by Thomas Breen The New Haven independent
For the fourth time in a year and a half, Ward 3 Democrats will have the chance to vote for a Pittman or Angel Hubbard in a Hill neighborhood election.
The hyperlocal democratic contest this time around is the race for Ward 3 Democratic Town Committee co-chair.
That’s one of 60 positions citywide — two in each ward — designed to serve as a neighborhood representative for New Haven’s Democratic Party. The role’s responsibilities include registering new voters, helping voters hit the polls during elections, and otherwise engaging residents with the local party and its platform. It also involves 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.
Current Ward 3 Democratic co-chairs Hubbard — who is also the neighborhood’s alder — and Clarence Cummings are seeking another two-year term in office. They’re being challenged by Sandra Pittman and Lisa Velazquez Torres.
The Ward 3 election will take place at Career High School at 140 Legion Ave. on Tuesday, March 3. Polls will be open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Ward 3 is one of two wards in the city to have a contested Democratic co-chair election this year. The other is in Beaver Hills’ Ward 29. The Democratic co-chair elections in Ward 3 and Ward 29 are open only to registered Democrats in each respective ward.
In September 2024, Hubbard beat Miguel Pittman — Sandra’s husband and business partner at the restaurant Sandra’s Next Generation — in a special election to fill a Ward 3 alder seat left empty after Ron Hurt’s resignation.
In September 2025, Hubbard beat Miguel Pittman in a Democratic primary for Ward 3 alder.
And in November 2025, Hubbard beat Miguel Pittman in the general election for Ward 3 alder. (Miguel Pittman, a registered Democrat, ran in the general election as the Republican and Independent Party candidate.) That race was marred by allegations on both sides of campaign misconduct — and saw one vote-fraud accuser change her story a month after the election. Pittman and Hubbard both denied all accusations of wrongdoing.
The Hubbard-Cummings and Pittman-Velazquez Torres slates each needed to submit a nominating petition to the city clerk’s office containing valid signatures from 5 percent of registered Democrats in Ward 3 — or 60 signatures in total — in order to run for the co-chair seats. The Hubbard-Cummings slate submitted 60 valid signatures; the Pittman-Velazquez Torres slate submitted 72 valid signatures.
In a phone interview with the Independent on Monday, Hubbard said that she is “mentally and physically” exhausted by the “Pittman vs. Hubbard” saga. “This is getting bored, old, and tiring,” she said.
Hubbard said she’s running for another term as co-chair — in addition to serving as alder — because “I’m going to continue the vision for the ward that I have already started to create.”
“If I had someone I can entrust with this path,” she continued, “then I would not be seeking reelection” as co-chair. For now, she said she wants to remain as co-chair to maintain the influence that comes with that position over endorsing the neighborhood’s next alder. “If I don’t seek reelection for being alder, I want to have some type of influence” over who succeeds her.
“I love this, and I will always encourage people to get involved,” she said about being one of Ward 3’s Democratic co-chairs.
Her running mate, Cummings, said he too would like another two years in office. “People think it’s a bad neighborhood, but it’s not,” said Cummings, a retiree who used to work as a “handyman” at Yale and was a member of the UNITE HERE Local 35 union. “Everybody’s really friendly. They help each other” in the Hill. He said he likes “sitting back [and] listening to everybody to see what the people want,” and then bringing those concerns and thoughts to the neighborhood’s alder. (“We work very well together,” Hubbard said about Cummings. “He’s definitely my backbone.”)
In a separate phone interview Monday, Sandra Pittman said she’s running in part to bring “accountable leadership” to Ward 3. She described supporting her husband during his campaign for alder last year. Even though she’s been in the Hill for over 25 years and has raised her four kids there and runs a restaurant there, the campaign “really exposed me to a lot … I just feel like the Hill is being neglected and being misrepresented. It needs strong leaders.”
If elected, she said she’d work on “getting the community involved with the grassroots, bringing people together so they can really see what’s going on.”
“They are the power. They are the people,” she said.
Pittman said this is her first time ever running for office. “I’m very, very excited about it.”
She described herself as someone known in the neighborhood for being a leader, for being inspiring. “We all have a purpose in life.”
Asked to respond to Hubbard’s statement about being exhausted by the continual Pittman vs. Hubbard elections, Sandra Pittman replied, “We’re not going anywhere. I am for the people and that’s what I stand for. … We’re going to prevail.”
In another phone interview with the Independent Monday, Pittman’s co-chair running mate — Velazquez Torres — said she’s running for the role because “the community needs a lot of help, especially the homeless and women’s shelters. There’s a lot of domestic violence. There could be more things done for that.” She also spoke about wanting to advocate for fixing up vacant buildings in the neighborhood — including the former Strong School on Orchard Street — and putting them back to good use.
“If elected, I’d like to restore what we already have.” She called for “spend[ing] the money in the community” as opposed to on building anything new.
Velazquez Torres said that she used to volunteer in the schools, and now takes care of her grandkids and “helps out in the community.” This is also her first time ever running for elected office, though she too helped work on Miguel Pittman’s campaign for alder last year. Her goal in running for co-chair this election cycle: “just to help out” and “do right.”