It’s official!
We are down to 2 officially acceptable candidates for the next mayor of New Haven. The incumbent mayor Democrat Justin Elicker, and his challenger, attorney Liam Brennan (Democrat).
There is another Democrat challenger, former NHPD sergeant Shafiq Abdussubar, but his petition got rejected. He only collected 1,400 “valid” signatures. Too bad, Shafiq! You’re not official. There’s also probably a couple independents, maybe even a Republican. But, this is New Haven. No one cares about those people. It’s a democracy. Yes, you get to choose… but only 2 choices maximum.
The race for mayor took an ugly turn earlier this Summer when former mayor Toni Harp endorsed Abdussubar. You may recall that in 2013, Elicker and Harp went head to head in the first ‘Battle of Yalies’. Since then it’s become a requirement to have at least one Yale degree and to have the endorsement of Yale unions. Abdussubar has neither and so he was officially eliminated.
If you want candidates with actual ideological differences you’re probably in the wrong town. At this point the only thing left to distinguish mayoral candidates in New Haven is which Yale school they graduated from. Can a Yale Law graduate like Brennan really understand New Haven as well as a Yale Management/ Forestry graduate like Elicker? Let the voters have their say!
Although these 2 candidates appear to be nearly identical there are some actual distinctions we’d like to point out. The Bike New Haven Local Political Analysis Team has put together the following comparison chart to help voters make a decision
| Justin Elicker (incumbent) | Liam Brennan (challenger) | |
| Hometown | New Canaan (Fairfield Co.) | Stamford (Fairfield County) |
| Party | Democrat | Democrat |
| Race | White | Prefer not to say |
| Ethnicity | English/Irish | Irish/English |
| Education | Yale Management/ Environment ’10 | Yale Law ’07 |
| Bike | newer (2000s) GT Outpost | 90s GT Outpost (converted to Xtracycle) |
| Former Employer | U.S. Dept. of State | U.S. Dept. of Justice |
| Is there a climate emergency? | Yes. Officially declared in 2019 | Yes. But need emergency powers |
Justin Elicker grew up on the rough streets of New Canaan, CT. He earned his undergraduate degree at Middlebury College in Vermont, where he studied Spanish and Computer Science, or, Puta Science. Afterward, he was a Foreign Service Officer in Taiwan and Hong Kong. He moved to New Haven in 2007 to study at Yale. Six years later with more than enough experience, he made an unsuccessful bid for Mayor. After being accused of not having enough support in black wards, he retreated to the non-profit world and started a solo hip-hop career to gain street cred while the Harp administration self-destructed. Elicker returned to mop up a disheveled Harp in 2019 and was reelected 2021.
Notable accomplishments for Elicker include testing positive for Covid on at least 3 occasions (most recently last week), and adding an Office of Climate and Sustainability to our already bloated municipal government, in order to prove that climate change is a serious end-of-the-world imminent catastrophe. With the Board of Alders he declared an official Climate Emergency in 2019 setting the stage for full neoliberal technocracy by 2030. Even before it was declared an official emergency, Elicker successfully de-carbonized himself by riding a bike to work on the very first day of the job. Coincidentally he bumped into news media who just happened to be walking by on Orange Street. (You really can’t plan these things).
The challenger to Elicker is Liam Brennan who had a decent childhood growing up in a different part of Fairfield County, Stamford. Or, as he explains in his campaign launch video, he started out as “an awkward, asthmatic kid from a working class neighborhood.”
Well, look at him now:
Like Elicker, Brennan moved to New Haven in 2004 strictly to attend Yale. Otherwise, why would anyone even consider living in New Haven? He paid his dues enduring countless hours of indoctrination at the Law school and subsequently worked as a federal prosecutor and legal aid attorney. Given his experience in the legal system, Brennan has stated that one of his first acts as mayor would be to stop arresting people for drug use. Critics say this will inevitably lead to more human excrement on sidewalks. Brennan argues that as long as tents are not being pitched west of Edgewood Park, we should be more tolerant of other people’s lifestyle choices.
