Yes, Elicker & Harp Will Debate

I thought they had agreed to three?

Does anybody have the story as to why there will only be one? Pretty lame, all in all. Not what democracy is supposed to look like!

ONLY one debate? I thought Harp was saying TWO before. What happened to that?

Maybe the "Democratic nominee" doesn't feel like she needs to debate, and is doing us all a service.

Please, NHI et al, no more "what do you like most/least about the other candidate" questions. Keep the questions pointed and relevant, and don't be afraid to remind candidates when they haven't answered the question. Require that the candidates give specific responses - a little more detail than better schools, safer streets this time. Some criticism of the opponent is fine, as long as it's substantiated with facts.

Thank you.

Will someone please ask Toni why she and her husband paid only about a tenth of the building fees that were due on her Conrad Drive mansion? (For the record they paid the fees on only the first $160,000 of construction costs on their twenty room, 9,700 sf palace.)

http://www.nhregister.com/general-news/20131017/new-haven-mayoral-candidate-harps-home-under-scrutiny

Of course Toni's response will be something along the lines of, "I don't own the house, I just live there..."

My worry is that supporters who attend from either or both sides will be intent on making this final public joint event as much a pep rally as a discussion, with a lot of disruptions.

I very much hope that the moderator and questioners can talk beforehand about a strategy for maintaining order and allowing as much time as possible for candidates' statements rather than audience interruptions.

(And note: yes, there will be at least a second debate, on WTNH at -- 8 a.m., early the Sunday morning before election day. Sheesh! Just when everyone in New Haven will be watching!)

I heard this interesting rumor from a certain Red-Headed Step Child, that she expects to be in attendance........she will see you there!

I guess the format can be more open ended with only two people up there. Does anyone have an idea of what the format will be? Hopefully it will be interesting to see what they do with more than 60 seconds.

Who is furnishing the questions? Will the NHI take submissions from the readers again?

Anderson Scooper... I also don't think democracy is about getting your hind kicked in a primary and then stripping yourself of the Party and doing it again. He should have run like the Republican that he is from the start.

Please ask him why he served Bush/Cheney for so long without ever questioning their policy.

Does anyone else see the irony here?

The debate will be held at a location where you must produce a Photo I.D. to enter and view the "open to the public forum".

Yet, if on election day, someone is asked to procduce a Photo I.D. before they CAST A VOTE, that is Voter Suppression/Disenfranchisement. Producing an I.D. is not a hardship to be at the debate, but it is to vote??

I'm sure the answer will be that those are the rules of G.C.C. But the debate is being held in a Cafeteria! Is that the best they could come up with? Why not hold the debate in a true public forum, like The Green, where everyone can attend.

So, Justin Elicker is the top bill in all of this despite losing the primary??? Can we say media bias?

Please please stop with the Bush/Cheney nonsense. As we learned this week, there are about 2 million federal employees. Should every one of them quit their jobs if they are of a different party than the President? It is such an unbelievably disengenous attack on Elicker. If you want to be critical of his policies or work in New Haven, fine. But the admininstration during his State Department employment is completely irrelevant.

Ex-NHPD

Going to a mayoral debate is not a basic civil right. People might be more inclined to support IDs for voting if 1. in person voting fraud was actually a problem, and 2. a certain political party wasn't using a non existent problem as an excuse to in fact try to keep demographics that vote for a certain other party from voting.

@SSSS

Let them keep going, it's just sad. I'm sure they like every campaign have people trying to find some dirty laundry on their opponent, and this is the best they can do. Besides, it raises the opportunities for some hilarious paraody.
"Justin enjoys life, this is reminiscent of George W Bush's pro-life policy"
"Justin was alive between 2001-2009, much like George Bush was."
"Justin has an E in his name, just like George Bush"

Ex-NHPD:
The difference between showing a photo ID to enter Gateway versus showing one at the polls is that Gateway security will accept any form of photo ID. Restrictive voter ID laws require people to show certain types of state-issued identification for which people often have to pay to acquire. A registered New Haven voter wouldn't be allowed to show their Gateway student ID or even their Elm City Resident card to vote. Both of those forms of ID are free.

Various independent studies have shown that voter fraud is essentially a non-existent myth used to perpetuate partisan interests.

Not that I want to defend voter ID laws but I think a student ID is acceptable.

Glad to hear that there will be more than one debate, although the timing of the second is a bit odd.

@cityoyen, "on WTNH at—8 a.m., early the Sunday morning before election day. Sheesh! Just when everyone in New Haven will be watching!)"

