City Ready-Mix Concrete Co.

There are certain landmarks I drive past regularly, always meaning to stop and take a closer look, always meaning to find out more about what it is. The City Ready-Mix Concrete structure is one of those landmarks.

City Ready-Mix Concrete plant, 434 Harper's Ferry Road.

City Ready-Mix Concrete has been at Harper's Ferry Road since the 1950s. I haven't been able to find any information about the company, but I did solve the "mystery" of why concrete plants have towers and long conveyer belts.

City Ready-Mix Concrete plant, 434 Harper's Ferry Road.

Depending on the set-up, the long conveyer belt runs from a quarry to the processing plant. Either before or after being placed on the conveyer (from what I can tell, there are a couple of different plant types), the rocks and gravel are broken down into small bits.

The tower, better known as a silo, is used to store fine sand. The sand and the broken-up rocks from the quarry get poured into a mixer, combined with some water, and then squirted out as concrete.

High-quality concrete involves chemists monitoring the relative chlorides, sulfates, alkalis, and solids. There are a number of different recipes for making concrete. The ancient Egyptians used lime and gypsum. Today's manufacturers use materials including limestone, clay, gypsum, minerals, and various chemicals.

In modern manufacture, cement is used as the paste to hold together the bits and pieces (aggregates) of concrete. That's right: cement and concrete are two different things.

There's another abandoned concrete plant nearby, in Torrington. I've driven by it a number of times over the years, and always wondered what it was. Now I know.

Old concrete plant at a quarry on South Main Street in Torrington.

Ready-mix concrete is still in demand, and there is at least one ready-mix company still in business in Waterbury. Sega Ready Mix Concrete is in the industrial complex on Chase River Road in Waterville. Their silo and conveyor belt are visible from Route 8. If I have time this summer, I'll see if I can get a tour of their plant--and some answers to my lingering questions about how concrete is made!

Sega's conveyor and silo.

Radium

As reported in today's Hartford Courant, the last surviving woman to have worked for Waterbury Clock painting radium onto watch dials has passed away at the impressive age of 107. Mae Keane spent two months in 1927 working with radium, following the instructions to bring the tip of the brush to a fine point with her lips. Luckily for her, she was not very good at the job and was transferred to another job. Those two months were enough to cause lasting damage: Keane lost all of her teeth when she was in her 30s and suffered from pain in her gums for the rest of her life.

As I understand it, when radium is ingested (which happens when you use your mouth to point a brush containing radium paint), the body treats it like calcium, absorbing it into your bones. Without sufficient calcium, bones crumble. Since radium is radioactive, it quickly causes bone cancer. Many of the women who worked for Waterbury Clock and other companies using radium died horrific deaths from radium poisoning.

For more on the "Radium Girls" and their history, I recommend this article from 1996.

Although the dangers of radium were obvious, and very public, by 1928, using radium on watch dials continued until the 1960s. As of February 1, 1963, the sale of pocket watches with radium dials was banned in New York City, on the grounds that they exposed their owners to excessive levels of radiation. Wristwatches, however, were still considered safe.

By 1967, the general public was growing increasingly concerned about exposure to radiation. An article focusing on the dangers of X-rays mentioned that millions of bedside alarm clocks had radium dials, and compared the risk of wearing a radium-dial wristwatch to 30 years of nuclear fallout, a top concern of the '60s.

Manufacturers eventually abandoned radium in favor of less dangerous luminous compounds, but it wasn't out of concern for workers' safety: it was a response to public fear of being exposed to radiation by their watches.

A while ago, I had the opportunity to "play" with radium (don't worry, I did not touch it, breath it, lick it, or otherwise put myself in danger). I was given access to a box of Fitrite Radium Outfit, which has instructions on the label for coating the hands of a watch with radium. It would have been sold to watch repair shops, not used in factories.

The label design suggests it might be from the 1930s.

Inside the box: small metal containers for the radium paint, a radium spreading stick,
and a razor blade for scraping off excess radium from the watch hand.

The radium paint in strong lighting.

The same container in complete darkness. I didn't have at tripod with me, so it's very blurry.

Cheshire Country Club

One of the fun aspects of historical research is the way new discoveries emerge from seemingly unrelated topics. You start out looking for one thing, and wind up finding something else entirely.

While looking for biographical information about James E. Kefford, the general manager of Waterbury's Negro Business League during the 1910s and '20s, I stumbled onto a reference to the Cheshire Country Club, established in 1917 as an African American country club.

