Voters who have settled on a Ward 6 candidate: Why are you supporting your chosen candidate?

[keithn.livejournal.com]

I'm just curious from people who are not the candidates or linked closely to any of them - how did you reach your decision? I have personally found that for the issues I care about, I can't see much of a reason to vote for one candidate as opposed to any of the others. So I'll probably end up voting based on some other reason I haven't decided on yet. They all seem like good people.

I'm wondering as to what is driving other voters. I'm probably not a typical municipal election voter (as a young and relatively recent renting resident of 4 years) but I'm willing to bet some more people like me are here on DSLJ.

Comments

[ron_newman]

I am disinclined to vote for Charlie Chisholm because he did not participate in the "Ask Me Anything" forum here and also declined to meet with the writers and editors of the Somerville Journal. I'm still quite undecided between the other three candidates.

[keithn.livejournal.com]

Is any of your disinclination due to the fact that he was endorsed by The Somerville Times, the paper that you perceive to be making anti-Semitic statements? Do you think he may be in cahoots with their editors?

I also wish he had participated here. I perceive his campaign to be more focused on helping individuals solve their individual issues with the city rather than higher level projects and policies than the other candidates (although I know they all very much are devoted to solving problems for Ward 6 residents) and it would have been interesting to have his take included here.

Anything to create more contrast between the candidates would be welcome, IMO. I feel like every candidate is playing it safe, taking what they perceive to be the most popular and uncontroversial positions, and likely splitting the vote of the people who decide it is even worth voting.

[ron_newman]

No, I don't hold any candidates responsible for the people who have endorsed them.

[laryu.livejournal.com]

I agree with your assessment and I'm also curious how others have landed. Candidate Chisholm seems to care about the day-to-day but he also has odd goals (make the T, free?). The other three seem more concerned about social justice than about the blocking and tackling of city services, like eradicating the rats of Davis Square, getting rid of the broken Big Belly garbage cans, and enforcing traffic rules on private delivery and garbage trucks. I'm pretty uninspired.

[jesseh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, make the T free is an odd stance, I think.

I appreciate Chisholm's emphasis on his work on LGBT issues -- not something I've heard from other candidates.

That said, I'm probably going with Lance Davis, because of his endorsements. Given the fairly similar positions of the candidates, I'm interested in the person who will be most able to work within the system to make things actually happen.

[keithn.livejournal.com]

Lance Davis seems to be the name I see the most on bumper stickers and lawn signs. That and the endorsements lead me to believe he will be one of the two to move on next Thursday.

As to the second one, I have no idea. My best guess would be that Chisholm might consolidate the votes of a lot of long time residents and move on as well. But really, we don't exactly have Gallup polling for Ward 6, and I have no idea how things stand and am very interested in seeing what the results are because I feel like I will learn something about my neighbors. The last time Ward 6 had an election with no incumbent, I wasn't even alive.

[ron_newman]

Lance was the first person to enter the race and got a lot of the early endorsements as a result. By the time David Lieberman's wife approached me to sign his nomination papers, I had to say no because I'd already signed Lance's (and only the first paper you sign is valid).

[cos]

Making the T free should be a universal position of everyone running for office from Somerville (or Cambridge, or Boston, or Brookline, ...), though it's much more of a state legislator priority than something for municipal government to tackle. It would be nice to have municipal governments pushing for it and trying to help make it happen, if the state legislature were working on it.

[ron_newman]

It's not what I'd advocate for right now when the T seems not to have enough money to keep itself in a state of good repair.

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

He also showed up at our door more than once -- at least in one case, not taking 'sorry, don't have time for that right now' as an answer. Nope...

