the last day of ​“ID-ing” voters, when the campaign tries to collect information on which way voters are leaning. On Friday, the campaign enters its Get Out the Vote (GOTV) period, when Garrett, Grace, and other volunteers plan to canvass 12 or more hours each day until Tuesday to make sure that the voters who said they would vote for Garrett actually get out and vote.

Garrett and Grace started canvassing at 11 a.m. on Thursday. They stopped at around 12:30 for a snack at Best Video, then got back into Grace’s Honda Odyssey and drove up Whitney Avenue to Carmel Street, where they parked to begin the afternoon canvass. Garrett had a meeting from 3 until 5 p.m., then planned to continue hitting the doors until about 8 p.m.

Garrett and Grace managed to knock on 25 of the 32 doors on the list Thursday afternoon before Garrett had to head off to her meeting. She only spoke with five of the voters she was trying to reach — a 13 percent contact rate. Low, but typical for an early afternoon canvass.

Some of the doors Garrett had already visited a few months ago. When that much time has elapsed since the last visit, Grace explained, even when voters said they would vote for Garrett, their commitment might ​“have gone stale.” When the initial conversation a voter has is with Garrett herself, Grace said, the interaction tends to be more powerful and voters are less likely to change their minds. Still, it’s always good to revisit those voters just in case.

At Loren Poin’s house, though, Garrett didn’t need to worry. When she introduced herself as Poin peered out of his door, he remembered her. ​“You’ve come by before,” he said. ​“We’ll be voting for you, actually. Your appeal was really good.” He said he finds her focus on the environment and on police accountability compelling. He added that he hadn’t heard police accountability mentioned in Hamden elections before.

Jim (who preferred not to give his last name) was blowing grass clippings off his driveway with a leaf-blower when Garrett and Grace approached. Garrett got his attention, and he turned it off.

“Oh! I’ve heard a lot about you,” he told her after she introduced herself. After a brief conversation about the Laurel View Golf Course, for which Leng declared a public emergency in May to get the water turned back on, Jim gave Garrett some encouragement.

“I think more people are going to vote for you than they think,” he said. People are ready, he said, for a change from the ​“same old politics.”