After doing a little research, I realized that the Cheshire Country Club might very well have been the first country club to have been owned and operated by and for African Americans. This statement is likely to cause some controversy. The Shady Rest Country Club in Scotch Plains, N.J. is widely considered to have been the first such club, but it didn't open until 1921. The Cheshire Country Club had two hundred members as of October 1917, placing it decidedly ahead of Shady Rest (sorry, New Jersey).

You might be wondering what this has to do with Waterbury, since the club was in Cheshire. As it turns out, the Cheshire Country Club was a Waterbury venture, owned and operated by members of Waterbury's African American community.

The idea for the club originated with Johnson L. Haile, formerly a head waiter at the Scoville House Hotel in Waterbury and, at the time, steward for Harriet B. Thorpe, who lived on Hillside Avenue in Waterbury. According to account in the Hartford Times, later reprinted on the front page of The New York Age (11 October 1917), Haile frequently passed by the Cheshire property (which was on the New Haven-Waterbury trolley line, now Route 70, near Mountain Road) and considered purchasing it as a home for himself and his wife. Instead, he decided to buy the property and turn it into a country club for African Americans. He purchased the property, which included 22 acres and a house, from Minnie S. Stanwood of Hartford in January 1917. After making some alterations, the Cheshire Country Club opened in July 1917. Tennis courts and a five-hole golf course were added that year.

I don't know why Haile, who lived in Waterbury, chose Cheshire for the country club, other than the nice newspaper story about seeing it frequently. Cheshire was a dry town in 1917, preventing the Club from serving alcohol until they obtained a special license. There was plenty of land in Waterbury, but as a black man in 1917, Haile might have had a difficult time finding a white property owner willing to sell to him.

The Club was owned and operated by Johnson Haile, with a Board of Governors who oversaw memberships and finances. Founding Waterbury members of the Board were Johnson L. Haile, J. Edward Jones, James E. Kefford, Dr. P. F. Anderson, Dr. B. B. Costa, Henry A. Hatcher, Col. Fabian McKinney, and W. A. Bradley. Other founding Board members lived in Ansonia, Meriden, New Haven, Bridgeport, and Hartford.

Since the Cheshire Country Club was quite possibly the only African American country club in the country, it immediately attracted members from as far away as Washington, D.C. and Knoxville, TN. Other members lived in New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. An inaugural clambake was held on Labor Day, 1917 and was attended by more than 300 people.

I have not found any images of the Club, but here's a description from The New York Age (11 October 1917):

It is located on a slight terrace which extends back from the road about 150 feet to the house. The lawn in front presents a fine appearance. The clubhouse is well arranged for the use to which it has been put. A wide veranda extends across the front and the length of one side. The main entrance opens into a large parlor or ballroom which can be used for dancing, card parties or other functions. There is a billiard room and other small rooms.

The Cheshire Country Club was used for social gatherings both large and small, from clambakes to dances. One of the first events (at least, one of the first to mentioned in the social pages of a newspaper) was a dance held in August of 1917 (The New York Age, 23 August 1917). On February 16, 1918, sixteen couples gathering for dinner, dancing, and singing (The New York Age, 2 March 1918). The party was hosted by Waterbury's Arnold Munn and L.S. Munn in honor of Lillian Taylor.

On September 26, 1919, the club hosted a "dinner and smoker" at which sixty-five of Connecticut's leading African American men honored Charles W. Anderson, former Collector of Internal Revenue, who had delivered a speech about Theodore Roosevelt earlier in the day at Waterbury's Republican Club (as described in The New York Age, 4 October 1919). Anderson dined with Waterbury's James E. Kefford, and Dr. & Mrs. P. F. Anderson; after the meeting, Anderson returned to Waterbury to visit with the Cheshire Country Club's found, Johnson L. Haile and his wife. The committee that organized the event at the club included Johnson L. Haile, James E. Kefford, J. E. Jones, J. E. Hatcher, Emmet Evans, Dr. P. F. Anderson, Otis Tisdel, Col. Fabian McKinney, and Dr. R. B. Costax.

The Cheshire Country Club, as one of the only African American country clubs in the nation, attracted groups from far and wide. During the Club's first summer, the Sonora Wohelo Camp Fire Girls from New Haven spent a week camping at the Club; meetings were held at the Club by the Grand Lodge of the Household of Ruth and the St. Elmo Club of New Haven; a Bridgeport club came up for an evening of whist and dance; a group of high school students from New Haven held a dance; and the Nemberolic Club of New Haven held a clambake in a grove of trees at the Country Club (The New York Age, 11 October 1917). Later, in 1921, Bridgeport's Phyllis Wheatley branch of the YMCA rented the club for an all-day picnic (The Bridgeport Telegram, 8 August 1921).

