Reunited Brigade Travels To Keep State Blue

With New Haven’s seat considered safe, a traveling ​“brigade” of local Democratic campaign volunteers has regrouped for the first time in four years to help a political newcomer one district over win a pathbreaking bid for U.S. Congress.

On Saturday, a dozen New Haven, Hamden, and shoreline Democratic Party advocates travelled to Meriden to canvass for that candidate, Jahana Hayes, a Waterbury high school history teacher who is running to fill the open Fifth U.S. Congressional District seat soon to be vacated by Democrat Elizabeth Esty.

If she defeats her Republican opponent Manny Santos in November’s general election, Democrat Hayes, a former National Teacher of the Year, will become New England’s first African American female congressperson and Connecticut’s first African American Democratic congressperson.

Although the fifth district does not cover New Haven, stretching instead across the northwestern part of the state from Meriden to Danbury to Salisbury, Hayes’s campaign is getting a boost this year from a group of New Haven area Democratic volunteers who worked from 2006 to 2014 to help turn the state’s entire Congressional delegation blue. (New Haven’s U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro faces a largely unfunded return challenge from a candidate who hasn’t had time to mount much of a campaign.)

Hayes, on the other hand, is running for an open seat in a Congressional district that leans Democratic, but not overwhelmingly so, in a year when the state party is desperately trying to break a tie in the State Senate and retain control of the state House and governorship. The New Haven area group, known as the Hilltop Brigade, has spurred back into action on behalf of Hayes and any down-ticket Dems who stand to benefit from the trailblazing teacher’s political success.

Hilltop Brigade 2.0

In 2005, Branford Democratic activist Penelope Bellamy helped found the first iteration of the Hilltop Brigade, a group of loyal New Haven area Dems who travelled outside of their home third congressional district, represented then as now by U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, to campaign for Democratic candidates in the three Connecticut seats then held by Republicans.

For each of the five Saturdays before November 2006’s general election, the brigade, named in honor of retaking Connecticut’s delegation to Washington D.C.’s Capitol Hill back for the Democrats, sent dozens of volunteers to campaign for Chris Murphy in the fifth district, Joe Courtney in the second district, and Diane Farrell in the fourth district.

“We were taking volunteers from non-battleground areas and moving them into battlegrounds,” Bellamy recalled on Saturday.

Murphy and Courtney won in 2006, with the ​“landslide” latter winning by just 83 votes. Although Farrell lost in 2006, the brigade helped Democrat Jim Himes defeat Republican Chris Shays in the fourth district election two years later.

Come 2014, with Connecticut’s five Congressional districts comfortable blue, the brigade disbanded.

But four years make a big difference, Bellamy said, and with the state caught in the crosshairs between an unpopular Republican president and an even more unpopular Democratic governor, she’s decided to rally the troops and do some democratic (lowercase ​“d”) Democratic (uppercase ​“D”) door-knocking on behalf of Hayes and Meriden Democratic state senate candidate Mary Daugherty Abrams.

Bellamy said that the Fifth Congressional District campaign trips for the brigade volunteers started last Saturday in Meriden, and will continue each subsequent Saturday until Nov. 6’s election.

“Making Connecticut Blue”

With two large paper bags of Braeburn apples and four tins of freshly baked cookies in tow, Bellamy arrived at Hayes’s Meriden campaign headquarters at 5 Colony St. at around 9:30 in the morning.

Overcast skies gave way to chilled intermittent rain showers outside of the rented street-level office space, which was decorated with brightly colored Democratic campaign posters and lawn signs.

By 10 a.m., around 15 campaign volunteers had shown up, many former and current members of the Hilltop Brigade.

Downtown New Haven residents Ramsay and Peggy MacMullen said that they had resumed their work with the brigade for the Hayes campaign because of the candidate’s commitment to fully funding public education and because of her compelling story as a teenage mom who grew up in Waterbury public housing and, with through her pursuit of higher education, rose to become a nationally heralded teacher and rising Democratic political phenom.

Plus, they said, they consider the Hilltop group’s strategy of traveling to swing districts a savvy and effective method for having an impact in politics.

“It was so exciting to see the Hilltop logo at the top of an email,” Peggy said to Bellamy as the two prepared to gather sheets of addresses for the morning’s canvassing.

“I think we made a contribution to making Connecticut blue,” Bellamy said.

As Bellamy and Meriden Democratic Town Committee Chairwoman Millie Torres Ferguson prepared the volunteers for their morning round of canvassing, Bellamy relayed Hartford U.S. Congressman John Larson’s insight that knocking doors in the rain is actually the best time to knock doors for a campaign. That’s because people are more likely to be home when it’s raining out, and they’re more likely to look with sympathy on a campaign volunteer who has braved the cold and soggy weather to speak in support of a candidate.

“These are very winnable seats for us,” Ferguson said about the Fifth Congressional District and the 13th State Senate District, where Abrams is facing off against Republican incumbent Len Suzio. ​“We should beat them.”

Before the group headed out into the cold, Abrams gave one last rally for her own candidacy, and for why Democrats need to win back the state senate and retain control of the congressional delegation. She said she stands for affordable and accessible healthcare, well-funded public education, fair taxation of the wealthy and corporations, a protected natural environment, and equitable access to good-paying jobs.

“When more people are more prosperous,” she said in response to a question about Republican critiques of Democratic tax hikes, ​“we’ll have more revenue.”

Education Matters

Jim Farnam, a New Haven nonprofit consultant and fellow founding member of the original Hilltop Brigade, was charged with knocking doors in Meriden’s sleepy, suburban, middle-class neighborhood of St. John.

After a few unanswered canvassing stops, Farnam found his first Hayes supporter of the day in Lois Strayhorn, a Murdock Avenue resident who has taught high school and middle school math in Connecticut for 45 years. Currently at New Britain High School, Strayhorn spent eight years teaching in New Haven at Roberto Clemente Leadership Academy and at Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School.

“We need financial help for teachers and schools,” Strayhorn said. She said that she thinks that Hayes, with her extensive professional background as a Waterbury high school history teacher, will prioritize directing more federal dollars towards public education in Connecticut.

Over on Fairway Drive, Farnam found another Hayes sympathizer in Bob Lorenzo, a second-grade teacher at Meriden’s Hanover Elementary School.

“We happen to be teachers,” Lorenzo said with a smile about him and his wife as he pledged his support for Hayes come Nov. 6. He said that their political priorities aligned closely with the Democratic Party’s: fully funding public education and providing financial support for mental health services.

Farther down Fairway Drive, father-daughter duo Tom and Stacy Jenkins said that they will almost definitely support Hayes, as they belong to a union household. Tom is a recently retired machinist. Stacy works at the Yale School of Medicine’s ophthalmology department and belongs to the university’s clerical and technical workers union, UNITE HERE Local 34.

“If she’s for the working class people,” Tom said about Hayes, ​“then I’m for her.”

Farnam did encounter one stalwart Republican naysayer to Hayes’s and Abrams’s candidacies in Steve Turgeon.

“I’m sick and tired of the way this state is run,” he told Farnam. ​“We’re spending too much money.”

With an affable wave of the hand, Farnam bid Sturgeon a good morning, and moved on to the next house on Fairway Drive.

As he scribbled a get-out-the-vote message on the back of a Hayes campaign flyer and left it at the foot of an unanswered door, Farnam reflected on why he had come out on the soggy Saturday morning two dozen miles away from his Elm City home.

“I’m committed to keeping our delegation blue,” he said.