She surrounds herself with unsavory characters and has family members who owe taxes. He takes “bundles” of donations just like everyone else and poses sexist questions.
“She” is Toni Harp, the Democratic candidate for mayor — as depicted by Justin Elicker.
“He” is Justin Elicker, as depicted by Toni Harp.
Elicker and Harp offered those depictions Sunday morning in a lively campaign debate televised live on WTNH. Harp, a Democrat, and Elicker, a petitioning candidate, square off Tuesday in a mayoral election to decide the successor to retiring 20-year-incumbent John DeStefano.
At times the debate came down to the question: Who has cleaner hands?
WTNH politics reporter Mark Davis moderated Sunday morning’s free-form debate. Click on the above video to watch it.
The final match-up between the two — and at least the 17th debate of this year’s mayoral campaign (people have lost count) — repeatedly returned to the issue of clean government. Elicker pressed Harp on two matters that have arisen in the campaign’s closing weeks: Allegations of improper handling of absentee ballots by the campaign of Harp’s city/town clerk running mate; and Harp’s embrace of two controversial figures from the heyday of 1990s City Hall corruption scandals, zoning lawyer and former state Sen. Anthony Avallone and ex-development chief Sal Brancati. Elicker mentioned the latter pair’s names twice in the debate’s first 20 minutes.
“Toni has surrounded herself with people .. with a history of corruption in this city,” Elicker said. “Her running mate is now involved in [an absentee ballot] scandal.”
Referring to Harp’s argument that she has far more experience for the job — serving as a state senator for 21 years and an alderwoman for 5 years before that, compared to Elicker’s total of four years as an alderman — Elicker remarked, “Richard Nixon had a lot of experience. You see where that got us.”
Paul Bass Photo
Davis with Harp & Elicker on set of Sunday’s televised debate.
Prompted by a question posed by Davis, Elicker also hamemered at Harp for failing to file federal income tax returns a decade ago; and for a contested $1.1 million (with interest) state tax debt her husband left behind in his real-estate business when he died. And Elicker continued to criticize Harp for declining to participate in the city’s voluntary public-financing program, instead accepting tens of thousands of dollars from political action committees as well as $1,000 contributions from out-of-town contractors.
“As a homeowner in New Haven, I find it hard to believe anyone can run for mayor with the tax background [state] Sen. Harp has,” Elicker declared.
“A mayor cannot ask people to pay taxes if they don’t take responsibility for their own taxes.”
Harp responded that her personal tax problems are more than a decade old; that her husband’s business was separate from her; and that her son, who inherited the business, is negotiating a tax settlement with the state.
She also noted that Elicker’s wife Natalie, not Elicker himself, is the legal named owner of the couple’s house.
“I’m the first woman who runs for mayor who has to stand for her spouse’s business practices,” said Harp, who notes that she has been an influential elected official for 26 years while also working with the homeless as a staffer at the Cornell Scott Hill Health Center. “As a woman, he’s asking me questions that as a man have never been asked of him.”
“He’s just digging through all the garbage he can to run the kind of negative campaign he said he would never run,” Harp added.
She said her campaign workers are trained to follow the law in helping people apply for absentee ballots. She noted that absentee ballot fraud allegations against her running mate, clerk candidate Michael Smart, come from his opponent in the election, incumbent Clerk Ron Smith.
“These are all allegations,” Harp said. Rather than “jump to conclusions,” people should wait for allegations to be investigated, she argued. “If there’s wrongdoing, they should be prosecuted.”
“People know who I am. I’ve been around for 26 years,” Harp said. “They don’t have to guess what I’m going to do. … I have a history of being independent.”
Then she addressed Elicker’s criticism of her failure to participate in the public-financing system (aka The Democracy Fund), in which candidates swear off committee contributions and individual contributions over $370 in exchange for matching public dollars. Harp said that Elicker has accepted “bundles” of contributions from associated groups of people.
“Numbers of attorneys bundled for you, Justin. I don’t think that you come to this conversation frankly with clean hands,” Harp said.
“… If you bundle money, you bundle money, whether it’s $370 [per contribution] or more.”
Stop & Frisk
The candidates also differed somewhat when asked about “stop-and-frisk” police tactics.
Moderator Davis asked if New Haven should follow New York City in instructing cops to stop people they consider suspiciously on a more regular basis and frisk them. (A federal judge ordered New York to stop the process; an appeals court stopped the order.)
Harp responded that the tactic leads to racial profiling, so the city shouldn’t use it. She said the police department already has the “tools” it needs to zero in on troublemakers. She noted that Police Chief Dean Esserman told her the department, through intelligence work, has identified the compact group of people — around 50 — who cause the most violent trouble in town. The cops can therefore focus on the right targets, she said.
“We know who these children are,” Harp said. “We know who their families are.” A combination of community policing, social services, and more youth programs can address the trouble they cause, Harp argued.
“We do not have the tools we need,” Elicker responded. He criticized Harp for not helping the city get a state law passed to create an entertainment district in which the city could charge nightclubs an fee to pay for extra police coverage.
Harp responded that the city could already do that through existing special services districts, which have taxing power. She said she has recommended passing the city-suggested law this coming session, but isn’t sure it’s necessary. Rather, she said, the mayor should take leadership to bring club owners and the cops together to ensure adequate security.
Booker vs. Myrick
The candidates also offered different answers when asked whom they consider the country’s best mayor.
Harp suggested Newark’s Cory Booker (pictured), whom she described as “an intellectual” who “got rid of a lot of corruption” and just got rewarded by becoming the state’s new U.S. senator.
Elicker suggested the mayor of Ithaca, N.Y., 26-year-old Cornell grad Svante Myrick (pictured), one of the country’s youngest-ever African-American mayors. He spoke of Myrick’s energy and his success in enlisting Cornell to help spark a new business district. Click here to read more about the Ithaca parallel, as advanced by Elicker supporter Jack Hitt.
The first overwhelming impression from this debate is that Toni Harp has improved her debating skills markedly since her first attempts at the beginning of this campaign season (except for when she became embarrassingly flustered this morning over the question of her own taxes and her family's taxes). The second, and takeaway impression, for this voter, is that Justin Elicker remains the candidate who New Haven can expect will run a forthright, responsive, scandal-free, idea-driven administration.
But of course those of us who have made up our minds, on either side, are not going to be swayed by viewing one hour of television. We are all going to find points to justify our already determined positions.
At this point, it is up to undecided voters to decide 1) whether to vote at all, and 2) whom to vote for. I urge them to think carefully about how New Haven this year really does have an actual choice, for a change -- that there is a real opportunity here to break away from rule by an entrenched power structure, which this year created and is pushing the candidacy of Toni Harp, and to select instead a candidate who, if elected, will derive his power from the people who elected him, rather than from monied special interests who are used to getting their own way around here, and want to continue to do so.
And as a concluding thought, I think that on the basis of today's debate, anyone wondering whether Justin Elicker is tough enough to be able to stand up to old pols who are used to running the city, and who might want to try to make mincemeat out of him, got a clear answer from his performance -- he can be as tough as they come, when he needs to be.