In August of 1931, the Cheshire Country Club held a dinner in honor of Judge James S. Watson of the New York Municipal Court (as reported in The New York Amsterdam News, 5 August 1931). Judge Watson was one of the first African Americans to be elected a judge in New York. During the 1920s, working as an attorney, Watson represented Marcus Garvey. His wife, Violet Lopez Watson, was one of the founders of the National Council of Negro Women. The dinner at the Cheshire Country Club featured local speakers as well, including William Pape of the Waterbury Daily American and Republican, John F. McGraw, senior judge of the Waterbury Municipal Court, and Waterbury probate judge D. J. Slavin. Following the dinner, Judge and Mrs. Watson traveled to Waterbury with Albon L. Hosley, executive secretary of the National Negro Business League.

Although dinners featuring well-known luminaries brought the most press for the Cheshire Country Club, golf and tennis were an important aspect of the club and its 22 aces. Members competed against a team from New Jersey's Shady Rest for the Cockburn Trophy in 1929 (The Afro American, 8 June 1929).

In 1933, the Mechanical Department of Naugatuck's U.S. Rubber Company Footware Plant rented the Cheshire Country Club for a golf outing (reported in the Naugatuck Daily News).

I have not found any information about the closure of the Cheshire Country Club, but it appears to have happened during the 1940s or '50s. New Jersey's Shady Rest, while no longer able to claim to be the first African American country club, can at least claim to be the longest operating.

Short Biographies Related to the Cheshire Country Club

(If you have more information, please share!)

Johnson Leroy Haile (1865-1923) was born in Florida. He came to Waterbury in 1890 to work as a waiter at the Scovill House Hotel. Haile quickly rose to the position of head waiter, and was highly esteemed by staff and patrons. He was, according to newspaper accounts, tall and handsome, and was known for dating numerous women, black and white. One of his girlfriends, Izetta Alexander, did not appreciate his philandering. She threw acid in Haile's face in 1900 to punish him for breaking her heart. The Bridgeport Herald ran the story with the headline "His Handsome Face is Spoiled" (30 December 1900). Haile refused to press charges. His luck worsened in 1902, when the Scoville House Hotel burned down and he lost his job. Undaunted, Haile found a new job and found a wife for himself. Haile married a woman from Tennessee named Nannie; their daughter Sibyl was born in 1904 and later attended Knoxville College. Johnson Haile purchased the property for the Cheshire Country Club in 1917 and oversaw its operations for at least two decades.

Henry A. Hatcher (1870-1922), originally from Virginia, married Nettie Dubois of New Haven in 1893. Dubois was a cousin of W.E.B. Du Bois, although they most likely did not know each other very well (see Gwendolyn J. Hatcher's book, Souls, for more details). The Hatchers were married at St. John's Episcopal Church on the Green, near their home on Bishop Street (they later lived on Bronson Street). Henry Hatcher appears to have arrived in Waterbury during the 1890s; his first job was as a waiter at the Scovill House Hotel, where he would have worked with Johnson Haile. In 1900, Hatcher was working as a janitor; by 1920, he owned his own cleaning business. Hatcher was an active member of the Waterbury and National Negro Business Leagues, as well as a founding member of the Cheshire Country Club.

James E. Kefford (c. 1871-1940), born in Virginia, was the secretary and general manager of the Negro Business League (NBL) of Waterbury. His office at 95 Bank Street was used as the main office for the NBL. Kefford was also the recording secretary for the National Colored Republican Conference League. Kefford was president of the J. E. Kefford Advertising and Distributing Agency, and he worked as a real estate, loans, and insurance agent. During the early 1930s, Kefford became president of the Cheshire Country Club, of which he was a founding member.

Kefford's wife, Mary E. Kefford (1860-1932), originally from Virginia, was a successful businesswoman. In 1917, she owned the only African American hair salon in Waterbury, employing five people (The New York Age, 23 August 1917). The Keffords lived on Pearl Street.

