Can Labor Help Break the Power of the Democratic Establishment? A Connecticut City's Model for Change

The success of a union-organized campaign to take over New Haven's city government offers a counternarrative to the old story of labor’s political decline. 

January 30, 2012  |  On January 1, as their colleagues around the country geared up for another year of battling governors and mayors to hold on to eroding union rights, progressive labor activists in New Haven, Connecticut, took on a different challenge: running a city government. Or at least one branch of city government.

On that day, thirty newly elected aldermen (the equivalent of city councilors) took the oath of office for a new term. Eighteen of the thirty won their seats as members of a union-organized slate taking on City Hall–backed candidates; fifteen were first-time candidates. Combined with other solidly pro-labor members of the Board of Aldermen, the slate begins its term with a commanding two-thirds majority of the city’s perennially reactive, pliant legislature. The success of the campaign startled the city—including the union activists who organized it. And it offered a counternarrative and possible strategic antidote to the old story of labor’s political decline.