Justin Elicker
Failure is an option. That’s at least how Justin Elicker sees it.
Back in 2013, Elicker cemented his name as a New Haven staple when he made a bid for the top office in the city and lost to the currently seated mayor, Toni Harp.
Elicker recalled that experience on the most recent #FailMonth edition of WNHH FM’s Werk it Out program. But he said he doesn’t consider his unsuccessful run for mayor to be a failure.
On the program, Elicker recalled when former Mayor John DeStefano announced in 2013 that he would not seek another term after 20 years in office. It was shortly after Elicker made his own announcement that he would vacate an alder seat and throw his name in the ring for mayor.
“I remember someone that I knew quite well sending me a text saying, ‘You’re going to be the next mayor’ because John DeStefano had dropped out,” he said. “And I remember thinking the result was going to be quite different.”
He was right. With DeStefano’s announcement, several other contenders stepped up to make a bid. New Haveners will remember Kermit Carolina and Henry Fernandez as two of the more prominent Democrats.
But after a primary, when it came down to the general election, it was just Harp and Elicker. (Elicker, who came in second in the Democratic primary, ran as an independent in the general election.)
“So many people think of failure in the short term, and they look at something that they were not successful at the first time as having failed,” he said. “But I would say in most cases your initial failure often sets you up for many other successes in the future.”
The success Elicker found after gaining 45 percent of the vote to Harp’s 55 percent rooted him in New Haven’s community. He has spent the last four years as executive director for the New Haven Land Trust, an organization he said was struggling when he arrived.
Applying some of the skills and insight he gained from running his campaign, he said, he has taken the organization from two part-time staffers to five full-time staffers and a budget that is four times what it was when he joined.
“None of that would have happened if I had won for mayor,” he said. “It’s been so exciting to take an organization that was really struggling, and make it into an organization that is what I would like to say is doing some exciting, interesting, innovative things in New Haven.”
He wouldn’t say if he plans to run again for mayor in 2019, but he said elections aren’t completely in his past. He said he’s still eager to help young people break into politics and offers his personal number for anyone needing political advice.
As for losing the mayoral seat, he doesn’t really see that as a fail at all.
“Did I fail? Maybe I did. Objectively, yes,” Elicker said with a chuckle..
“[But it’s a] reminder that if you are persistent and fail a number of times, you may succeed in the long run.”
Click on or download the above audio file or the Facebook Live video below to hear the full episode of Werk It Out on WNHH 103.5.
The fail that was that taxpaying homeowners and the non-patronage wing of the Democratic Party were looking to people like Elicker, Stratton and Hausladen for representation and true leadership. Instead of organizing a counter-balancing force to machine politics, these folks essentially allowed themselves to be bought out. (In fairness Stratton just self-destructed.)
How much different New Haven politics would be today if Elicker had built an organization and kept his supporters together, engaged in a lasting political conversation with the clique that currently controls City government.
Sigh. Huge sigh...