Fabian McKinney (1873-1961) was a Waterbury real estate agent and founding member of the Cheshire Country Club. He served during World War I, eventually being promoted to Colonel. After the war, McKinney, along with Edward F. Johnson and George Wilson, established the G.K.P. Association, an exclusive men's club for Waterbury's leading African Americans (Hartford Courant, 10 December 1919).  McKinney and his wife, Ella, lived on Easton Avenue during the 1910s and '20s. Both came to Waterbury from Virginia. The 1920 census listed them as sharing their home with two nieces, Alice McKinney and Hattie Lacey, and an adopted daughter, Ruth Newlin.

McKinney made frequent business trips to New York City. During one such trip, traveling with George Washington, a barber who worked on Brook Street in Waterbury, McKinney and Washington were mugged by a gang of thugs. McKinney refused to hand over his money, and the pair managed to escape unscathed (Hartford Courant, 10 December 1919). Their misadventure became part of the public record in 1912, when a corrupt NYC police officer, Charles Becker, was on trial for the murder of Herman Rosenthal. George Washington was called to the stand to testify that he and McKinney had been accosted by a "strong arm squad" working directly for Becker.

Morden Manufacturing

One of the great things about Waterbury is the depth and breadth of its history. There are countless stories to be discovered and shared. Here’s one that starts as the story of an early woman entrepreneur, and ends as a tragic tale of suicide and a phantom lover.

In 1901, a woman named Lucena Mandana Morden left Portland, Oregon and came to Waterbury, seeking a manufacturer for her patent. Nicknamed Lulu, she was born in 1866 in Nebraska to Canadian immigrants. The youngest of eleven children, Morden at first chose a traditional career for herself, attending the Teachers’ College at Emporia, Kansas. She lived with her family in Nebraska during the 1880s, working as a teacher.

Sometime around 1890, Morden relocated to Portland, Oregon and trained as a stenographer. She lived with her brother, Charles Augustus Morden. Still not satisfied with her life, Morden enrolled as a History major at Stanford University, graduating in 1896. She returned to Portland, taking a job as a stenographer for the Chamber of Commerce.

Morden’s life took a new direction in 1898, when she filed her first patent, for a “Separate-Leaf Book” (book bound with two metal rings). The patent was approved on June 19, 1900. The next step was to find a manufacturer for her patent. Morden’s brother, Charles, helped finance the venture with a loan.

Illustration of Morden's patent, No. 651,950 (June 19, 1900)

Morden came to Waterbury hoping to find an existing company willing to manufacture her product. According to a very brief history of her company given in the December 1921 issue of Office Appliances: The Magazine of Office Equipment, the smallest order she could place was for 100,000 lots each of three sizes. Instead, she decided to establish her own manufacturing company for her new product.

Advertisement in The Inland Printer, November 1906.

Morden established her new business at 53 Canal Street in 1901, then relocated it to 59 Grand Street. The Morden Manufacturing Corporation of Waterbury was incorporated on August 9, 1904, and a factory space was established at 143 Waterville Street. The company relocated to 40 Johnson Street, in the former Turner mansion at the corner of Chestnut Avenue (the conversion of the house into a small factory was controversial; it has since been replaced by a massive brick apartment complex).

As president of her company, Morden may have been the first female manufacturing executive in Waterbury. For much of her company’s history, she was the only female manufacturing executive here.

Advertisement in The American Stationer, February 23, 1907.

In the 1920s, Morden moved into a part of the house/workshop on the corner of Johnson Street and Chestnut Avenue. She never married and apparently had few friends. She was dedicated to her business, garnering 47 patents. The company’s capital was listed at $40,000 in 1920—larger than many of Waterbury’s other small manufacturers.

Advertisement in Office Appliances: The Magazine of Office Equipment, July 1922.

Morden Key Ring, illustrated in Hardware, November 10, 1906.
The ring opened using a recessed lever ("A") to activate a swivel gate ("C").

Somewhere along the road of this success story, things went terribly wrong. The first possible hint of trouble appears in the 1910 census, which listed Morden as widowed. It’s possible that the census taker was mistaken—in fact, there are numerous errors in Morden’s listing. She claimed to be a full ten years younger than she actually was, that she was born in Connecticut, and that her parents were born in England. Was there a miscommunication between Morden and the census taker, or was Morden showing the first hints of mental health problems?

On December 21, 1926, Lulu Morden committed suicide. Her body was found by the police, alerted to the possibility of a problem by her gardener and handyman, Frederick M. Feest. Morden had sealed up the windows of the kitchen with quilts, and turned on the gas. Next to her body were letters and other documents addressed to the Waterbury National Bank – the content of the documents is unknown.

Morden was buried in California, alongside her mother, Hannah Lewis Morden. She was survived by her sister, Mima Morden, and her brother, Charles Morden.

