Who are "us" and "them" in this political race?
Hartford Mayor Pedro Segarra and his team are using some polarizing rhetoric as they try to hold on to Hartford city hall. Segarra is casting this as a race between "us" and "them," while others are calling it a fight for Latino pride.
Segarra effectively lost the Democratic endorsement to Luke Bronin -- a Greenwich native, a relative Hartford newcomer, and a white lawyer. Now, he's preparing for a primary -- and here's how state Rep. Minnie Gonzalez framed the fight ahead:
“This fight we’re going to finish in the streets. This fight is ours. It’s ours with Pedro," Gonzalez said.
And here’s Segarra at a union endorsement, telling the crowd that there are “outside interests” trying to take the city over:
“Political power should not come from a chosen few privileged who feel, because they have power – the power of money – that they can buy themselves into office. This office is not for sale. Because this office belongs to us. And we own it. We own it," Segarra said.
So that leaves the obvious question. Who's the "us"?
“The ‘us’ for me is the 124,942 people that reside in the city. That is the us,” Segarra told WNPR.
And the "them"?
“The ‘them’ is people who are disengaged, and people who really have no real connection to our city. People whose length of residency in the city and whose efforts in terms of what they have produced for the city is very slim or none, at best,” Segarra said.
Segarra is careful not to define the contest as a racial or ethnic competition between Bronin and himself. The mayor does live in a big gated house in one of the city’s wealthier neighborhoods bordering West Hartford – where many of his neighbors are white. But he said race isn't the issue.
“The fact that he’s white is not the issue. The fact that he’s disconnected and not really from here, and has a profile that’s unlike anything that you see in our city, that’s what makes him very disconnected," Segarra said.
Still, Segarra is a proud Latino, and so are many of his supporters.
Take Elvis Tejada, for instance. He writes in the local Spanish-language press. After Segarra walked out of the Democratic convention, Tejada wrote this in Identidad Latina:
They want to take away city hall from us. This seat isn’t Pedro’s. It belongs to the Peruvians, Dominicans, Brazilians, Colombians, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans.
Tejada goes on to say this race has awakened the Puerto Rican and Hispanic monsters.
"I cannot tell the Latino community not to be prideful that they have a Latino mayor," Segarra said. "I cannot do that. They’re entitled to that, right? But I will disencourage them, however, to turn this into some type of racial competition."
Segarra's rhetoric falls flat for people like Janice Flemming, the founder of The Voices of Women of Color -- representing women of diverse backgrounds in the city. That organization is supporting Bronin.
"I have a hard time understanding that rhetoric when I sit at the table daily with Black, Latino women who have all decided that they wanted to go with Luke," Flemming said.
She also doesn't buy the idea that outsiders are trying to take city hall away from those who have it now.
"First of all, let's be clear. No one can take anything from you that is earned. And when you're consistent on what you're doing and if people see progress, then nobody can really touch you. So, I don't know who the 'us' the 'they' are. But, what I do know is that we're prepared to do the work for the guy that we believe in," Flemming said.
For his part, Bronin said that if anyone is disconnected, it’s the mayor.
“I think some of the rhetoric he’s been using is very disappointing and verging on irresponsible. We are a diverse city. And for Hartford to be as strong as it should be, we need to come together. The mayor needs to be the mayor of all of Hartford," Bronin said.
The primary is September 16.
