Emerging and Converging Political Factions
Aug 18 – Candidates continue to send me materials for their Candidate Pages and I generally get those posted soon after I get them. You all can thank me later.
I’m also a City Council candidate, and the usual barrage of questionnaires from advocacy groups have been arriving. I’ll be answering some of them but, quite frankly, some are simply not worth wasting my time answering such narrow-minded, self-serving interests that leave candidates little room for nuance, explanation, historical perspective, or much of anything else. It will be interesting to see which candidates dish out all the BS the advocates want to hear in their endless quest for endorsements from a handful of self-anointed, self-appointed activists. Yeah, you know who I’m talking about.
One of the more curious things I have seen emerging over the last few years and municipal election cycles is the coalescence of the left-wing activist groups – including several groups that have emerged relatively recently which are at least somewhat centered around particular candidates. In addition to the Our Revolution gang (ORC), the highly problematic local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and the Cambridge Residents Alliance (CResA) which has become indistinguishable from the DSA, we now have groups calling themselves the Cambridge Housing Justice Coalition (CHJC) and the Cambridge Housing Affordability Organizers (CHAO). In classic chicken-and-egg fashion, it’s hard to say whether the groups have grown around the candidates or if the candidates were spawned by the groups. Many of the same individuals are affiliated with several of these groups. Perhaps most interesting this year is that essentially all of the leftist groups have settled on a common questionnaire promoted by something known as the “Cambridge Progressive Electoral Collaboration”.
Personally, I won’t be answering that questionnaire for a number of reasons. First, there’s no way in Cambridge or on Earth that a centrist like me would ever be supported by the radicals behind this “collaboration”. Second, any group that wants to grill Cambridge candidates on their views regarding Israel and Gaza doesn’t really deserve a response from a municipal election candidate – though I’m sure some of the current candidates will be thrilled to express their views from the river to the sea. Our local socialist loonies are likely looking to Mamdani and New York City for inspiration. Could they add a City Council seat this year? Perhaps, but I really hope not. We are actually in a moment where fiscal restraint should be the call of the day, but we could end up with 5 votes calling for the City Manager to drain our “free cash” in order to fund every imaginable giveaway.
The “A Better Cambridge” faction will, no doubt, sell its slate on the usual promise of housing affordability, but all they really want to do is turn every parcel into a lucrative development opportunity – even if all of the neighbors object. [The ABCers will simply call them all NIMBYs or worse.] I do find it striking that during all the years when “affordable housing” has been the expressed goal of most aspiring City Council candidates, that train has been traveling steadily in the opposite direction. The current pitch is that increased supply will cure all ills, but my guess is that we’ll mainly see more investment vehicles where people (many of them non-residents) can store their wealth. So many landlords, so little time.
Just about every School Committee candidate says they want to narrow the “achievement gap” and provide for the needs of all children (they always italicize the all), yet that gap always seems to grow wider. Even though I am a candidate for City Council, I’m actually quite interested in what’s going on with the School Committee election. There are several matters that have motivated so many candidates to run for School Committee, e.g. the closing of the Kennedy-Longfellow School, the early firing of the previous School Superintendent, the current process to select the next Superintendent, and (at least I hope) the neverending hope for improved educational outcomes – especially in math and science. I don’t really get too jazzed about all the equity talk. Not surprisingly (considering what I do for a living) I just want to see everyone succeed in math and science.
Though I like most of the candidates under the “Cambridge Citizens Coalition” umbrella, they apparently have no criteria for candidate endorsement other than personal whim. I am actually more comfortable as a candidate being completely independent of all the factions.
Then there’s The Bike People, their irrational beliefs, and their total disregard for any residents who travel on more than two wheels.
We may or may not see the proposed new City Charter on this year’s ballot. The clock is ticking. I would love to have the opportunity to talk about the tortured process that led to the current proposal.
Enough for now. – RW