At first, the newspaper accounts (in the Waterbury American) detailed Morden’s health problems and loneliness as the likely cause of her suicide. The American ended its first article (21 December 1926) about her death by stating “Miss Morden’s career is a story of struggle against odds and a subsequent rise in the industrial world. When signing business letters she always used the business signature of L. M. Morden and, it is said, that hundreds of business men dealing with her for years were under the impression that they were exchanging letters with a man.”

The sensationalism of her death led to widespread coverage. Some newspapers fancifully wrote about her story as an illustration of the perils of ambition. Pennsylvania’s The Kane Republican (24 December 1926) wrote that Morden came east “with a determination to succeed in the business world… [and] killed herself here in her palatial home because in her eagerness for financial independence she had neglected to make friends.”

Other newspapers leapt onto a supernatural interpretation, beginning with the Waterbury Republican’s article, “Mystery Veils Strange Death of Woman Here,” on December 22, 1926. The paper reported that “Miss Morden imagined that she had lost a phantom lover” was being rumored about town. Although the significance and veracity of this were unknown to the paper, the article went on to explain that the phantom lover “is supposed to have appeared at various times in the reminiscent mind of the woman and influenced her strangely.”  The Medical Examiner denied any mention of the phantom lover in Morden’s will or other documents found with her body.

The phantom lover rumor, not surprisingly, became a national news item, spinning quickly from a “rumor about town” to a full fact. On December 25, 1926, the Los Angeles Times ran an article blaming Morden’s death on the mysterious phantom lover, declaring that she took her own life “as a result of ‘jilt’ by imaginary admirer.” Morden was described as “eccentric,” with a personal fortune worth half a million dollars, and wearing clothing twenty years’ out of style. The article claimed that Morden “told persons that this phantom appeared to her at times in her dreams and made love to her; and that it also advised her regarding business affairs.”

The Miami News ran a nearly identical article the following day, adding a few embellishments (such as her clothing being 25 years out of style). Both articles mistakenly gave her age as 50, rather than her actual age of 60. Since her age on the 1910 census was also off by ten years, maybe this was deliberate on her part.

Is there any truth to the rumor of Lulu Morden’s phantom lover? It is too remarkable to have been the invention of the Waterbury Republican, and it is too bizarre to have been an unfounded rumor. Perhaps Morden really did believe that she was visited by the ghost of a lost love—that could explain why she was listed as widowed in the 1910 census. While she never was married, if she suffered from a mental illness involving a ghostly lover, perhaps she considered herself to be the widow of the phantom.

This is the sort of story that most likely has no firm answers. It’s the sort of story that makes for great fiction. Maybe someday there will be a gripping ghost story written about Lulu Morden and her phantom lover.

Hobart Victory Welton

This is a landmark familiar to most people in Waterbury, a mysterious stone arch built into the side of a wooded hill on Wolcott Street near the intersection of Manor Avenue. It's familiar, but most people don't know why it was built. Years ago, I was told that it was built as a shelter and watering spot for horses needing to rest after pulling carts and trolleys up the long, steep hill. An informal survey on Facebook this week suggests that a lot of people have heard some version of that story. One person remembers it being used by a fruit and produce truck. A few people figured it was a trolley stop and, later, a bus stop.

The story of its origin can be found in Anderson's History of Waterbury, published in 1896. When it was new, this was a shed for storing lumber and carriages, part of a farm owned by Hobart Victory Welton. Here's an engraving of how it looked during the 1890s. There was a carved bird on top which is now gone (although possibly at the Mattatuck Museum).

The shed was built in 1858; the date of its construction is engraved on a medallion on the front center of the arch, along with the Latin phrase Maneo ("I endure"). On the top center of the arch is decorative carving showing two cornucopias overflowing with fruits and vegetables--very appropriate for a farm--in between two Latin words: Puteus and Dolium.

"Puteus Dolium" is a play on the name of the man who built the shed, Hobart Welton. Puteus translates to "well" and Dolium can be translated to "tun." Welton is not a name that exists in Latin, so Hobart invented a phrase to use as his name.

The carriage shed, an iconic structure for Waterbury residents, is now officially historic. It was added to the State Register of Historic Places on November 6, 2013, thanks in part to the efforts of the Bouley Manor Neighborhood Association, which contacted the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation during a recent survey of historic barns in Connecticut.


