City Council Election 2023
This past election, we failed to get a majority of councilors who would support our main objectives of removing bike lanes and preventing the building of affordable housing. However, we did get two members of the No Coalition onto the council who will certainly be able to slow things down and perhaps halt progress for the next two years. For this we are grateful to our constituency who we affectionately call the No Voters.
Our Winning Endorsed Candidates
Of the 11 candidates we endorsed, four were elected. They won’t all vote our way, but it certainly looks good for our propaganda.
Joan Pickett
Our poster child Joan Pickett just barely got in on the last round. She technically didn’t meet quota, but it doesn’t matter because now she’s a winner and will be on the council. We love winning. We believe that Joan is the embodiment of everything we stand for. She was the president of the ironically named Cambridge Streets for All organization which was created to sue the city to remove bike lanes. Her platform opposing the construction of bike lanes and the zoning reforms that allows the city to build more affordable housing. She also said in this op-ed to Cambridge Day that she believes that the city is spending too much money and that the tax rate increase is a symptom of this, despite Cambridge still having the lowest residential tax rate in the entire state with additional exemptions for owner-occupants. A true conservative.
Paul F. Toner
We are particularly proud of this one. During his first run Paul Toner was endorsed by our bitter enemy A Better Cambridge. He told them he’d support the building of affordable housing. Jokes on them. He voted against the AHO expansion. We endorsed him this time. ABC clearly did not.
Patricia M. Nolan
Patty Nolan actually isn’t a member of the No Coalition. She genuinely believes in environmental protections as demonstrated by her spearheading of the BUEDO amendments. She also expresses legitimate concerns about how the city has implemented bike lanes and zoning reforms, but has earnestly signaled willingness to support smaller but still impactful legislation. Unlike members of the No Coalition, she actually has voted for pro-housing amendments, such as the one to remove parking minimums. So, why did we endorse her? Because her real concerns align with our fake ones and endorsing winners is good for our narrative.
Ayesha M. Wilson
Literally, the only reason we endorsed Ayesha Wilson is because otherwise our slate of endorsees would be blindingly white. Don't get us wrong, she is entirely qualified for her future role as councilor. Our ulterior values just don't align with her demonstrated ones. In fact, she was endorsed by ABC, so we'll have to deal with that.
Our Losing Endorsed Candidates
We endorsed seven candidates who lost. That’s alright though, as most of them were feeders anyway.
Catherine Zusy
She actually had a chance at winning. She went from as low as 12th place to as high as 10th. We hoped she would get in but she was really just a backup in case Joan was too brazenly conservative.
The rest of our endorsees don’t really matter, as they had no chance.
The Winters And Pasquarello Incident
Two of our endorsed feeder candidates were Robert Winters Carrie E. Pasquarello. Shortly after our endorsement, it was discovered Winters and Pasquarello had posted numerous bigoted, homophobic, and Islamophobic tweets. To Carrie’s credit, she did delete her most egregious retweet from a user named @NeoArian and reportedly apologized. Winters, on the other hand, doubled down. He first denied making the tweets when asked about it. Then when presented with evidence that he did make those tweets, the wrote on his blog,
“I’m sorry if anyone failed to appreciate my sense of humor (actually, I’m not really sorry) or failed to see either the irony or the absurdity of something I said over the last quarter-century.”
We really should’ve made a public statement addressing this, but we have no shame. Instead, we asserted that they're accusers, "somehow infiltrated or hacked into the system."
Read more about this and a "woke" protest against our endorsees in the Harvard Crimson.