Did you notice that NBC30 covered a PRIMARY debate live in the late afternoon, yet WTNH can only muster up this?

It is not very surprising given WTNH'S "brand" but disappointing nonetheless that we get flat, dead, uninspired and rare coverage from the television station that is "stationed" in our city/

Anderson Scooper, I thought so too. Best guess why not three? One person is very articulate and gives direct answers. The other avoids giving strait answers.

Amen, NHV Greenie and citoyen.

Citizen X, as someone sworn to defend The Constitution, and sees this as an article of faith, a matter of ultimate concern, your version of democracy is not mine. We have a one party system in New Haven, and that is very undemocratic.

Ex-NHPD and TheMadcap, I am going to disagree, in that, going to a mayoral debate is a basic civil right, and ID cards for this and voting is beyond the pale.

Atticus Shrugged, could this be a function of alphabetical listing?

I still cannot understand why anyone other than developers or the politically connected would ever vote for Toni Harp. Throughout the entire campaign, starting with the primary, she has consistently feigned ignorance when any negative things surfaces. "I think someone said there was a certificate of occupancy I think she said as I remember to the best of my political recollection I think..." Toni often comes across as being in a SNL skit - she just appears to be clueless about everything except the health conditions of police officers (at the long wharf debate, she said that police officers get high blood pressure). So, Harp gets traumatized when she walks in the hood, said that she does not know what happened to the resources she brings into New Haven, has no clue about her late husband's business but those who did business with him say she has been in the business a long-time, has never once said her son should pay the taxes he owes, failed to pay her own income taxes because she was busy being a parent and she can't really say why she did not pay, completely screwed over Gary Holder-Winfield, has no idea about an important telephone poll, cries sexism when held accountable, and claims to have brought community policing to New Haven, but has yet to provide one shred of evidence to support that claim. Yup, Toni Harp is the perfect candidate to succeed King John because she ensures that his legacy will remain in tact.

Citizen X,

If you are as confident in your candidate as you seem to be, why are you so concerned about the other candidate in the race running as an Independent? Were the other candidate breaking the law or doing something that is against the rules then you would have a case in protesting his appearance in the general election.

Since no rules or laws are being broken, there is no bases for your incessant demand that the candidate(s) who ran in the primary not be able to run in the general election as independents.

The only thing that you've accomplished with your obsessive focus on who should or should not be in this race at this point is making yourself (and whomever you're writing for) appear as if you're running scared.

Win the race at the polls, and stop trying to delegitimize your opponent.

One more thing. Given the frightening threats against Gateway earlier this year I think it's very smart that they keep track of who's entering the building http://www.nhregister.com/general-news/20130220/east-haven-woman-19-accused-of-threatening-mass-shooting-at-gateway-document

Madcap...

Justin promoted the Cheney Halliburton foreign policy strategy abroad, just like George Bush.

It has no bearing on the millions of government workers, he was one of 8,000 employees trying to justify the lies and distortions of that horrid administration.

Citizens of New Haven:

Join The Guilty Party for our First and Last Ever Convention, to be held concurrently in time and space with this year's Mayoral Debate.

All are welcome to caucus in our open free-thinking empowerment zone, in support of the Great Masquerade that is New Haven Politics.

Citizen's of New Haven,

I regret to inform you that our 'Poster Child' for the Guilty Party, Little Miss Mess-Up, has, apparaently, gone rogue.

But then again, we at the Guilty Party know that we CANNOT CONTROL the HUMAN SPIRIT....

Perhaps LMMU's message is:
POLITICAL ACTION SPEAKS LOUDER THAN WORDS.

I don't know what she has in store, I think I am going to have to shave to find out......

The Bush/Cheney remarks are so ridiculous and silly. I was employed by the city and didn't agree with a lot of what our mayor was doing and was not a fan of him and his policies for approximately the past 8-10 years. Yet I stayed on for a total of 17 years. No I didn't quit my job! Did that make me a DeStefano supporter or a bad person? Geesh, do you know how ridiculous you sound?

True.....I couldn't agree more with your comments!

@ Ture That, if you are so confident in your candidate why are you concerned about why anyone would vote for Toni Harp. She received nearly 50% of the vote in a 4 way race.

Win the race at the polls if you can!

Big surprise Harp does not want to debate. She's one of the worst public speakers I have ever seen. Her voice is shaky and her answers often turn into incoherent babbling as she struggles to run out the clock. I would love to see a format with real questions and 3-5 minute response time. It would be very entertaining to watch the Toni Harp meltdown live.

