by Thomas Breen | Jul 29, 2019 12:47 pm

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Posted to: Politics, Campaign 2019

September’s Democratic Party primary for mayor will have at least two candidates on the ballot now that challenger Justin Elicker has officially qualified with over 2,000 verified signatures.

Elicker, a former East Rock/Cedar Hill alder and 2013 mayoral candidate, announced on Monday afternoon that Democratic Registrar of Voters Shannel Evans has verified more than the minimum 1,946 signatures he needed to make it onto the Sept. 10 Democratic Party primary mayoral ballot.

Evans verified over 2,100 signatures his campaign has collected from local registered Democrats over the past 10 days, Elicker is quoted as saying in a press release.

Evans confirmed Monday afternoon that her office has reviewed and verified over 2,100 signatures so far from local Democrats interested in putting Elicker on the ballot. There are many pages left yet to review, she told the Independent. When her office is done reviewing and verifying these names, she said, she will submit the list to the city clerk’s office for a final, official certification.

Update: On Wednesday afternoon, the City Clerk’s office confirmed that the local registrar has certified 2,313 signatures submitted by Elicker from New Haven registered Democrats, thereby officially securing Elicker’s spot on the Sept. 10 ballot.

Elicker submitted over 2,300 signatures to Evans’s office last Tuesday, just four days after he lost the official local party’s nomination for mayor to incumbent Toni Harp during the Democratic Town Committee’s convention.

“I want to thank the thousands of people who signed our petition on the street,” Elicker is quoted as saying in the release, “in their homes and by stopping by our office. I also want to thank our team of volunteers for working through the extreme heat and torrential rain to get our name on the ballot. With only six weeks left to go until the primary, we are in a good position to win.”

Elicker’s campaign manager, Gage Frank, added in the press release that the campaign has submitted a total of 3,638 signatures to the Registrar of Voters to date.

Frank told the Independent that Elicker has also already pulled the necessary paperwork from Secretary of the State’s office required to run as an unaffiliated candidate in the general election, were he to lose the primary. Elicker has already started collecting the 121 signatures necessary to qualify for the November ballot as an unaffiliated candidate, and plans to submit that list before the Aug. 7 deadline, he said.

According to the City Clerk’s office records, Wendy Hamilton has also already qualified to run for mayor as an unaffiliated candidate in the general election in November. Urn Pendragon told the Independent that she too is in the process of collecting the 121 signatures necessary to make it onto the ballot in November. And Seth Poole has also pulled the necessary paperwork with the Secretary of the State’s office to petition his way onto the November ballot.

Correction: The original version of this article incorrectly stated that Elicker had already submitted the 121 signatures needed to appear on the general election ballot as an unaffiliated candidate. He has not yet submitted that list, though he has pulled the necessary paperwork and started collecting signatures.