Natal, Laughter Qualify For Ballot

by Laura Glesby - New Haven Independent | August 4, 2025

Certified for the Sept. 9 primary: Ward 1's Norah Laughter and Ward 16's Magda Natal.

With two days left before Wednesday’s 4 p.m. deadline, two petitioning candidates for alder — Magda Natal of Ward 16 and Norah Laughter of Ward 1 — have officially made it onto the ballot for the upcoming Democratic Primary.

After the Democratic Town Committee Convention on July 21, alder candidates who did not receive official party endorsements have been tasked with obtaining signatures from 5 percent of the registered Democrats in their respective wards in order to secure a spot on the Sept. 9 Democratic primary ballot. 

Candidates must submit their collected signatures by this upcoming Wednesday, Aug. 6, at 4 p.m. for the Registrar of Voters office to verify.

As of Monday afternoon, Natal and Laughter are the two candidates whose petitions have been certified. Both are union-backed candidates — Natal by the New Haven Federation of Teachers, and Laughter by affiliates of the Unite Here Yale unions.

Natal, who is running to represent Fair Haven’s Ward 16, gathered 48 signatures, more than the required 35 for her ward. She’s running against incumbent Alder José Crespo, who received the Democratic party nomination (and therefore did not need to petition onto the ballot).

“It wasn’t really difficult to do,” said Natal of gathering the requisite signatures, ​“because I have been doing the work for so long and I had a lot of people supporting me.” 

She said she decided to focus on gathering signatures from people whose doors she’d knocked on already in the campaign process. ​“I think it’s a lot easier to approach people that you’ve already spoken to to sign the petition. You’ve already met with them, you’ve had a dialogue with them.” Though the petition process slowed her down, Natal reflected, it was a means of bolstering relationships with those voters.

Laughter, who is running to represent Yale and Downtown’s Ward 1, also gathered 48 signatures, more than the required 43 for her ward. Laughter is running to succeed incumbent alder Kiana Flores, who is stepping down after the end of her term this year. The party did not make an endorsement in the Ward 1 race, meaning that all three Democratic candidates running for the seat — Laughter, Elias Theodore, and Rhea McTiernan-Huge — have to petition onto the ballot.

Gathering signatures in Ward 1 entailed some unique challenges, as the ward is largely comprised of Yale student dorms: home to an ever-revolving population of voters who typically leave town for the summer.

Laughter said that she and her campaign team called up the students who registered to vote as Democrats in the ward, one by one, to ascertain who was present in New Haven over the summer.

She said she focused the bulk of her in-person canvassing efforts, meanwhile, on the residential addresses in her ward that aren’t affiliated with Yale.

That presented its own challenge: since Ward 1 is largely downtown, many non-dormitory apartments in the ward are in high-rises with security measures preventing uninvited guests from wandering inside. ​“We ran into concierges that were not super interested in letting two college students with clipboards to the building,” said Laughter, ​“but some buildings were very receptive.”

Door by door, Laughter said, she conveyed to voters that ​“I want to be on the ballot so I can fight for a fully funded city. I want good union jobs, affordable housing, and youth and educational opportunities.” She said that message resonated with many voters — particularly residents who worry that they’ll be priced out of downtown as rents rise.

While the area is known for its majority-student population, ​“I learned that Ward 1 has a very diverse makeup,” including in terms of age and generation, said Laughter. One takeaway from her canvassing efforts is that ​“a lot of people don’t have cars. They’re really invested in keeping downtown affordable, so they can live near where they work.”