“The war on drugs is over,” Brennan told the News. “There’s nothing that obligates the city to continue to enforce an ineffectual war on drugs. And we can pull our police out of that and have them focus on guns and things that really hurt people that aren’t really public health issues.”
Under Brennan, the New Haven Police Department would continue to stop open-air use or sale of drugs, but would be told to no longer make arrests over drug use or confiscate drugs.
Apparently you can just tell people to stop using drugs in public and they’ll listen. They won’t ignore you or tell you to “fuck off.” This is good information. I’m going to give it a shot next time I’m crossing the Green.
On more than one occasion, Brennan actually admitted out loud that he would use his “authority” as mayor of New Haven to impose bold climate solutions. Normally when you’re running for mayor you don’t just come right out and say you want to be ‘Il Duce’ of New Haven, but I didn’t go to Yale Law School, and I’ve never appeared on the prestigious investigative news outlet MSNBC. Brennan has been on-air many times and he writes for WaPo. Somebody’s been busy!
We didn’t think anyone could do a better job at de-carbonizing himself than Mayor Elicker has already done. So our team starting looking at Brennan’s official climate solutions titled, ‘The Green City’
One of the first things that stood out was the concept of “climate criminals”
Apparently, parking lots are one of the worst climate criminals:
Apparently Brennan has found a legal loophole that would allow him to unilaterally enact bold climate change solutions in New Haven simply because a climate emergency was officially declared in 2019. According to his interpretation, the climate emergency declaration provides unlimited power to the Mayor in the event of heavy rain or when the air conditioning stops working.
Most recently climate change has made working class life in New Haven even more awkward and asthmatic than usual as “smoke-inflected air” from Canadian wildfires blew over in early Summer. As any decent climate scientist will tell you, wildfires did not occur before 1994 when global warming was still percolating. Now with global boiling, wildfires are frequent unnatural events caused by un-de-carbonization and normal democratic procedures. Prior to 2017 “smoke-inflected” could only refer to elements of smoked meat according to USDA rules. Clearly, we are past due for action.
“Give me my rightfully earned emergency powers!”
If that isn’t enough already, with a serious face (see above), Brennan proposes destroying the portion of I-95 that runs through Long Wharf and replacing it with a bridge over the harbor! His plan would necessarily require that we bulldoze portions of Morris Cove and Lighthouse Point. This is the kind of bold solution that you would expect in campaign run by a Yale Law School graduate.” The old highway destroyed whole neighborhoods.” That was bad. The only way to fix that is to destroy more neighborhoods.
What do they ride?
The most important factor in any political run-off: what kind of bike does each candidate ride?
Showing his true conservative inner nature, Elicker has chosen to ride the same GT mountain bike that he must have gotten when he first arrived in New Haven. While this may seem boring to the average e-bike rebate recipient voter, the discernible “acoustic” bike-riding voter will appreciate Elicker’s overall consistency plus the care and maintenance he has demonstrated with this bike. Although he often runs into nasal swabs and news cameras while he’s riding, I have personally seen him riding on Orange Street in heavy morning traffic and he looked very confident, exactly what you would expect from a thrice-infected (fully-vaccinated), seasoned bike commuter. Bike New Haven gives him a de-carbonized micromobility rating of 13.
Liam Brennan also rides a GT mountain bike (All Terra Outpost), the exact same make as Elicker. However, his appears to be a mid-90s model making it at least a few years older than Elicker’s bike. This may be the most important, deciding factor for New Haven swing voters.
Always the radical pragmatist, Brennan has opted to extend his frame using the Xtracycle design. He seems to rides this bike everywhere, with or without children or luggage, thus alternating between the Corgi- and Camel-pack styles of urban cycling. Although he was critical of the Edgewood cycle track for taking too long, and he did not acknowledge Elicker quarterbacking a major feat of his administration – the peanut roundabout constructed in Brennan’s own neighborhood (Westville) – he has made it abundantly clear that he will use climate-derived emergency powers to ram through any bicycle related projects, opposing citizens be damned! For this reason alone, Brennan’s decarb-micromob score is 22.
May the best, fully-vetted, Yale-educated, GT mountain bike-riding, OFFICIAL candidate for mayor, win!
Bike New Haven 