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For More Years?
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Business New Haven
3/18/2002
By: BNH
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New Haven's two most entrenched politicians - U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-3) and Mayor John DeStefano Jr. - have a lot in common.
Both are Italo-American Democrats who embody the legacy and values of an old-school city Democratic machine that made them. Both are well-nourished by a campaign-finance system that, while starving their potential opponents gorges them biennial with more cash, literally, than they could ever spend to re-elect themselves.
And by this point both would much prefer to avoid the inconvenience of having to campaign - all over again - every 24 months in order to defeat by Soviet-style margins the - let's face it: nobodies - who dare to challenge them.
At least one of them has the opportunity to doing something about that. In the city's Board of Alderman works to seat a five- to 15-member commission to review and make recommendations to amend the city's charter, DeStefano is seeking a charter change that would double the mayor's term of office to four years.
Some potential charter revisions make sense - reducing the number of aldermen from 30 to nine, for example, which would give individual lawmakers enough electoral heft to pose an effective counterweight in a system that has become a too-strong-mayor system.
But as we oppose doubling the chief executive's term we are guided by the principle that whatever subtracts power from voters makes public servants less accountable, and is inherently anti-democratic.
In the Third Congressional District, H. Richter Elser is gearing up to take a run at DeLauro. Elser, best known as long-time proprietor of an eponymous eatery/watering hole (Richter's, not Elser's - which by the way he no longer owns), has several unusual qualities. He's a gay Republican, for one. More interesting to us is that he's an experienced downtown small-business owner in a city where most small-business owners get paid lip service, when they get paid at all. He really, really cares about transportation issues.
Whether Elser can forge a viable Rob Simmons-style candidacy is too soon to know. But it would not hurt voters if DeLauro were forced to break a sweat for a change. As she claws her way to the inner power core of her party, a growing number of constituents feel, at the very least, taken for granted by the distaff half of one of the Beltway's most potent Democratic power couples.
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