The origin of the stories about the shed being used as a watering spot for horses can be found to the north of the carriage shed, where Welton built a stone fountain for people and watering trough for horses. Again, here's an engraving of how it looked in the 1890s.

The watering trough was inscribed with the date of its construction: 1870. The fountain and trough was fed by a pipe running from a nearby spring. They remained in use until the 1970s, when the State Highway Department gave them to the Mattatuck Museum. This stretch of Wolcott Street was Route 69 from the 1930s until the 1960s. The carriage shed is still owned by the State Highway Department.

Wolcott Street, before it was paved. The carriage shed can be seen on the left. The house is now a dark red. (Photograph from the Collection of the Mattatuck Museum)

So who was Hobart Victory Welton?

Born in Woodbury in 1811, Hobart moved to Waterbury when he was 8. His father was a retired minister, and the Welton family moved into a new farm house built on what is now the corner of Wolcott Street and Manor Avenue (opposite the carriage shed).

When Hobart was 14, his father died. Late in life, Hobart wrote that “If I were to write my own biography, to please myself only, it would be somewhat as follows: With an inborn taste for sculpture, but obliged from early youth to earn my own living, I have been of some service to society in my day and generation. Had I not been placed under such limitations, I might have been nothing more than a third-rate artist.”

As is the case with all artists, Hobart seems to have felt compelled to create his art, adding decorative flourishes everywhere on the Welton farm. Even the steps of his house were ornamented with fruit and lions' heads.

The lions' heads were salvaged and are preserved at the Mattatuck Museum.

There was also a carved wood gate on the Welton farm. More portable than his stone carvings, the gate has traveled the world. Recognized in 1940 as a classic example of American folk art by the Works Progress Administration, the Gate was exhibited at the Museum of Early American Folk Arts in New York City in 1966; at World Exposition in Osaka, Japan in 1970; and at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1974. 

 

The Gate was donated to the Mattatuck Museum by the Welton family in 1938 and remains on view there today. It was designed with symbols of the farm: a yoke, sickle and chain, harrow, and plow. The top of the gate features a carved array of fruits and vegetables spilling out of a cornucopia.

While art was his passion, Hobart Victory Welton was equally accomplished as an engineer. He served as superintendent of the city roads for 25 years, oversaw the construction of a system of reservoirs on the Mad River to power brass factories, engineered Waterbury's first stone bridge with an arch in 1848, and engineered Connecticut's first iron bridge in 1863, built over the Naugatuck River at West Main Street. Welton served in the State Legislature in 1852 and 1853. He died in 1895, but his art continues to influence us today.

2013 Election Results

This blog post did not go in the direction I expected. I thought I would write up a quick analysis of this year's election results. I thought I would comment on the remarkably low number of votes received by the Republican and Independent Mayoral candidates as indicative of specific problems with their campaign strategies.

Instead, I decided to find out just how much the voter turnout has really declined over the years, and how long this has been going on. What I found was stunning. If voter turnout continues to decline at the same rate that it's declined over the past fifty years, in another decade the only people who will vote in Waterbury's municipal elections are the candidates, members of the Town Committees, and their immediate circles of friends and family.

If we don't change what we're doing, in ten years our voter turnout could be reduced to maybe 3,000 people.

That sounds extreme, but take a look at the table below, and you'll see why it might be reality.

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Year	Mayor Elected	Party	Total Voter Turnout	Total Voter Turnout Percent
1961	Bergin	Democrat	48,195	unknown
1967	Palomba	Republican	41,386	unknown
1975	Bergin	Democrat	37,481	unknown
1979	Bergin	Democrat	32,268	unknown
1981	Bergin	Democrat	33,168	unknown
1983	Bergin	Democrat	29,669	unknown
1985	Santopietro	Republican	32,311	unknown
1991	Bergin	Democrat	32,496	unknown
1995	Giordano	Republican	29,619	unknown
1997	Giordano	Republican	25,164	unknown
1999	Giordano	Republican	22,097	unknown
2001	Jarjura	Democrat	24,323	50.3%
2003	Jarjura	Democrat	19,660	38.8%
2005	Jarjura	Democrat	21,130	40.6%
2007	Jarjura	Democrat	16,429	32.4%
2009	Jarjura	Dem/Rep	13,399	24%
2011	O’Leary	Democrat	17,104	30.9%
2013	O’Leary	Democrat	12,763	22.6%

Election results were pulled from the City of Waterbury Registrar's webpage, from the Connecticut Secretary of State's Election Results Archive webpage, and, for years prior to 1999, from various newspaper articles. For the years prior to 2001, my data is incomplete. I hope to eventually fill in the blanks.

