by Thomas Breen and Laura Glesby
Seven current alders are looking to serve as Democratic Town Committee (DTC) ward co-chairs for the next two years — as they look to recruit others to take on the position in the future.
“I would love to pass it on,” said Hill Alder Kampton Singh when asked about why he’s filed for another term as Ward 5 Democratic co-chair. “I just couldn’t find anyone” to run.
“It’s tough to get people to step up and do civic duty.”
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, picking neighborhood Democrats to serve on their respective ward committees, and casting endorsement votes for the party’s nominees for alder, mayor, and other local elected positions. Its also often a springboard for people looking to run for alder in the future. (Click here to read about the local Republican Party’s recent nominations of new co-chairs.)
New two-year terms for Democratic co-chair are set to begin on March 4.
Interested candidates needed to gather signatures from at least 5 percent of registered Democrats in their respective wards in order to compete for the role. The deadline to return those nominating petitions to the city clerk’s office was Jan. 28.
Only two wards in the city — the Hill’s Ward 3 and Beaver Hills’ Ward 29 — saw multiple slates of candidates return petitions with enough valid signatures, meaning that each of those wards will host a Democratic ward co-chair election on March 3.
Another 20 wards saw one two-person slate each submit petitions with enough signatures to secure their respective nominations, thereby guaranteeing their selection as co-chairs for the two-year term that starts March 4.
Those wards — where the Democratic co-chair nominations are all set, and where no election will take place — are Wards 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, and 30.
Meanwhile, two wards — Bella Vista’s Ward 11 and Quinnipiac Meadows’ Ward 12 — saw no candidates return any nominating petitions at all for Democratic co-chair. And another six wards — 2, 6, 13, 19, 21, and 23 — saw candidates return nominating petitions that did not contain enough valid signatures.
According to the DTC’s bylaws, the party’s chair gets to appoint ward co-chairs when there are vacancies.
DTC Chair Vinnie Mauro — who plans to seek another two-year term as the head of the party — told the Independent in a phone interview this week that, if reelected chair, he’ll appoint ward co-chairs by late March for those eight wards that saw either no candidates file or insufficient petitions returned.
“We’ll talk to the alders, talk to people” who have been interested in the position in the past before making that call as to who will be co-chairs in those wards, he said.
While he anticipates a collaborative process, ultimately, it’s the party chair’s responsibility to make those appointments.
Mauro added that last week’s snow storm “kind of clobbered folks” who would otherwise have been out getting signatures in the runup to the Jan. 28 nominating-petition deadline.
Alder / Co-Chair, Co-Chair / Alder
Among the 60 people in 28 wards who returned nominating petitions for Democratic co-chair spots, seven are already alders. That’s up from the five alders who served as ward co-chairs during the 2024-26 term. (All 30 alders in the city are Democrats, as is every other holder of a contested local elected office.)
Those current alders looking to double as Democratic ward co-chairs are Ward 3’s Angel Hubbard, Ward 5’s Kampton Singh, Ward 21’s Troy Streater, Ward 22’s Jeanette Morrison, Ward 23’s Tyisha Walker-Myers, Ward 25’s Adam Marchand, and Ward 28’s Gary Hogan.
Several alders said they plan to fill the co-chair role as a temporary measure.
Morrison said she is taking on the Ward 22 co-chair seat “with the hopes to be able to find someone that is willing to participate in that role in the very near future.”
Morrison, whose ward is split almost evenly between the Dixwell neighborhood and adjacent Yale dormitories, has historically recruited one co-chair representing “Dixwell permanent residents” and one co-chair representing the Yale students in her ward. “I truly believe you need to represent the whole ward, because the issues for the different sides of the ward can be different,” Morrison said.
Ward 22’s other incoming co-chair, Elsa Holahan, is a Yale student who grew up in New Haven and previously served as a youth representative on the Dixwell Q House Community Advisory Board.
“The hard thing about the ward co-chair races is that they happen in the dead winter,” Morrison said. “It’s hard to get signatures. Even when people are in the house, they don’t even want to come near their door.” She mused that the frigid weather may have been a deterrent, since to run for a co-chair seat, “You gotta get out there, you gotta talk to people, you gotta get your petition signed, and you only have two weeks to do that.”
Morrison added that it may have been more difficult to recruit for the co-chair positions citywide due to a broader disillusionment with politics that she’s noticed. “I think a lot of it has to do with what’s going on on a national level — people just feeling like there’s nothing they can do, no matter what roles that you’re in,” Morrison said. “We have to go back to the drawing board and really, really get people excited and engaged. Because people are starting to feel hopeless, and that’s a sad thing. … You can’t get let hope die.”
