Bronin wants a divided Hartford to unite — but how will we get there?
Community leaders say there will be a long road to mayor’s goal
HARTFORD — Luke Bronin wants to lead a Hartford that hasn’t existed in many years — one, united city.
The mayor said so on election night last week after defeating two primary challengers, former Mayor Eddie Perez and state Rep. Brandon McGee Jr. He said it four times, finding a rhythm as he spoke to screaming supporters at the Polish National Home on Sept. 10: “A city where people disagree respectfully, listen thoughtfully and come together shoulder to shoulder to work for the city of Hartford. One city — North End, South End, West End, Downtown. One City, united by our love for this city. One city. We are one city, one Hartford.”
Bronin was coming off a needling, divisive race against black and Hispanic opponents who questioned the white, wealthy politician’s commitment to Hartford, attention to the neighborhoods and intentions in politics. And the divisions Perez and McGee highlighted did not just
“A city where people disagree respectfully, listen thoughtfully and come together shoulder to shoulder to work for the city of Hartford ... one city, one Hartford.”
— Mayor Luke Bronin
define their mayoral bids, several community organizers said last week.
Those divisions are deeply rooted in Hartford, they said, from the haves and the have-nots, to the North End and the South End, to the ethnic groups who carved out sections of the city decades ago and those who have just arrived. Identity politics are an old story in Hartford, a city of just 17 square miles. For decades, candidates running for mayor in Hartford have built coalitions based on geography and ethnicity.
The problem is, Bronin said at a June mayoral forum in the West End, “We are a great city with beautiful diversity, and we are far too divided, and we let ourselves be divided against ourselves too much.”
It’s also going to be one of the hardest problems to solve, said Hartford leaders like Lynn Ferrari, a former president of the Neighborhood Revitalization Zone in Sheldon Charter Oak.
Even NRZs struggle to fully represent their residents, and reinforce competition between different parts of the city, said Ferrari, vice president of CSS/ CON (Coalition to Strengthen the Sheldon/ Charter Oak Neighborhood).
She recalled how, early on in the NRZ process, the organizations competed for limited federal dollars, and none would receive enough to complete their projects.
In the late 1990s, the neighborhoods worked together more under the banner of Hartford 2000 and developed a priority list of city-wide projects, from demolishing blighted buildings to building an equestrian center in Keney Park. But not all of those projects came to fruition, and the the big picture, city-wide approach to planning didn’t last, Ferrari said.
“It’s as divisive now as it was years ago, I think,” said Ferrari, now . “The city would be much stronger if it was not divided, but I’m not sure exactly what would have to happen.”
Ferrari says Bronin has helped by implementing monthly town halls and rotating the locations through every neighborhood.
She also suggests more planning around specific issues. The city could take the lead and invite all of the groups and experts to the table.
“Every neighborhood has many of the same issues as every other neighborhood, whether it’s street repair or what’s happening with the (Metropolitan District) digs all over the city, or crime,” she said. “It might provide some cross-neighborhood cohesion.”
Melvyn Colon, a community leader in south Hartford for the past seven years, has only seen two administrations lead Hartford. But in that time, he said, there has always been friction between the north and south sides of the city.
The “chatter,” as Colon calls it, is usually underlined by racial divisions between the majority-Hispanic southern half of Hartford and the majority-black neighborhoods to the north.
“I think the election results bear all of that out,” said Colon, executive director of the Southside Institutions Neighborhood Alliance.
Bronin won nearly 60 percent of the primary vote, but lost to Perez — the city’s first Puerto Rican mayor — in four neighborhoods in South Hartford. And while Perez earned nearly twice as many votes overall as McGee, he was weakest in North Hartford, edged out of second place by the state representative who sought to become the first black mayor of Hartford since 1993.
Some of that spread is a result of people playing identity politics and trying to convince voters that only someone from their own group will look out for their interests, says Fiona Vernal, a historian at the University of Connecticut who studies how different ethnic groups have shaped Hartford.
That mentality can be particularly stubborn in cities with limited resources, like Hartford, she said.
“As long as we define it as ‘It’s either this or that, this area of Hartford or that area of Hartford,’ all of us are going to lose. People in the North End are going to feel like they’re missing out all the time, and in the South End, certain segments are going to feel that they don’t have enough even if there’s a perception that they’re getting a lot. It’s just a losing proposition.”
She agreed with Ferrari that residents should come together around the issues they share in common, like housing, employment and education, to “get over some of that tribalism.”
Vernal added that “identity politics” can have unintended consequences, even when the target of criticism is someone like Bronin, a white man raised in Rye, N.Y., and Connecticut’s Gold Coast.
Throughout the race, when the professor heard people attack Bronin as an outsider, she thought of the message that sends to Puerto Rican transplants, immigrants from the West Indies and South Asia, and other newcomers struggling to belong.
“We can’t have it both ways. You can’t champion Hartford as this welcome space for everybody to come and be here and then say, ‘Well Luke is not a local. He’s from Greenwich,’” Vernal said. “How much nativisim are we going to endure in our political rhetoric, even if it is Hartford vs. Greenwich, even if it’s cities vs. suburbs. We have to be really careful.”
Colon added that within the city, people’s perceptions don’t always reflect the reality of where resources are being concentrated.
He acknowledged that there are several projects underway in south and central Hartford — the Park and Main development; the revitalization of Dillon Stadium and the Colt complex; supporting home ownership in Frog Hollow and the South End; the renovation of the Park Street library — but noted each of them is long overdue.
On the other side of town, there’s Dunkin’ Donuts Park and the housing, retail and community spaces planned for the surrounding area.
Plus, Colon said, placebased groups like SINA are talking more these days about opportunities to expand the areas they serve.
For example, Colon chairs the Hartford Working Cities initiative, which is working to increase employment for young adults in Barry Square, Frog Hollow and South Green. The group is now talking about whether it should expand to the North End.
Eli Mercado, who unsuccessfully ran for city council in the recent primary, chose to start his faith-based community organizations in different Hartford neighborhoods in 2015. His group, called Know Thy Neighbor, holds separate meetings in Frog Hollow and Clay Arsenal, but gets residents to work together on issues they share.
“To me, it was very important to have it in both neighborhoods,” Mercado said. “Our leaders in the south and north see what’s working in each neighborhood and what could possibly be done working together. No side feels left out.”
Colon also noted that the Building for Health initiative, a program Connecticut Children’s Medical Center launched earlier this year, is considering expanding its focus from southern Hartford. That project works to address home health hazards, like mold and lead, which are threats across the city.
Community workers, like the city, don’t want to see the divisions continue, Colon said. But that takes time to change, and a steadier stream of money and development filling the neighborhoods.
“There’s such a dearth of investment in the city. Anything that looks like it’s happening in one neighborhood, another will say, ‘Why isn’t it happening here?’” Rebecca Lurye can be reached at rlurye@courant.com.