Campaign Tales – August 31
Aug 31 – While other candidates are spending their Labor Day weekend handing out campaign literature and promising whatever it takes to win a #1 vote, I was down in the basement yesterday clearing the collected dust and debris out of a dryer vent. In addition to hair clips and mini-Lego pieces from my previous 1st floor tenants (who were great, by the way), I was able to pocket $1.37 in loose change. I guess I’ll use that to supplement the cost of the 3rd floor front porch deck that I will likely be replacing next month. Owning a triple-decker is great – except when it isn’t.
Back in my computer saddle, I updated several Candidate Pages yesterday and I’m sure I’ll be doing many more soon. It’s relatively quick and easy to do and it gives me an opportunity to read about all the other candidates for City Council and School Committee. I am planning to attend some of the upcoming candidate events – especially the School Committee candidate forums, in part because the Council events conflict with my teaching. Most of the City Council candidate forums are exercises in repetition – bike lanes, empty promises of housing affordability, and the action-reaction to rezoning Cambridge to be more like the ever-exploding downtown Flushing in Queens, NY (where I went to high school). I’ll be interested to hear more about how the Mamdani-inspired candidates will plan to cover the cost of their promises during a time of limitations in municipal finance and how they plan to Defund The Police while carefully employing euphemisms to convey that sentiment.
Also from my computer saddle, I set up an email account yesterday for the Membership Secretary of the Middlesex Canal Association. (I’m a Board member, webmaster, walk leader, and publisher of our Towpath Topics newsletter.) [By the way, is “webmaster” now a verboten word?] I have also been hearing from a few people about a “Not secure” message some people have been getting when going to the rwinters.com and middlesexcanal.org (and possibly other domains and subdomains). There are zero financial transactions happening on any of my websites, so there’s not really a problem, but I’m looking into fixing this for those who get scared off by the warning messages. It’ll cost me a few bucks, but I’ll just tell myself that the ample Social Security payments I’m now receiving will cover it. Hey, it’s better than blowing it at the Encore casino or on a fast red car.
Starting next week, I’ll be back in the mathematics teaching saddle. After Harvard Summer School wrapped up several weeks ago, it’s been great having some time to just walk the Earth like Caine in Kung Fu. That said, Harvard Extension School is calling and I have an all-time record enrollment in one of my two courses – currently 222 students, about 50% more than ever before. I suppose I can chalk it up to my boyish good looks, but there may be some other things going on in the wider world. Even though there has been a “distance option” in my courses going back to Fall 2017, in the semester after Covid first hit (2020) we had large increases in enrollments – all online that year. We have been doing the courses hybrid (in person or online) since then, so that doesn’t explain the big increase this Fall. For the Summer School course, there were as many students who registered and dropped before the start of classes as there were students who attended. This was true for many of the Summer School courses, and my theory is that many were scared off by shifting federal policies and the targeting of Harvard by the Executive Branch. Perhaps the gigantic increase in my Multivariable Calculus course, especially students attending remotely, is also an unexpected consequence of federal policies. Or maybe, mathematics has become the Taylor Swift of academic disciplines.
Having partially buried the lede, let me say a few more words about the municipal election season.
Municipal election campaigns didn’t used to pick up until after Labor Day and, being an old school kinda guy, I’ve been sticking to that schedule. Perhaps I’ll put up a few yard signs this week and do an email blast. I have plenty of yard signs, bumper stickers, and buttons (hint, hint). I also have to update my candidate website – primarily simplification. I’m also thinking of making a few short videos on various topics.
The questionnaires keep on coming – not so much sincere inquiries about the opinions of a candidate on various relevant (or irrelevant) issues of the day, but more of the “Do you agree with our rigid and inflexible ideology on Topic X?” type. The latest one came from a heretofore unknown group calling itself “Cambridge for Palestine (C4P)”. As expected, no names were provided for this new mystery group. I won’t be responding to their little push poll on topics having zero relevance to Cambridge municipal government, but it was good for a chuckle. [That said, I’m sure at least several current candidates will be providing enthusiastic responses.] I suppose it’s only a matter of time before C4P gets included in the “Cambridge Progressive Electoral Collaboration” list of “allies”.
Speaking of the Lefties, 7 Council candidates are now on the record saying they’ll support a Home Rule petition to bring back rent control to Cambridge (Al-Zubi, McGovern, Nolan, Rivkin, Siddiqui, Sobrinho-Wheeler, and Wilson). There may be others. Of course, barring a change in state law, that’s really just a hollow gesture. Besides, what exactly is the value in freezing rents at stratospheric levels? Perhaps that’s not really the point. It’s just the politics of promising something you can’t actually deliver – kinda like when “A Better Cambridge” promises affordable housing as they do every election. My personal platform may include free Internet, free ice cream (w/vegan option, of course), and free ponies for everyone!
Though I am spending less time on it than previous years, I have been watching the campaign finance reports for the municipal election. Perhaps most noteworthy is the (currently) $83,550 in receipts for new candidate Tim Flaherty who is apparently the candidate being backed by the players who have mobilized in the wake of Paul Toner’s decision to not seek reelection. I like Tim and consider him a friend, but there is something very unsettling about this. I’m also a bit puzzled about the criteria used by the various organizations who will be promoting candidate slates this year. Some of them seem primarily focused on ensuring the reelection of their favored incumbents with a few feeder candidates thrown in for insurance. I just wish there was a Reasonable Cambridge slate. I might request inclusion in that slate, but that’s just wishful thinking at this point. I think that’s the candidate slate most Cambridge residents would prefer. Unfortunately, the single-issue advocates are all that we hear from.
By the way, if you want to talk, give me a call (617-661-9230), send me email, or ring my doorbell. I have beer.
Robert Winters (in my role as a candidate)
In Cambridge we like to tout our Proportional Representation (PR) election system as superior to other systems, and in many ways this is true. There is one question, however, that has been nagging at me for some time: “Proportional to what?” During the heyday of Cambridge rent control, it was pretty clearly the case that the City Council was in a similar proportion to the tenant-dominated electorate and that many, perhaps most, voters at that time were guided by that one dominant issue before considering any other issues or candidate traits. After the demise of rent control after Question 9 in 1994, the dominance of the rent control issue faded quickly and we entered a prolonged period where individual personalities and legacy affiliations guided local electoral choices. The notion of proportionality became more of a relic than anything else. In recent years, we have seen the rise of single-issue politics (density, subsidized housing, bike lanes, preservation), but identity politics is as much of a factor as any polarized issue. The question of “Proportional to what?” could not be muddier. What I find most aggravating is how single-issue advocates quote municipal election results to argue why their single issue is somehow reflective of the will of the electorate. There are so many confounding factors involved in voter choice that it is simply never valid to draw conclusions on issues that were not explicitly on the ballot.
This week’s agenda is dominated by several City Council Orders meant to address (or navigate around) the contentious issue of whether the proposed separated bicycle lanes, removal of most of the existing parking, and loss of curb access should proceed on Broadway as currently mandated by the Cycling Safety Ordinance. This is not really a matter of safety so much as political clout. Some straightforward analysis using the current registered voter list indicates that those who want the street reconfiguration to proceed as planned are approximately 25 years younger than those who have signed the petition opposing the reconfiguration. It is also anecdotally clear that there is also a large gap in socioeconomic status. Basically, young professionals are well-represented among those wanting to remove the parking, and those in opposition include far more seniors, people with mobility issues, and people who need their motor vehicles for work and chores.
