Cupo has spent all but four of her 35 years in New Haven and now finds herself at the nexus of the city’s relationship with Yale, its biggest employer. Sworn in last month for her third term as an alder, she embodies the dominance of Yale’s unions in city politics, which some New Haveners have criticized as privileging Yale issues, and what happens when activists take over the government.

Charlotte Eliscu, a onetime coworker at a communications firm whom Cupo likened to an older sister, said Cupo draws inspiration from a desire to keep the city hospitable for future generations of locals.

“New Haven is really lucky to have Ellen. And I think that Ellen is also really lucky to live in New Haven,” Eliscu said. “She wants to make it better, and she wants to make sure that her children can have the same experience.”

Raising kids, representing neighbors

On Nov. 5, 2019, Ellen Cupo gave birth to her first child, Hunter, while coasting to victory in her uncontested alder election.

The idea of running for the Board of Alders had come from Aaron Greenberg GRD ’19, who had stepped down from the Ward 8 seat earlier that year and whose replacement was not seeking a full term. So Cupo spent the summer politicking in the city as her pregnancy progressed, pitching a platform of housing affordability, jobs and what she called “developments built in the character of our neighborhood.”

“I felt like I could do anything,” she said. “I felt strong. I felt brave.”

After two uncontested elections, Cupo faced her first challenge last year, from Andrea DiLieto Zola, a Democrat-turned-Republican and local business owner. Cupo said she took the race seriously, although, in an overwhelmingly Democratic city, it posed little threat.

Cupo trounced Zola, 410 votes to 72 — but not before a contentious debate in which Cupo criticized Zola’s Republican affiliation and Zola hit back at Cupo’s union allegiance. When the two candidates were asked to compliment each other, Zola drew gasps for focusing on Cupo’s absences during maternity leave.

“Being a woman who’s working as a mom, no matter what political party you’re representing, isn’t an easy job at the end of the day, and we’re constantly working,” Zola reiterated in a recent interview with the News.

Joining the family union

Before she was a mother, Ellen Cupo was a child of Local 34.

Her mother, a medical research assistant, and her father, who worked in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, met while organizing the union in the early 1980s. By 1988, when Cupo’s mother was helping negotiate Local 34’s second contract, she was pregnant with Ellen.

“You can have a department, or an administrative staff, that just wants to push paper, but they’re not really into the intellectual mission of the department,” Ferguson said. But not Cupo. Ferguson said that she shares an interest in “promoting equality, promoting social justice, diversity.”

In late November, Cupo was one of three administrative employees to sign an open letter defending students who had been targeted by a so-called doxxing truck amid campus tensions about the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. One of the truck’s targets, a graduate student who works with Cupo and who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of further targeting, told the News that Cupo’s signature touched them.

Fighting for change in the long run

Cupo got off work at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 6. There was no time to get home for a shower and a bite to eat, so she stopped at Burger King before heading to City Hall to preside over the Legislation Committee for the first time this year.

The committee’s work spans a variety of policy areas, but this meeting had only one item: a measure to exempt certain city officials from the requirement to live inside New Haven. Cupo, who has chaired the committee since September 2022, called on each speaker as the six alders reviewed the proposed text and questioned mayoral appointees.

“Regardless of what’s going on, she’s always upbeat, she’s always prepared,” Ward 27 Alder Richard Furlow, a committee member, said in an interview. “I think that’s what makes her so easy to work with.”

As a means of making local change, the New Haven Board of Alders moves slowly, but also just as fast as some members’ busy lives can sustain. Cupo described reading reams of official documents in the evenings, and fielding daily questions and complaints from constituents about everything from speeding cars on Chapel Street to indecent images posted outside a strip club.

Alders tend not to propose policy initiatives of their own but rather vote on proposals that come before them, sometimes after making amendments. The vast majority of votes are unanimous. Cupo said she has no aspirations for higher office but plans to keep running for her alder seat as long as she can fight for New Haveners’ housing and jobs and for Yale to give the city more money.

In other words, she sees the long run. When Cupo meets a new member of Local 34, among her first questions is, “What do you want to win in our next contract?” she said. “Everything that we have — paid time off, overtime, all of our benefits — are only because there have been people over the last 40 years who have fought like hell to get them and then to keep them.”

Cupo would know. Her parents, now retired, receive pensions on par with the salaries they earned while working. When Cupo and Dunn need help, they look after Hunter and Ada.

Correction, Feb. 21: This article was changed to reflect the correct name of the Program in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and the year when Cupo first moved to Wooster Square.

Correction, Feb. 21: A previous version of this story misstated the regularity of Cupo’s “office hours” with constituents; they are not every week.