This is a problem that goes beyond party lines, beyond the failings of any particular campaign. All three parties need to come together to reverse the steady decline in Waterbury's voter turnout.

Before we do anything, we need to find out why people aren't voting. We can't sit around guessing at why they didn't vote. We need to know the real reasons. This will take some work. Probably the best way to go is to survey every registered voter who didn't vote. This will require some serious funding. There might be a national organization that can help.

I suspect that the solution to the low turnout will require even more work. The three parties need to do a better job of connecting with the voters, of making them feel like they are part of the system, that their voices and their votes count. But that's just speculation. We won't know for certain how to solve the problem until we find out why 40,000 people did not vote this year.

Campaign Season, 2013 Style

Election Day is almost upon us, so I figured I ought to do at least one blog post about this year's campaign. There's not as much to cover this year. Even if I were involved with the campaign, as I was two years ago, there's not much to cover. There seems to be a consensus that Mayor O'Leary will win re-election and that all of the Democrat candidates running with him will win election. The only unknown is which of the other non-Mayoral candidates will win.

There are four lines of candidates to choose from this year: the Republicans, Democrats, Independents, and on the fourth line, two incumbents who are running without any party affiliation.

Sample Ballot from the Secretary of State's website.
Take a look at the ballot now, so you know what to expect on Election Day.

Row D: Petitioning Candidates

Let's start with the wild cards: Frank Burgio and Ann Sweeney. Burgio is running for re-election to the Board of Aldermen. Sweeney is running for re-election to the Board of Education. Because they are no longer affiliated with any of Waterbury's three established parties, they are Petitioning Candidates on Row D of the ballot. There's no telling how they will do in the election. Although they are incumbents, they'll probably receive fewer votes this year, since they don't have the benefit of a party helping them campaign. This raises the question: how many votes do they need?

Election results for the past 8 years are available online. There are a few things you can learn from them. One of the things the results tell us is that any given candidate for the Board of Aldermen or the Board of Education  needs at least 5,000 votes to win (based on the minimum needed in past elections--if voter turnout is low this year, candidates will need fewer votes to win).

Row C: Independents

Waterbury's Independent Party was formed in 2003 by disgruntled political insiders who found themselves on the outside of Waterbury politics. Since then, members of the Independent Party have been elected to the Board of Aldermen and the Board of Education, particularly after the Republican Party fell from grace following the arrest of Philip Giordano.

The Independent Party lost its seats on the Board of Aldermen in 2011, swept aside by the Republicans, who had placed Mayor Jarjura at the head of their ticket. The Independents might have been able to hold onto one seat, but Larry DePillo chose to run for Mayor instead of running for re-election as Alderman.  (Side note: someone should point this out to whoever runs their website; DePillo's resume claims that he is still serving on the Board of Aldermen.)

This year, the Independents discussed joining forces with the Republicans, but the negotiations fell apart and now both parties are running full slates. Well, sort of. DePillo is on his slate twice, running for both Mayor and Alderman, leaving the Independent ticket technically short one person.

The slate of candidates for the Independent Party can be reviewed on their website.

Row B: Democrats

The Democrats are the dominant party in Waterbury right now. They have the largest base of supporters and hold a majority on the Board of Aldermen and Board of Education. It is widely assumed that their slate of candidates will all win election, riding the coattails of Mayor O'Leary.

Biographies of the Democrat candidates can be reviewed on the O'Leary for Mayor website.

Row A: Republicans

The Republican slate is looking to hold on to the second-place position they gained in 2011 (or maybe even seize a majority on the Board of Aldermen, although that's a bit of a long shot). The party has done a good job of presenting themselves as responsible adults over the past two years (by this I refer only to the Republicans in Waterbury!), helping to repair the damage done by Giordano.

The main competition for the Republicans this year are the Independents, who are likely to win at least one seat on the Board of Aldermen (unless DePillo's base has shrunk, or his supporters are confused by having to vote for him twice).

The Republican slate of candidates can be reviewed on the Van Stone for Mayor website.


Mayoral Candidates

Now for the meat of the election: the Mayoral candidates. Because Waterbury's parties use a slate system of election, in which all the candidates of each party run as a team, the headliner gets all the attention from the media. There have been numerous debates during this year's election, none of which included any candidates other than the Mayoral candidates.

