New Haven, Bridgeport paths veer away

Justin Elicker waited six years for his opportunity, and he did not let it go to waste. Opponents of Joe Ganim will have four long years to ponder how they missed a rare chance to defeat the Democratic machine.

Connecticut’s two largest cities staged mayoral primaries on Tuesday, and each served as defacto elections. It’s possible for a Democratic nominee to lose in November, but unlikely in a city where other parties are outnumbered sometimes 101.

On paper, it should have been Bridgeport that was due for a massive rejection of its incumbent. All Connecticut cities have problems, from crime to high taxes, but it’s New Haven widely acknowledged as leading the way in what the state desperately hopes is an urban rebirth, while Bridgeport keeps sputtering along.

But New Haven Democrats weren’t satisfied, delivering a decisive victory for Elicker over Mayor Toni Harp. He’d run before, in 2013, so he knew what he was doing this time and outraised Harp despite selfimposed limitations. Still, previous campaign experience is no guarantee of a better outcome, as witnessed by Tom Foley’s disastrous second attempt to take down Dannel Malloy in 2014. Elicker, though, is a disciplined candidate who ran a smart campaign, while Foley seemed to assume everyone would come around to his way of thinking without his having to work for it.

Ganim’s detractors were irked by any number of things, not least of which was his decision to celebrate his return to office after a stop in federal prison by making an ultimately embarrassing run for governor. But worse than that may have been the sense that nothing much has really changed since Ganim’s last run in office. The same people still run city politics, the same fights take up all the oxygen. If voters thought they were getting a fresh start in 2015, this wasn’t what they’d hoped for.

All that added up to a primary where challenger Marilyn Moore surprised everyone by outpolling Ganim on Election Day, but ultimately losing because of absentee ballots. Compounding the disappointment was news that Moore’s team had botched her planned appearance on the November ballot, but that probably wouldn’t have mattered. The primary was the chance to take out Ganim and the Democratic machine, and thousands of people showed they were itching for the chance.

Instead, everyone who thinks Bridgeport deserves better can do nothing but stew about it until 2023.

As to why New Haven wanted a change and Bridgeport ultimately didn’t, it’s a complicated question. On most issues that came up in the campaign, New Haven is better off than Bridgeport, or at least they’re about even.

For instance, Bridgeport has made strides in turning its downtown from a wasteland of empty buildings 20 years ago into an actual neighborhood, but it can’t be compared to New Haven, with hundreds of night spots and concert venues, and developers falling over each other to put up new apartments and condos. It’s why Bridgeport’s plan to turn itself into an entertainment destination is probably doomed — there’s a legitimate, thriving downtown just up I95.

Both incumbents made personnel choices that generated outrage — a superintendent in New Haven, a police chief in Bridgeport. Both took heat over taxes, school funding and crime, though the numbers show New Haven is doing better on many of those metrics than Bridgeport and should have been more likely to stick with an incumbent.

In the end, Elicker was a better candidate who ran a stronger campaign. Even with the support of the Working Families Party, which knows a little about winning Bridgeport elections, the Moore campaign couldn’t complete the simple task of securing a spot on the November ballot, which should’ve taken about a day’s work.

The biggest shakeup in the campaign came in its closing days when a Ganim supporter shocked the city by saying Moore wasn’t “really black.” (This supporter didn’t say anything about where this left Joe Ganim.) In an otherwise staid race, it might have been enough to galvanize outrage to make the race close.

But it wasn’t enough. And now Connecticut and all its largest cities — including Hartford, Stamford, Waterbury and Norwalk — each with large and growing minority populations, will have a white man in the top job. There are many ways to measure progress, but on this one, where members of a community see themselves reflected in their leadership, it can only be called halting and slow.