Mayoral Challenges Set

Against a backdrop of change and controversy in the town, Hamden Councilwoman Lauren Garrett is launching a Democratic primary challenge to Mayor Curt Leng, while a Republican is planning a general-election challenge.

Garrett plans to announce her candidacy Wednesday on the steps of Hamden Memorial Town Hall at 5 p.m.

“I want to make sure that we have a long-term plan for Hamden,” she told the Independent. She said that she will run on a platform of financial responsibility.

Jay Kaye, who is production manager at Ferraro’s Painting and Restoration, said he plans to file paperwork next week for a candidacy for the Republican mayoral nomination. Tentative plans are for a formal campaign announcement on May 28. 

Leng, meanwhile, has filed papers to seek a third two-year term.

The campaign comes at a time when Hamden has undergone a leftward political shift. Since 2016, former Bernie Sanders presidential volunteers have elected a (now) leading statewide progressive to the legislature — Joshua Elliott — and social-change activist Justin Farmer to the Legislative Council; and formed the Hamden Progressive Action Network (Ham PAN), which has become a force in not just local but regional elections. Garrett has been an active member of HamPAN since its founding. HamPAN does not make candidate endorsements, said Co-Founder Jen Pope, and it will share information from both candidates. However, she said that she, acting as an individual, only plans to ​“support one candidate financially at this point, and that is Lauren.”

The campaign also coincides with a series of controversies — from a police officer’s shooting of an unarmed woman to another officer’s threats of violence and immigration action against an unarmed Latino driver; to complaints related to diversity in schools — that reflect the town’s changing demographics. Leng has found himself in the middle of social-change protestors seeking a shift to 21st century community policing and civilian review; and an old guard seeking to promote a longtime insider to the chief’s position. Leng has also found himself the subject of criticism from council members and residents over how he and previous mayors have handled town finances.

Hamden currently has 17,107 registered Democrats, 4,049 Republicans, and 11,914 unaffiliated voters.

Garrett: ​“Financial Responsibility”

Garrett said that the reason she decided to run for mayor ​“was mostly financial,” as was her decision to run for the council in 2017.

In 2017, before she was elected to the council, she decided to show up to meetings and observe the budget process. That budget, she said, included ​“some erroneous revenues that nobody felt confident about. And as it turned out, we came up short. I felt pretty strongly that relying on that money wasn’t the right thing to do… So I decided that I would run for council because I wanted to be a voice of financial responsibility.”

That year, she won a seat as an at-large member of the council.

Now she wants to bring her ideas of financial responsibility to the mayor’s office, she said.

Garrett vocally questioned Leng’s management of town finances. In December, she helped organize a meeting to discuss how Leng had closed the previous year’s budget shortfall by short-funding the pension and sweeping funds from bonded capital projects. In the current budget process, she has called Leng’s revenue projections inflated. She has also been a vocal opponent of transfers out of the pension line in the budget, such as those that the council passed April 18. 

“One of the biggest problems we have in Hamden is that we’ve been pushing off the bills,” she said. ​“We’ve been pushing off the pension and we’ve been pushing off our debt… It may give you a break on your mill rate in the short term, but it’s going to go up even higher a few years down the road.”

She said that she is working with ​“an expert” to create a long-term financial plan for the town, which she said she hopes to have done in about a month. She said she hopes to present a few options on a public website for the council’s, and public’s, consideration.

“Right now,” she said, Hamden has ​“barely even a one-year plan. It’s budget by budget.”

Garrett said she supports the creation of a civilian review board as well as an independent investigation into the shooting of Stephanie Washington.

The Hamden Democratic Town Committee plans to hold its convention in July, when it will decide who to endorse for the Democratic nomination for mayor. Whoever does not get the nomination can then file to run as a primary challenger. Garrett said that if she does not get the DTC’s nomination she will challenge Leng in a primary. She said she would not run as an independent if she loses the primary.

Council Majority Leader Cory O’Brien, who often sides with Garrett, said he will wait until the DTC convention and then decide whether he will make an endorsement, though he said that ​“on issues, I align with Lauren a lot more than I do with Curt.”

Kaye: Beyond One-Party Control

Like Garrett, Kaye said he will make town finances the centerpiece of his campaign.

He said that he would like to provide the town with ​“options for controlling spending, for making sure that the budgets are accurate, making sure that the departments are being managed properly and to the full extent that they should be managed.”

“I feel that there could be maybe some more cost savings realized with a little bit more of a concerted effort into managing the departments themselves,” he told the Independent.

Kaye said he started paying attention to town politics more and more over the past few years, as taxes have increased. He said he started going to meetings a year and a half ago, and that he ​“just felt like the town maybe needed more options than the one-party control that’s been prevalent for the last 20 – 30 years.”

He also said that he would like to revitalize southern Hamden. ​“Southern Hamden in particular has been made a lot of promises and I don’t really see any fruition to those promises,” he said. Southern Dixwell Avenue, he said, should be the focus of a revitalization of businesses and restaurants. He added that southern Hamden lacks adequate public transportation.

He said he would like to see a more ​“proactive approach” to managing the police department. ​“I think that a civilian review board is not a bad idea,” he said, but proactive measures like hiring a new permanent chief and moving faster to update the police pursuit policy ​“might have suited situations like this a little better.”

Marjorie Bonadies, the council’s minority leader, said that Kaye has a ​“great combination of compassion and fiscal restraint.” She said she will endorse him.

Kaye said he does not know of anyone planning to challenge him for the Republican nomination. Bonadies said she did not think anyone will.

Leng: Keep Going

Leng said he looks forward to campaigning on his administration’s ​“successes and continuing efforts to build a stronger Hamden.”

He responded to the criticism over his fiscal management by defending his record.

“We need to separate fact from fiction. Protecting the town and ensuring that we balanced our books in a time of great challenges with loss of state revenue was essential. The alternative would have been gigantic tax increases, which wouldn’t be right for our residents, our seniors or our business community,” he stated.

“Sometimes government solutions can seem slow. It’s much easier to sit behind a table and say what’s wrong without recommending solutions.

“The reality is that my team and I have negotiated union agreements that include pension changes that will save tens of millions, have contributed more to the pension fund since becoming mayor than any fou-year period in the town’s history. Enough with the constant fear mongering and half-truths. We are stronger financially and otherwise than we were yesterday, than we were a decade ago and we will be even stronger tomorrow.”