Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Paul Bass of the  New Haven Independent  t ells us that Mike Carter, long associated with New Haven Mayor Toni Harp, has left the building: “Carter’s personal relationship with the mayor became strained in recent months, with Carter reportedly growing openly critical of her performance. A lunch between the two failed to ease tensions.” New Haveners cannot help but notice, as did Bass in his report, that Carter’s resignation “comes at a time when City Hall has been buffeted by bad news,  from a wave of over 100 K2 overdoses  in several days on the Green, to controversy  over city budget deficits ,  credit ratings agencies ,   education cuts ,  employee theft with a city credit card , and the  purchase of $4,000 [worth] of uniforms for mayoral staffers .” There seems to be a lot of beef on that plate. And yet, Harp will survive the buffeting, largely because the Democrat Party has had a lock on New Haven since 1953. The last Republica...

It’s important when you are the Democratic mayor of a large city in Connecticut to have an immovable rug under your feet so that political opponents may not pull it out from under you, sending you sprawling into anonymity. The traditional power structures in cities ain’t what they used to be. In New Haven, while Mayor John DeStefano was tending to more important things – inviting school unions to partner with him in forming educational policy for the city, rolling out the red carpet for illegal aliens or, if one prefers, undocumented workers, community policing – a slate backed by Yale’s unions seized control of the party last year.