Neil O'Leary

Mayor O'Leary is running for re-election after a little less than two years in office. During his time in office, he's made a lot of progress in turning the city around. Yes, there is still a ways to go, but you can't undo decades of neglect and mismanagement in two years.  O'Leary is steering us in the right direction, and we should let him keep leading us for another two years.

Two years ago, I worked very hard and very long hours to help O'Leary win the election. I have not been disappointed by the results. In addition to steering the city in the right direction,  he has demonstrated some amazing out-of-the-box thinking. Two examples of this have something in common: when presented with a problem that seemingly has no solution, O'Leary finds a solution that inspires everyone involved. Remember the awful blizzard that has us stuck in our homes for days, buried under four feet of snow? It was a nightmare to deal with. O'Leary's plan to hire bored teenagers to shovel out the schools was brilliant, a stroke of genius. The city got dug out faster, the kids and adults who signed up were able to earn some extra money, the parents got a break from the kids, the city's morale improved, and Waterbury got some positive media coverage. The other example is from this past summer, when O'Leary merged two problems to create two solutions. One of Waterbury's big problems of recent years is the proliferation of halfway houses, which get filled up by people with few job prospects, too much free time, and a likelihood of returning to crime. For years and years, city residents and city officials have moaned and groaned about the halfway houses blighting the city. O'Leary looked at this problem and saw an opportunity to solve one of the city's other problems: not enough workers to maintain all of the city parks. He offered the residents of the halfway houses the opportunity to work, clearing the overgrowth out of an abandoned city park, and to enroll in a job training program. The program gave the workers a chance to rebuild their lives, and the city got some very affordable labor out of it. It was a win-win-win scenario.


O'Leary's opponents in this election seem to have two basic criticisms of his leadership that are worth mentioning: 1. Some people have seen their taxes go up; 2. He doesn't follow the rules of bureaucracy.

I see the tax issue as somewhat ironic. O'Leary has done a great job of holding the line on city spending, while improving city services. Taxes went up due to the recent property revaluation, not because the mill rate went up. If your taxes went up, it's because the value of your home didn't fall into the gutter. One of Waterbury's biggest problems is the large stock of devalued properties. The city is full of mortgages that are under water, of houses that went from being worth $120,000 ten years ago to being worth $40,000 today. Speaking as someone whose home is currently worth about $30,000 less than what I owe on the mortgage, I'm a little jealous of people who saw their taxes go up. The fact that my taxes went down is small consolation for knowing that my home has no monetary value.

As to the criticism about not following the rules, I don't see how that is accurate. It's been pretty well substantiated that O'Leary follows the rules of bureaucracy, despite accusations made by DePillo. In fact, there have been several times when the Mayor has consulted with Corporation Counsel to make sure that he's following the rules. Chalk that up to another example of DePillo getting his facts wrong.


Larry DePillo

The Independent candidate for Mayor, Larry DePillo, has run unsuccessfully many times. When this campaign season began, he stated on WATR that he does not expect to win this time either. He's also running for Alderman, which supports his statement that he doesn't think he'll win the Mayoral election. I suspect that the Independents couldn't get anyone else to agree to run for Mayor on their ticket.

The Independents have been running a pretty ugly campaign, launching personal attacks against O'Leary, calling him a bully, a liar, and a racist. Their Facebook posts have been particularly ugly. It's the sort of thing that turns people away from politics. So far, the Independents have only presented reasons to hate the Mayor, and no reasons to vote for anyone else.


Jason Van Stone

The Republican candidate for Mayor, Jason Van Stone, is currently a member of the Board of Education. His term on the Board doesn't expire this year, which means that he is risking nothing by running for Mayor. If he loses, he keeps his seat on the Board of Education and has gained a lot of exposure, improving his political future.

The Republicans have been playing it safe this election, possibly too safe. Van Stone recently stated that they are targeting their base, hoping that if voter turnout is low and they can get enough Republicans to come out to vote, they'll win (which explains why they seem to be campaigning mostly in Town Plot). I'm not sure that's the best strategy. It certainly doesn't seem like a healthy strategy.


Summary

It has been said that the Independents and the Republicans are in a race for second place. Waterbury has approximately 22,000 registered Democrats and about 5,600 registered Republicans. Judging by the 2011 election results, the number of die-hard DePillo supporters has dropped to about 3,100 people. Looking again at 2011, when O'Leary was untested as Mayor, he pulled in 7,648 votes. If the Republicans can get most of their party to vote, and assuming that most voters vote along the party line, they'll fare better than the Independents, but are unlikely to defeat any of the Democrats.