Declaring that New Haven has had enough of “good” elected officials, attorney Alex Taubes filed papers Tuesday to launch a campaign for mayor. The election form filed with the City/Town Clerk’s Office states that Taubes is seeking the Democratic nomination for mayor in the 2027 election. H is campaign committee name: “Bad Mayor.” The filing follows a series of social-media posts in which Taubes lays out his case for an alternative to four-term incumbent Democratic “Good Mayor” Justin Elicker, who’s seeking a fifth term. (This one will be the first four-year mayoral term under a change to the city’s charter.) Taubes, who’s 37, expanded on his “bad mayor” case Tuesday in a straight-faced, at times high-voltage conversation on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program. He argued that New Haven taxpayers have suffered because of mayors who are “good” to the “people in the room” such as alders, governors, union leaders, and city employees. A “bad” mayor would instead focus on “the people who are paying for that room to be there,” Taubes argued. Mayor Elicker is “always a good citizen. He bikes to work. He’s a good father, a good husband. These are things I’m not. So when it comes down to it, he’s a good guy, and he does things for our own good. Like for example, all these [surveillance] cameras that we have in our city right now …” Taubes riffed. “I’m evil.” Taubes’ platform includes: • Turning the former English Station power plant and surrounding Ball Island into a casino, rather than the swimming pool and park suggested by Elicker. He said he would invite developers to bid on the project — including Donald Trump (who in his pre-presidential life tried without success to build a Bridgeport casino). “Such a good mayor with such a good idea — pool, some trees, a path to walk on. We need something bad there. The taxes are high enough. How about we build a casino with ten pools? Provide a profit motive. Some possibility of making money. Once we make money, it pays taxes and actually help people across the river in Fair Haven who have seen their taxes go up 45 percent.” • Refusing to pay most of the city’s outstanding debts (Let the banks sue!) and firing most city employees in order to cut taxes. That would include eliminating most firefighter positions (aka “jobs for friends, jobs for family, people who knew people, people who were firefighters before”), requiring existing staff to compete for a smaller number of EMT positions. Taubes called the fire department “a huge waste of money … How many buildings are really burning?” • Ditto for the police department: “I’m going to be their worst nightmare.” He said he’d hire a smaller number of ex-offenders (who unlike top-paid cops “don’t make more money than the chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court each year”) to stamp out crime. • Eliminating the 311 license-plate reading surveillance cameras the Elicker administration recently posted around town. (“Who knows who the police share [footage] with? ICE…”) • Abandoning city-supported composting. (He called composting an example of government deciding what’s “good” for us.) Taubes makes his living suing the city of New Haven (among other entities) on behalf of wrongfully imprisoned Black men or arrestees mistreated by police. He was asked on “Dateline” if that in fact makes him good, not bad. “There’s lots of people who don’t agree with what I do,” he responded. “There’s lots of people who go out there and say, ‘Alex opens up old cases and terrorizes the victims and opens old wounds and attacks our police and calls them corrupt.’ A lot of people think I’m bad, and they’re right. I am.” Even as he readied his bad run, Taubes signaled a willingness to drop out of the race this weekend. He responded to a semi-viral Facebook post calling on City/Town Clerk Michael Smart to run for mayor by stating that he would step aside for such a candidacy. Bad luck for Taubes: Asked about a possible mayoral run, Smart subsequently told the Independent, “I haven’t thought about it at all.” Click on the below video to watch the full conversation with “Bad Mayor” candidate attorney Alex Taubes on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.” Click here to subscribe or here to listen to other episodes of “Dateline New Haven.” The post Bad Guy Runs For Mayor appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less