by THOMAS BREEN The new haven independent
THOMAS BREEN PHOTO
Elicker, and “yes” on charter changes, win in landslide.
Mayor Justin Elicker handily won reelection to a third two-year term in office with 79 percent of the vote at the polls, bringing to an end a campaign year that stretched back to last December and saw a total of five people run for the city’s top elected office.
Voters also overwhelmingly approved the charter-revision ballot question, by nearly a 2‑to‑1 margin. That means that, starting with the 2027 municipal election year, the mayor, city clerk, and all 30 alders will serve four-year terms instead of two-year terms each.
Overall, 12,237 people voted at the polls in the mayoral race. With roughly 628 absentee ballots left to count, that means voter turnout citywide was around 24.5 percent.
According to machine-vote results reported in all 30 wards after polling places closed at 8 p.m., Elicker, a two-term Democrat who also ran on the Working Families Party line, won a total of 9,755 votes (79.2 percent) in his successful bid to remain in the mayor’s office.
Republican and Independent Party challenger Tom Goldenberg won 2,210 votes (18 percent), unaffiliated petitioning candidate Wendy Hamilton won 223 votes (1.82 percent), and 49 votes (0.4 percent) were cast for write-in candidates.
The charter revision ballot question, meanwhile, was approved with 6,629 “yes” votes (64 percent) to 3,721 “no” votes (35.9 percent), a resounding win for a Democratic Party push for four-year terms for mayor and alders (see more on that below.)
Elicker’s win on Tuesday follows his defeat of challenger Liam Brennan by more than a 2‑to‑1 margin in September’s Democratic mayoral primary.
According to the Registrar of Voters office, there are currently 52,419 registered voters in New Haven — including 33,603 Democrats, 2,702 Republicans, 15,605 unaffiliated voters, and 509 registered to third parties.
With 12,237 voters casting ballots at the polls on Tuesday, and another 628 absentees yet to be counted, that means that voter turnout was at 24.5 percent in Tuesday’s election.
Tuesday’s turnout in absolute votes cast was lower than the last contested mayoral election in November 2021, when a total of 12,980 votes were cast in the mayoral election. That was a 23 percent turnout. In that race, Elicker collected 10,767 votes, or 83 percent of the total, to win reelection against Republican John Carlson, who received 1,727 votes; and Independent Mayce Torres, who collected 166.
Elicker has focused his campaign this year on highlighting accomplishments like a surge in city funding from Yale and the state, the creation of the COMPASS crisis response team for mental health and homelessness-related 911 calls, the passage of an inclusionary zoning ordinance mandating affordable housing percentages in new developments, and ramping up landlord code violation fines and tenants union support.
Mayor Justin Elicker at his victory party.
At a victory party at Nolo pizza on State Street, Elicker called the landslide results a vote of public confidence in the city’s direction and a public rejection of divisive politics.
“The competitor that we were facing,” he said of Goldenberg, “ divided our city, misrepresented so many truths about our city, scapegoated the people that were most vulnerable in our community. New Haven in an overwhelming way said, ‘This is something we do not stand for in our city. ‘That is why we crushed it with almost 80 percent of the vote It has no place in our city.”
Goldenberg, for instance, had attacked the Elicker administration for considering the idea of a safe-injection site for opioid abusers.
Elicker cited the nearly 2 – 1 vote in favor of charter reform as a vindication of Democrats’ handling of the city. “If they were dissatisfied right now with the direction the city is heading in, there is no way it would have passed.”
Among several supporters in East Rock Market, former McKinsey & Co consultant Goldenberg conceded the race.
He quoted the Bhagavad Gita in Sanskrit: “You have the right to act. You have the right to do what’s right. You don’t have control over the result.”
“When I look back on this campaign, maybe it’s not the exact outcome I would have envisioned,” he said, but “we have put our heart and soul into this, and we have put our heart and soul into things we believed needed to happen in the city.”
Goldenberg reflected fondly on connections he made with prospective voters. “It was these experiences along the way that made this meaningful,” he said. “These are things that I will forever look back on and be proud of.”
Goldenberg thanked, among others, John Carlson, the chair of the Republican Party that ultimately endorsed him. “John, you are a courageous man. You chose, as a Republican Town Chair, to endorse a Democrat.” The cross-party partnership was “historic,” he said, adding that he considered Carlson a “good friend.”
Also on Tuesday, five-term incumbent City Clerk Michael Smart, a Democrat, trounced Republican challenger Anthony Acri with 8,919 votes (86 percent) to 1,384 votes (13 percent).
The election also elevates Andrea Downer, a Democrat, to the Board of Education District 2 seat, after Darnell Goldson, who currently holds that position, dropped out of the race.
Charter Revision Approved 64% To 36%
While Democratic elected officials and party leaders never doubted Elicker’s victory at the polls, in a city where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 15 to 1 and where Democrats hold every elected office, they did make a more concerted push over the past two weeks to urge voters to support the charter-revision ballot question — including using this contested flyer put out by Elicker’s reelection campaign.
The approval of the revision by a 2‑to‑1 margin to the city charter means that New Haveners can expect quite a few changes to be enacted to the city’s constitution and, therefore, the structure of city government. Those now-approved changes include:
- Extending terms for mayor, alder, and city clerk from two years to four years each, to take effect in the municipal elections of 2027;
- Allowing alders to move most requirements for the structure of city departments, boards, and commissions out of the charter and into the code of ordinances, making them easier to change as part of the normal legislative process;
- Increasing alders’ annual stipends from $2,000 to $5,000 each (or $6,200 for the president), with cost-of-living raises implemented in between terms;
- Explicitly clarifying that alders must approve all city contracts of at least $100,000;
- Extending the window for alders’ approval of appointees to city boards and commissions from 60 to 90 days;
- Changing all language in the charter to be gender neutral;
- Making line edits and correcting a handful of inconsistencies and errors.
The revision is the culmination of a year-long effort that typically takes place once every 10 years, as undertaken by a nine-person Charter Review Commission that held hearings and proposed charter changes based on an initial set of recommendations from the mayor and the Board of Alders.
Those in favor of the revision, many of them leaders of the Democratic party, argued that four-year terms for mayor and alders will allow officials to spend more time governing and less time campaigning.
Opponents have criticized the changes as reduced accountability for elected officials, and have called out the single, non-specific ballot question as difficult to understand and a “poor use of power.”
At the polls on Tuesday, a majority of voters interviewed by the Independent about this matter embraced the charter-revision proposal, and the four-year terms for mayor and alders, as leading to a more efficient government and fewer time-consuming and costly elections.