Millennials Cycle Into Mayoral Race

Marcus Paca’s campaign found a way Thursday to get 20 and 30-something moving in local politics: order them some pizza and invite them on the Elm City Party Bike.

The Democrat’s campaign for mayor has a Millennial Task Force, which invited young professionals to Ah Beetz pizza on Temple Street after work Thursday afternoon and hired out New Haven’s new mobile pedal-bar with wheels to pedal around downtown and talk about how to make a better city.

Paca was determined not to wear a suit to the event.

The weather had finally started to feel like summer, and the candidate was going to be riding for a few hours and talking to some of the city’s 20 and 30-somethings about why they should vote for him to be their next mayor. A suit was out of the question.

After discussing it with his most trusted campaign aide, his wife Mendi Blue, he arrived at Ah Beetz at the end of the workday in a short-sleeved button down shirt, cargo shorts, and Nike huaraches. He was ready to shake some hands, share his vision for how millennials would help chart the city’s course under his leadership, and he fit in with a crowd that was a mixture of after work, summer casual and ready for fun.

Paca is the first candidate to rent the Elm City Party Bike, which is already a hit with millennials, for an event, according to co-owner Colin Caplan. The beer-pizza-cycling event reflects a challenge facing local office-seekers: how to bridge a generational divide and start harnessing the energy of millennials who haven’t so far swarmed to political campaigns.

At 40, running against an incumbent mayor nearing 70, Paca is just a decade or so older than the millennials he’s working to attract to his campaign. He is in the process of petitioning his way on to the Sept. 12 Democratic Party mayoral primary ballot against two-term incumbent Toni Harp. He needs 1,872 signatures from registered Democrats. He added up a few more Thursday as his happy hour event was gearing up. (He needs only 220 voters, of any party, to run unaffiliated in the Nov. 7 general election.)

The energy was high Thursday as the first group of about 11 people, many of them already Paca supporters, prepared to make the downtown loop past busy bars and restaurants in the city. Those who didn’t make the first trip stayed back at Ah Beetz enjoying pizza and drinks.

As the first group pedaled their way up Crown Street they joined Paca in waving and shouting ​“Vote for Paca” to people on the street, dining outside and driving with their windows down. Many people honked their horns, while others waved and smiled at the enthusiastic group.

The event was the brainchild of 34-year-old Kelly Moore, who heads up Paca’s Millennial Task Force. She works at Yale Law School as an assistant director in the business office and grew up in the city, though she wasn’t born here.

“I just love this town,” Moore said. ​“Nothing else compares to New Haven.”

It would have been easy for her to vote for the incumbent mayor. Harp’s late husband, Wendell, helped her family with housing when they first moved here from a U.S. Air Force base in California. The New Haven Works job-placement agency helped her get her foot in the door at Yale. She voted for Harp in the past. But she said this time she felt different: She didn’t want to continue to support an incumbent as blindly as she said has been done in this town in the past.

“The heart of democracy is us being involved and our voices mattering,” she said. ​“It’s not so much the argument of different political views. We need to make sure that everyone is a part of the process and then let the majority decide. One of the foundational pieces that drew me to Marcus was his passion for getting people involved. That’s where my passion is, in inclusion.”

She said Paca wasn’t trying to foist an agenda on her or anyone else but was genuinely interested in the ideas of others.
​“We just need to hear from them and remind them that this is a place that they can come and talk about how they feel and what their vision is,” she said of young voters like her. ​“And then we have to figure out how we turn those dreamers into believers.

“One of the hardest things we face, and what we saw in the federal election, everyone doesn’t feel like their voice is being heard,” Moore added. ​“If we don’t give people those options, our democracy is going to fail.”

When the boisterous party bike pulled in for a pit stop near Barracuda Bar & Bistro, Paca asked members of his pedal party to share what they love about the city and what kind of ideas they had for making the city better. That also opened the door for him to talk about some of his ideas about improving job opportunities and increasing mental health awareness.

Britt Lewis-Dupree, 33, said she was happy that Paca created an opportunity for the young professionals in the city to have their voices heard and that’s important because they are making the choice to live, work and raise their families in New Haven, and they’re doing that over other places they could be.

“We’re on the front lines of whatever profession that we’re in,” said Lewis-Dupree, who has been a clinical social worker for about a decade. ​“We see things that people in certain offices don’t always see.”

She said Paca’s commitment to taking the Millennial Task Force beyond the campaign trail impressed her.

“My field is mental health … If can help shape policy based on my experience working in the field, I would love the opportunity,” she said.

Paca, of course, isn’t the only candidate running hard after the millennial vote. Harp’s team is led by 34-year-old Jesse Phillips said that like Paca, the Harp campaign is using happy hours, brunches and networking events to connect with a younger demographic, Phillips said. Philips said Harp has been most active with the Urban Professional Network, also known as UPN, and the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce’s PULSE group, which is for young professionals 21 to 40.

“She wants to make sure that the city is working on policies and ideas and trying to retain us here in New Haven,” he said. ​“You can go to New York, Boston, Atlanta, Houston, but she wants you to have reasons to stay. We want to be the No. 1 city for startups but also No. 1 for young families to move here.”

It would seem to be hard to have a one-on-one conversation with someone on a party bike. But Paca and Cerrone Bell, 25, managed to do it. It turns out that years ago when Bell was applying for college, he bumped into Paca in Stop & Shop.

Bell was wearing hoodie with the name of Paca’s alma mater, storied historically black Hampton University, emblazoned on it that day. Paca chatted him up over the sweatshirt and ultimately wrote a letter of recommendation for Bell. He didn’t get into the school, heading instead to the nation’s oldest HBCU, Lincoln University, but he never forgot how Paca had tried to help him.

Bell is now a financial assistant in the Office of Sponsored Projects at Yale. He said he stands ready to help Paca, just as Paca helped him.

“I let him know I would do anything I could to help,” said the New Haven native, who grew up in the Newhallville section of the city. ​“He actually
bridges the gap with my political interests. I hate politics. I don’t like what it does to people but it makes it more genuine that I know what his commitment is and what he’s done for me. So I can only assume that he will transfer that to the community. He’s built trust with me already.”