Marilyn Moore is seeking to make history by becoming the first African American mayor of Bridgeport, the state’s largest city and one where blacks and Latinos make up a majority of the population.
But it is her opponent, incumbent Joe Ganim, who represents the face of urban power in Connecticut. White men maintain a grip on the top office in almost all of the state’s big cities, from Stamford to New London, Danbury to Hartford, Waterbury to Norwalk. (New Britain, the state’s eighth-largest city, is led by Erin Stewart, a white woman and a Republican.)
On Tuesday, Moore, a state senator, lost the Democratic primary to Ganim. She seeking an investigation into possible voter fraud and has pledged to press on to the November general election as a write-in candidate, but both strategies are long shots. Minority candidates in Hartford and New Haven fared no better in their primaries.
In a year when the Democratic Party is fielding a historically diverse slate of presidential candidates, the absence of people of color in the leadership ranks of Connecticut’s largest cities is an irony not lost on black political leaders.
“We’ve made tremendous strides,” said Dennis Bradley, a Democratic state senator from Bridgeport. “But even though we’re not back in the Jim Crow era … we still have work to do. I always tell people democracy isn’t a done deal.”
Connecticut’s urban centers have long been ruled by a white power structure, said Jonathan Wharton, a professor of political science at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven and a member of the Republican State Central Committee.
“These cities were run by classic political machines, often tied to Irish- or Italian-American families,” Wharton said. “The machines behind the mayors have been able to maintain the power. It’s difficult to break through.”
In New Haven, where the population is roughly evenly split between non-Hispanic whites, blacks and Latinos, an African American woman, Toni Harp, has held the mayor’s seat since 2013. But Harp was soundly defeated in the Democratic primary by Justin Elicker, a white former foreign service official who served on the New Haven board of alders. Elicker faces token opposition in the general election in November.
In Hartford, African American and Latino candidates failed to gain traction in the city’s Democratic mayoral primary. Luke Bronin, the Greenwich-raised, prep-school educated white incumbent, handily beat back challenges from state Rep. Brandon McGee and former Mayor Eddie Perez in a city where non-Hispanic whites constitute just 15 percent of the population. Bronin is heavily favored to win a second term.
But amid a national reckoning on race and identity, sparked in part by President Donald Trump’s racist tweets, some Democrats wonder if white men are the best standard-bearers for an increasingly diverse party, especially in cities where white voters are in the minority.
Much of the Democratic Party’s energy as it gears up for the 2020 presidential race is being generated by women, young voters and people of color. Yet more than a decade after Barack Obama’s barrier-breaking election, blacks and Latinos remain under-represented at all levels of Connecticut politics.
“I wish we were further along,” said Rep. Geraldo Reyes, a Democrat from Waterbury and vice chairman of the legislature’s Black and Puerto Rican Caucus. “I’d really like see a more even playing field.”
Cities have provided a reliable stream of votes for white Democratic candidates for decades, noted Khalilah L. Brown-Dean, a professor of political science at Quinnipiac University and the author of “Identity Politics in the United States,” a new book that examines the racial, ethnic, gender and religious divisions shaping public life.
“What does it mean for the Democratic Party to say it is the party of inclusion yet its key leaders do not represent the future of the party?” Brown-Dean said. “What does it mean that no person of color has ever been mayor of Bridgeport, a majority-minority community? What message does that send to the tremendous number of kids of color in the Bridgeport public schools? There are long-term consequences of this.”
One consequence for Democrats could be flagging interest among urban voters. New Haven and Bridgeport helped deliver the governor’s office to the party’s nominees in several recent close elections; without cities, Republicans Tom Foley and Bob Stefanowski likely would have scored solid victories in 2014 and 2018.
“You cannot win [a statewide race] in Connecticut without winning the cities,” Brown-Dean said. “If the mayors of those cities do not have a deep connection to their communities,” Democrats could struggle to gain traction. “It’s not that people in the cities are going to vote for Republicans, but they just won’t vote at all,” she said.
Nancy Wyman, the Democratic state chairwoman, said the party has worked to bolster its recruitment of minority candidates. It has hosted a series of training sessions — another one will be held later this month — to help guide political newcomers, especially first-time candidates from under-represented groups.
“We need to make sure the diversity is there so kids growing up see people that look like themselves leading their towns,” said Wyman, who served two terms as lieutenant governor before becoming the party’s leader. “We believe that we are the party of diversity. … That’s why I became a Democrat.”
Wyman and other Democrats cautioned against viewing Tuesday’s primary results as evidence of an erosion of minority political power in cities. Both Hartford and New Haven have had African American mayors in the past, and Hartford has also had two Latino mayors.
“We want to see diverse leadership, but only one person gets to be mayor,” said Rep. Edwin Vargas of Hartford, who backed Bronin. “You can find diversity on the board of alderman or the city council, too.”
Bronin swamped his competitors, former Mayor Eddie Perez and state Rep. Brandon McGee, by more than 3,000 votes. He won handily in Blue Hills and Upper Albany, two African American neighborhoods in the city’s North End. He also beat Perez in most of the southern half of Hartford, including the majority-Latino neighborhoods of Parkville and the South End.
In New Haven, Harp focused on African American voters. In the waning days of the campaign, according to an account in the New Haven Independent, she sent out a flyer playing up fears that Elicker would use drones to spy on black neighborhoods.
Some viewed the New Haven results through a generational lens, not a racial one. Harp is 72 and has spent decades in public life as a member of the board of alders and a state senator.
Elicker, who is 44, ran as a reformer, saying he would push for more affordable housing, invest in public schools and youth programs, strengthen neighborhoods and battle against predatory landlords.
But Elicker conceded that race was part of the equation for many voters. “We have to acknowledge that,” Elicker told a voter on Tuesday, according to an account of their exchange in the Independent. He added: “People are frustrated. They want results. Most people I talk to, they don’t care what I look like. They want more opportunities.”
In Bridgeport, racial divisions also loomed. At one point, an African American Ganim supporter pursued a puzzling attack against Moore, suggesting she was not authentically “black enough.”
Moore came close to toppling Ganim. She was the apparent winner once all the machine votes were tallied Tuesday night. But later, when the absentee ballots were counted, Ganim moved ahead by 270 votes. That turnabout, and Bridgeport’s historic problems with absentee votes, led Moore to demand an investigation.
“A clear majority of voters said no to the old politics, in a clear repudiation of a party machine that has stood in the way of progress for far too long,” Moore said Thursday. “This demand … was denied to voters. Questionable absentee ballots poured in, denying their voice.”
Reyes, of the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus, said Moore worked hard to get out the African American vote.
“She showed that Bridgeport was really close to breaking that glass ceiling,” he said. “In my estimation, it’s within reach and will be broken sooner rather than later.”
Reyes noted that his caucus has just 32 members out of a 187-member legislature. Change, he said, starts at the entry level of government.
“We have a long way to go as a state and as a party, but I would also say we as minority elected officials have a lot of work to do in our own backyards,” he said. “We need to grow the next tier of people. … There has to be interest in getting folks involved in boards of education, boards of alderman. … That’s where it starts.”
Wharton, the political science professor from Southern, said it’s critical for both political parties to make room for a new generation of racially diverse leaders.
“At what point,” he wondered, “will these younger Puerto Rican and African American leaders step up to the plate and challenge the Joe Ganims?”
Daniela Altimari can be reached at dnaltimari@courant.com.
