4 Vie For Beaver Hills Co-Chair Seats

by Thomas Breen The New Haven independent

A longtime Ward 29 Democratic Town Committee co-chair’s decision to not run for reelection has led four Beaver Hills residents to jump into a race to become the neighborhood’s next hyperlocal party reps.

Ward 29 is one of two wards in the city that will have a contested election on March 3 for Democratic party co-chair. The other is the Hill’s Ward 3.

Two two-person slates have qualified to appear on the ballot in the Ward 29 co-chair race. One slate consists of Alexandra Taylor and Jorge Lopes. The other slate consists of Bryanna Wingate and Betty Alford.

There are 60 Democratic co-chair spots citywide — two for each ward. The position serves as a neighborhood representative for New Haven’s Democratic Party. Its responsibilities include registering new voters, getting out the vote during elections, engaging residents with the local party and its platform, and casting endorsement votes for the party’s nominees for alder, mayor, and other local elected positions during municipal election years. Click here to read about the local Republican Party’s recent nominations of new co-chairs.

The Ward 29 co-chair election will take place at Beecher School at 100 Jewell St. on Tuesday, March 3. Polls will be open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. 

For the past two decades, Audrey Tyson has served as one of Ward 29’s Democratic co-chairs. A stalwart of local Democratic politics, Tyson is known for knocking doors, working the phones, fielding concerns from neighbors, campaigning for Democratic presidential candidates, and even representing New Haven’s Democratic Party as a delegate at national party conventions.

Tyson is currently the New Haven Democratic Town Committee’s vice chair. She is not running for reelection this year for another two-year term as Ward 29 co-chair. Her current Democratic co-chair colleague, Beaver Hills Alder Brian Wingate — who just began another two-year term as alder, and who is also the vice president of the politically influential UNITE HERE Local 35 union at Yale — is also not running again for co-chair.

In order to qualify for the March 3 ballot, the Taylor-Lopes slate and the Bryanna Wingate-Alford slate each needed to collect signatures from at least 5 percent of registered Democrats in the ward, or 53 signatures in total, by Jan. 28.

Taylor and Lopes submitted 64 verified signatures. Wingate and Alford submitted 59. That means all four of their names will be on the March 3 ballot.

“I was ward chair for a lot of years,” Tyson told the Independent on Wednesday. Now that she’s vice chair of the citywide Democratic Party, “I just really wanted to try something different.” She also described some “medical issues” that make it harder for her to go out and knock on doors in the neighborhood in the way she used to.

Tyson said she’s working with some of the candidates for co-chair who are looking to fill her seat, though she declined to say who she’s backing, leaving it to the candidates themselves to win neighbors’ votes.

Any advice she has for whoever succeeds her as Ward 29 co-chair? “Communicate with people in the ward,” she said. “Find out what their needs are” — and then do what you can to try to address those needs, whether that means working with the alder or calling the mayor for help.

In a phone interview Wednesday, Bryanna Wingate — who is Alder Wingate’s daughter — told the Independent that her run for co-chair builds off of years of advocating for her neighbors across the ward and the city.

“I want to get involved from a political standpoint,” she said. “I’m already involved from a community standpoint.”

While her day job is in central registration at Yale Medicine, she said she also runs a nonprofit — the Bree Wingate Foundation — through which she mentors roughly 20 different New Haven high school students. Running for co-chair, she said, is one way of showing these young people how to get involved “and be the change they wish to see in their communities.”

If elected co-chair, she said she’ll advocate for Yale to Yale New Haven Hospital to “pay their fair share” to the city; push for downtown developments to benefit city residents, through jobs and affordable housing; to help New Haveners become entrepreneurs; to speak up for better maintenance of the city’s schools.

Wingate described working with her dad, who is the neighborhood’s current alder, on a number of ward initiatives, including the Beaver Hills Block Party. She also praised her running mate, Alford, as a “behind the scenes” community leader for many years. (Alford did not respond to requests for comment by the publication time of this article.)

Taylor and Lopes, meanwhile, spoke with the Independent in separate phone interviews about how they’re trying to build off their respective years of civic engagement in Beaver Hills and in New Haven to help the neighborhood they live in and love.

Taylor said she’s lived in Beaver Hills for over 40 years. This is where she’s bought a home, where she’s raising her 7-year-old and 10-year-old bilingual children, where her family has put down roots.

Taylor works at Yale doing billing and coding. Outside of her day job, she said she’s worked closely with the Whalley-Edgewood-Beaver Hills (WEB) Community Management Team, with the city’s anti-blight Livable City Initiative (LCI), and with business-improvement organizations on Whalley Avenue; she’s helping plan WEB’s second annual neighborhood fest with Arts & Ideas; she’s testified at Board of Zoning Appeals and City Plan Commission meetings; and she’s knocked doors and talked to neighbors, all in service of helping make Beaver Hills a safer, healthier, more interconnected and mutually supportive place to be.

“Most of our community is disengaged,” she said in a phone interview Tuesday. “Too many feel disconnected, especially after this election” for president in 2024. Taylor said she frequently reminds neighbors that, especially when they’re despairing about the state of politics nationally, they should get involved locally. They can make a difference at the hyperlocal level. “Local elections matter.” Taylor said she’s drawn to running for co-chair instead of, say, for alder, because she sees being an alder as more of a citywide position, while Democratic ward co-chair is about as neighborhood specific as you get.

In a separate phone interview Wednesday, Lopes described Taylor as “the brains of this partnership” in their joint run for co-chair. “I’m looking forward to learning” from her and working alongside her.

A financial adviser and licensed Medicare adviser, Lopes said he has lived in Ward 29 for roughly three decades, and has been a polling place moderator — first at Southern Connecticut State University, then at Beecher school — for 25 years.

He’s also been a member of the Elks for 30 years, a member of the Knights of Columbus for 25 years, a board member for the region’s Sickle Cell Disease Association of America chapter, and a member of the city’s redevelopment agency for 14 years, including a stint as chair. If that isn’t enough, he’s also a “eucharistic minister” at St. Francis Church in Fair Haven, where he lived before moving to Beaver Hills.

“Through the years of me working the polls in Ward 29, I’ve gotten to know voters,” and have heard from Ward 29 residents about “the disconnect they feel with some of the elected officials, how they don’t feel heard.”

“I decided I want to do something a little more,” he said, and so he decided to run for co-chair.

If elected, his goals include “helping the community to get more involved in the [democratic] process … We’re trying to give them some information on how to engage in the political process and how important is is, even at this level.”

Taylor praised her co-chair opponents — Bryanna Wingate and Alford — as “both amazing people,” even as she and Lopes run against them for the position.

“What happens locally matters,” she reiterated about why she wants to be co-chair, and what message she wants to send to neighbors about why they should care about this hyperlocal race. “This is not just about [the] president.”

In still another phone interview with the Independent Wednesday, Alder Wingate told the Independent that he respects all four candidates running for co-chair, even as he’s backing his daughter’s slate.

“Democracy is good. I’m all about democracy,” he said. “I’m so happy that Betty and Bryanna have stepped up to do this job.”

Wingate said he decided not to run for reelection as co-chair in part because he’s been thinking about “who can be in a position to be your successor.”

“In the business of politics,” he said, “we don’t do enough of handing it off as we get older. At some point in time, we got to have the youth get involved. … Let’s give the youth an opportunity to do something. Let’s let somebody take on these steps and get involved.”

Wingate said he’s confident his daughter’s slate share the same values he has “around affordability [and] Yale paying their fair share.”