Bermudez Brings Primary Petition To The Cove

by Laura Glesby The New Haven independent

Jet fuel fumes and park funding. Healthcare premiums and electric bills.

Those environmental and cost-of-living concerns were on the minds of Morris Cove voters when Wildaliz Bermudez asked for their signatures on Wednesday evening.

Bermudez, the executive director of the city’s Fair Rent Commission, is running to represent the 97th district in the state House of Representatives. The district extends along the eastern side of the city, from Lighthouse Point Park to the North Haven border, including a pocket of Fair Haven where Bermudez lives.

The seat has been held for the past decade by State Rep. Al Paolillo, Jr., who is now seeking to succeed soon-to-retire State Sen. Martin Looney.

Paolillo and the Democratic Party establishment have endorsed first-term Morris Cove Alder Leland Moore to fill the seat. Without the party endorsement, Bermudez must collect 300 signatures from registered Democrats in the district by June 9 in order to make it onto the Aug. 11 Democratic primary ballot.

Bermudez explains why she needs signatures to a Ring doorbell camera. Credit: Laura Glesby Photo

In conversations with voters, Bermudez introduces herself first as a parent of a nine-year-old. She says she’ll advocate for more state funding to come to the city of New Haven as a whole, and particularly for the state to contribute more to New Haven Public Schools (NHPS). She names environmental health as another top priority, along with concerns about the cost of living.

Bermudez explains to each voter that as the director of the city’s Fair Rent Commission, “I bring together landlords and tenants to try to find an agreement.”

Since taking on that role in 2022, she has overseen an increase in tenants’ utilization of the Fair Rent Commission, which has the power to mediate rent and housing condition disputes. She has stewarded the city’s system for formally recognizing tenants unions — the first policy of its kind in Connecticut — and she chairs a statewide Fair Rent Commission Network.

Bermudez also has local legislative experience, having served for six years on Hartford’s City Council prior to her move to New Haven. A member of the Working Families Party, she served as the council’s minority leader. One accomplishment she’s proud of was advocating for Puerto Rican families left stranded by Hurricane Maria in 2017. “A lot of the families had to leave” Puerto Rico and became “climate refugees” — “many were homeless,” she said. She recalled building a coalition to help resettle over 13,000 evacuees in Connecticut.

On Wednesday evening, Bermudez continued her quest for those 300 primary-petition signatures along the residential streets near the U.S. Coast Guard station in Morris Cove.

She was about to knock on a Woodward Avenue door when she noticed Moira Cassell on a run in her direction.

Cassell stopped to speak with Bermudez.

“Are you a registered Democrat?” Bermudez asked.

“I am,” Cassell replied.

“Yay!” said Bermudez. She proceeded to explain that she is running for state representative. “I need to get 300 signatures to get on the ballot,” she said, “so that we can have a more democratic process.”

“Certainly,” said Cassell, accepting Bermudez’s clipboard to fill out a line on the petition.

“A little bit more about me: I have a nine-year-old. I’m a mom,” said Bermudez. “We really do need more funding” for NHPS.

At East Rock School, where her daughter attends, “The teachers are amazing. I love them,” Bermudez added later. There’s just a need for more resources.

Cassell responded that she’s also a mother — that her two kids are now grown, but they attended Nathan Hale before eventually switching to private school. “I also taught in New Haven Public Schools for nine years,” Cassell said.

She agreed that NHPS needs more funding: “Teachers’ working environments are students’ learning environments.”

Bermudez said that her father was a teacher and her mother was a paraeducator in Hartford.

“I’m also an environmentalist,” said Bermudez, citing her master’s degree in environmental science. She believes in “having air quality that’s pure” and water that’s clean, “not just in this neighborhood” but across the city.

“This neighborhood definitely bears the brunt of it,” said Cassell. “The smell of jet fuel, it just wafts.”

Living blocks away from Tweed Airport, which is slated for a controversial expansion, Cassell said that the air quality has suffered. She worries, too, about the impact of the expansion on wildlife as well as the humans who live nearby. “Al knows my concerns,” she said, referring to incumbent state representative Paolillo. “Leland knows my concerns,” she said referring to Moore, the neighborhood’s alder and Bermudez’s opponent.

“I get why they want a functioning airport,” Cassell added, but she’s skeptical of the benefits of expanding airlines focused on “destination travel.”

“Does everyone need to fly to Florida all the time?” she asked.

“This is something that resonates,” Bermudez said. “It’s important to know that you feel that way.”

Bermudez said later, after their conversation concluded, that she supports “more environmental impact studies” before the airport expansion moves further.

Another priority for Cassell as a voter is more resources for the city’s public parks. But, she added, “I’m very against the pool on Ball Island,” referencing a proposal by the Elicker administration to transform the defunct English Station power plant into a park with an outdoor swimming pool. The city should be investing in existing public pools, Cassell argued.

Marilyn Velazquez signs Bermudez’ petition.

“I agree,” said Bermudez. “We really have to think through the resources that we have.”

Around the corner, Marilyn Velazquez was sitting in her car outside her Morse Place home.

Bermudez approached her. Speaking in Spanish, she explained that she’s running for the state representative seat as a mother and as someone who wants to be a voice for her community.

Velazquez readily accepted Bermudez’s clipboard to sign her name.

The pair bonded about the fact that they both were born in Puerto Rico, though in different towns. (If elected, Bermudez would be New Haven’s first Latina state representative and one of two women of color among the city’s state legislators.)

They spoke about a cracked part of asphalt road outside Velazquez’ house. Bermudez snapped a photograph to send to her colleagues at City Hall. Bermudez asked Velazquez if she’d spoken to her alder about the issue, and Velazquez responded that she didn’t know who her alder was.

Velazquez told Bermudez about some of the bills that have been looming larger lately in her life. She said that the solar panels she’s installed on her house haven’t done much at all to lower her electricity costs. She also said that she’s faced higher healthcare premiums as a result of the end of federal Affordable Care Act subsidies.

Bermudez said she believes that the state legislature has a role to play in lowering both of those costs, both by regulating utility companies more stringently and by funding more healthcare access for residents.

“Housing costs are expensive for everyone, not just tenants,” Bermudez reflected as she continued down the block.

In just over an hour, Bermudez collected four signatures in Morris Cove — a relatively quiet evening that brought her total number of signatures to 216.

She plans to keep knocking, with a petition party at Ziggy’s Pizza coming up this Saturday from 12:30 to 3 p.m.

Bermudez documents cracks in the asphalt outside Velazquez’ home.