New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Former Hamden mayoral candidate seeks to form Independent Town Committee
HAMDEN — A former mayoral candidate said he nowisworking to form an Independent Town Committee, which he hopes will give peoplewho don’t fully identify as Republican or Democrat a way to engage politically.
Once a registered Democrat, Jay Kaye switched his political affiliation and ran as a Republican during the 2019 mayoral race because he felt decades of Democratic leadership had been unsuccessful in Hamden, he told the New Haven Register at the time.
Kaye lost to then-incumbent Democrat MayorCurt BalzanoLeng, getting just shy of 5,000 votes, according to the Connecticut Secretary of the State’s website, which shows Leng got roughly 7,500 votes.
In 2021, Kaye made another switch: he joined the Independent party and sought a seat on the Legislative Council. He lost the election but has stayed involved in Hamden politics.
He describes himself as “center left” and said he believes there are other voters who fall more to the center of the political spectrum than the major party candidates.
It seems that “everything’s either like really far left or really far right,” Kaye said. “A lot of people are having a hard time identifying with the parties.”
He holds nothing against progressives or conservatives, he said, but feels there is a “little gap in the middle that’s really not being filled, I don’t think, by any particular candidates.”
Kaye bases that conclusion in part on the number of unaffiliated voters in Hamden.
As ofMarch 1, Hamden had approximately 33,100 registered voters, according to an email from Lushonda Howard, the Democratic registrar of voters.
About 17,800 of those voters were registered Democrats, 3,600 were registered Republicans and 500 were registered with a third party, she said. The rest – roughly 11,200 – were unaffiliated.
“If there’s that many (voters) that are unaffiliated, then probably a good majority of them wouldn’t mind being affiliated with something if it kind of appealed to them,” Kaye said.
He hopes an Independent Town Committee would not only give more candidates a platform to run for office but also prompt residents to get involved with boards and commissions, he said.
According to a spokesperson for the Secretary of the State’s Office, the rules around the creation of a town committee are determined by the state party with which that committee identifies.
Michael Telesca, chairman of the Independent Party of Connecticut, said there are currently about five or six active Independent Town Committees in the state.