Hogan had been a Democratic ward-co-chair for Beaver Hills’ Ward 28 for a couple of years prior to his election as alder in November 2024 — a special election after the death of his predecessor, Tom Ficklin. Now that a new co-chair term is on the horizon, Hogan is petitioning to serve in the ward committee leadership role again.
According to Hogan, he and his co-chair Jess Corbett weren’t able to find someone with experience on the ward committee who was willing to replace him.
He attributed the dearth of interest partly to “election fatigue,” with “so many elections in just a year and a half” within the neighborhood.
“Over the next year,” Hogan said, he and Corbett intend to more actively recruit people from the committee to serve in his place.
Meanwhile, while Marchand has represented Westville’s Ward 25 on the Board of Alders since 2011, this coming term will be the first time he’ll also serve as a Democratic ward co-chair.
After learning that incumbent Ward 25 co-chair Deborah Evans would not be serving in the role again, Marchand said that he worked with the other incumbent co-chair, Janis Underwood, to seek out a new candidate for the role.
“We had conversations with some folks who we thought would be great,” but they all “decided they didn’t want to” fill the seat, said Marchand. He surmised that a substantial workload might be one reason behind the reluctance he encountered: “They know in Ward 25, it’s a high bar.”
“So Janis asked me if I would do it,” Marchand said. “I thought about it, and said OK, I will do it.”
Marchand said that he’s long been deeply involved in voter outreach efforts in the ward. “Being officially on the DTC is new for me, but doing the work of leading the party in Ward 25” is not, he said.
“In this year, we want to raise the bar with the committee,” he added, including setting up phone bank and canvassing shifts for ward committee members and assisting with races outside of the ward.
Singh, meanwhile, said he too tried and tried to find another Ward 5 Democrat interested in stepping up as co-chair — but to no avail. “People don’t want to do the legwork, go out and get petitions.”
“We are an aging people,” he added. “We need to get people younger to take up this office [and] be more involved in the democratic process. [But] people are not interested.”
That said, Singh continued, “my heart is in the Hill. I do it because I have the best interest for my neighborhood.”
See below for a full list of Democratic co-chair nominating petitions submitted for the 2026-2028 term. Asterisks indicate that the two-person slates did not submit enough valid signatures to secure the co-chair spots, leaving it up to the party’s chair to appoint people to the roles.
Ward 1: Salma Laraki, Isaac Kleppner
Ward 2: Jane Kinity, Richard George***
Ward 3: Angel Hubbard, Clarence Cummings
Ward 3: Sandra Pittman, Lisa Velazquez Torres
Ward 4: Jennifer Chona-Brinezl, Howard Boyd
Ward 5: Kampton Singh, Cortney Porteous
Wared 6: Doris Doward, Dolores Colon***
Ward 7: Kevin McCarthy, Lisa Siedlarz
Ward 8: Ana Winn, Brenda Harris
Ward 9: Claudia Herrera-Martinez, Sarah Fritchey
Ward 10: Ken Suzuki, Kenya Adams-Martin
Ward 11:
Ward 12:
Ward 13: Dondre Roberts, Paul Christopher Ozyck***
Ward 14: David Weinreb, Ana Paola Juarez
Ward 15: Robert Roberts, Rafael Ramos
Ward 16: Michelle Lee Rodriguez, Damon Perry
Ward 17: Jody Ortiz, Al Paolillo Sr.
Ward 18: Jeremy Jamilkowski, Derek Miller
Ward 19: Claudine Wilkens-Chambers, Susan Metrick***
Ward 20: Barbara Vereen, Jahmal Henderson
Ward 21: Ray Jackson Jr., Maceo Troy Streater***
Ward 22: Elsa Holahan, Jeanette Morrison
Ward 23: Tyisha Walker, Tynicha Drummonds***
Ward 24: Randall Furlow, Mareika Phillips
Ward 25: Janis Underwood, Adam Marchand
Ward 26: Sharon Jones, Laura Cahn
Ward 27: Lakiya Nichols, Judith Sparer
Ward 28: Gary Hogan, Jess Corbett
Ward 29: Bryanna Wingate, Betty Alford
Ward 29: Jorge Lopes, Alexandra Taylor
Ward 30: Iva Johnson, Alberta Witherspoon