I agree with HewNaven - Harp's previous debate performances were absolutely shocking. She would have been better off not showing up.

As an avid Harp supporter, I look forward to the debate tomorrow though I think its superfluous. Moreover, anyone who judges a person's ability to govern on a debate is highly misguided. Being a leader doesn't mean producing quick 1 or 2 minute responses, its about the longer drawn out thought process, bringing people together, and getting collective results. Henry was by far and away a better debater than Mr. Elicker or Ms. Harp, yet he lost because people realize that is not what counts. With that said, I do look forward to her being self-assured and confident and ready to go tomorrow.

To those who don't distinguish employer from employee, there are many times when we do and it is completely acceptable. Not every soldier in every war agreed with the decisions their war time president made, yet, if you ask any member on their receiving force they are just as guilty and liable as the policy makers. Ms. Braffman, if you did not support Mayor DeStefano and did not work to unseat him while you reaped the benefit of your office, you are as complicit in his policies as he.

@ Samuel T. Ross-Lee -- "Win the race at the polls, and stop trying to delegitimize your opponent."

She's already more than doubled his vote totals in the Primary and is on course to repeat in the General. So there is no fear in facing the voters for a second time on Nov 5th, in what certainly seems to be an unnecessary "Lieberman two-step" do over. Unfortunately, what Elicker supporters fail to understand is that the comments addressing his prior Republican Party leanings (having been raised as Republican in New Canaan, and having been appointed by the Bush-Cheney Administration to serve in an important foreign policy position) calls into question his truthfulness and commitment to claiming newly found Democratic officeholder status, and alternately Independent candidate ballot status. New Haven is in fact a Democratic leaning town, with voters who deeply care whether their potential office holders are Democrat or Republican. To most of our residents it does indeed matter far more than it matters to Mr. Elicker and his group. It is surely as appropriate for Citizen X to note Mr. Elicker's glaring ideological flip-flops as it is for Elicker supporters to continually raise questions about sales and use taxes her dead husband's business owed, and which are being satisfactorily handled in due course of his estate's administration. The taxes are not hers any more than they are yours. And with those tactics no one is more guilty of attempts to "delegitimize" the opposition than the Elicker East Rock Elites.

So I would offer up the same challenge to Elicker supporters as you offer to Citizen X. "Win the race at the polls! Stop with the lying and demonizing and the never-ending personal attacks upon Sen Harp, her family, and everyone who dares endorse or support her. It adds nothing positive to the debate, and in the long run is counterproductive.

Razzie,

What I haven't read from the Elicker supporters on here are claims that Harp should not be in the race at all based their disagreements with her.

Further, the fact that New Haven has an majority Democratic base does not mean, of course, that a person from another party is ineligible to run for office here.

The oddest thing that I've read from the Elicker detractors is this obssessive claim that he, somehow, is not a legitimate candidate in this race because he worked in Washington under a Republican president and ran in the primary as a Democrat before switching to run as an Independent in the general election.

Neither of these things is illegal nor run counter to the rules. So, you brought them up as things that you don't like about this candidate, but followong them up with "he shouldn't be running" is quite extreme. Hence, my statement "win the election at the polls".

Your statments should be about convincing people to vote for your candidate, not about trying to have your candidate run unopposed for reasons that are dubious, at best.

A little accountability for my comrades: I would like to encourage my fellow Toni supporters to back off this Bush Cheney nonsense.

Justin was not appointed by Bush to an important post. He took a job as a career foreign service officer after passing the exam, similar to any federal civil service job. He was sent to his postings through a bidding process based on qualifications, background, a little luck, and no doubt, some bureaucratic politicking.

It is true that his job was to promote US foreign policy, as is the case for any career officer, regardless who is President.

Personally, I would never take the job. When it comes to foreign policy, there is little difference between the parties. Obama is waging multiple undeclared air [drone] wars all over the globe, murdering civilians and lying about it, abusing the powers of security classification, mounting an even more ferocious attack on press freedom and whistleblowing than did Bush and Cheney, and carrying unlawful surveillance even farther than they did too.

So I would never serve as a foreign service officer unless something dramatic happens within one of the major parties.

But Justin's stint has nothing to do with support for or opposition to Bush/Cheney, save for the nature of the job.

Everyone here has read my views of Justin's economic policies and character. His economic policies are often regressively Republican. He acts in a blatantly opportunistic fashion behind a faced of "independence."

There is a case to be made for Toni and against Justin. But make it on the facts. This is a phony issue. Leave that kind of distortion to the Justinians. Toni doesn't need it to win.