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

I plan to vote for David Lieberman, as I know someone who knows him well personally, and thinks he's a standup guy. I agree that excluding Chisholm the platforms are pretty similar and they all seem bright and like they might do a fair job.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I agree that there's not a whole lot of differences between the candidates' positions, and they all seem capable and good-hearted. I am currently leaning towards Chisholm for several reasons:
1. He has the most experience with government and leadership roles. (I was originally leaning against him because he seemed like an old-guard conservative candidate who might be too set in his ways, but I haven't seen any evidence of that. I particularly appreciated his explanation of why he's not a Democrat, due to a wave of conservative Democrats in state politics in the early '90s.)
2. He's lived his whole life in Somerville and seems familiar with the history of many local issues.
3. He has a principled stance against taking donations from developers, and seems to emphasize anti-corruption positions.
4. He's the only one who mentioned sidewalk snow removal, a pet peeve of mine.
5. In general he seems to have offered concrete actions (e.g. buying sidewalk snowplows like in North Reading) rather than just identifying problems to focus on.
6. He's a math teacher and I like math. :)

I am disappointed that he doesn't seem comfortable communicating on the Internet (didn't participate here and his answers in other online forums were often too brief) but for me that isn't quite enough to outweigh the other reasons.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I am not too worried about vote-splitting, since this is only a preliminary election and the top two vote getters will compete in the general election in November. I would prefer a preference voting process (like instant-runoff) rather than having two separate elections, but it's better than having a single four-way election where someone could win with 25% of the vote.

[pywaket.livejournal.com]

Lance Davis's endorsements, or at least two of them is what made me decide *not* to vote for him. Anyone Curtatone or Connolly wants is someone I DON'T want. The BOA has been way, way too deferential to the Mayor for years.

[ron_newman]

I have some recollection of Chisholm running a really racist and anti-immigrant campaign against then-Ward 6 alderman Jack Connolly in the early 1990s*. Enough so that I campaigned for Jack that year. Maybe Charlie has changed since then, but it concerns me even today.

This was back when "Sanctuary City" was a major local political issue.

(He has run unsuccessfully for Ward 6 alderman four times -- three against Jack, once against Rebekah Gewirtz.)

*EDIT: I'm pretty sure this was in 1993, which was the last time Chisholm ran against Connolly. I moved from Ward 2 to Ward 6 in 1992, and I would not have campaigned for some other ward's alderman when I still lived in Ward 2.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

That is surprising given his involvement in the civil rights movement. Do you have any citations?

[ron_newman]

This was a really long time ago so I don't have any paper saved from then. But I may go look up old Somerville Journal articles in the library now. And maybe also drop by Jack Connolly's office and talk to him.

contested elections, no incumbents ,etc

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

Didn't Rebekah Gewirtz get elected in 2005 in a contested race? Or are you saying that that was different because Jack Connolly was actually still an incumbent but then had some snafu I don't quite remember where he ran as a write-in for his incumbent office after accidentally not re-seeking nomination? Rather than saying that you're an elementary school kid? :) There was something weird about 2005 but it might've just been the suprise of a challenger beating an incumbent (who did not then run for at-large till the next cycle.)

[keithn.livejournal.com]

In light of this, I'm now a little surprised that you initially said you were disinclined to vote for Chisholm due to his lack of participation in the "Ask Me Anything"/Somerville Journal interviews. If he ran a "really racist and anti-immigrant campaign" at some point then I wouldn't expect his participation in those forums to really make any difference in overcoming this issue.

RE: contested elections, no incumbents ,etc

[keithn.livejournal.com]

I don't know the details of the 2005 election, but my understanding is that Connolly was defeated by Gewirtz and there was some sort of drama in the process. It happened before I lived here, but since moving here and paying attention to local politics I've viewed it as a fairly negative event in the history of Davis Square.

RE: contested elections, no incumbents ,etc

[ron_newman]

After losing his ward alderman seat to Rebekah Gewirtz, Jack Connolly returned to the Board as an at-large alderman in a special election after Denise Provost resigned from the Board.

RE: contested elections, no incumbents ,etc

[ron_newman]

Rebekah Gewirtz defeated incumbent Jack Connolly in 2005. (Both candidates were on the paper ballot.) Connolly had been Ward 6 alderman since 1984. I do not know whether he defeated another incumbent way back then.

[gruene.livejournal.com]

Huh. That's only a Somerville rule i think. For state and federal offices, you can sign as many different nomination papers as you like.

> A voter may sign once for each candidate for office.
http://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/elespec/specidx.htm#signom

[ron_newman]

Yep - only for Somerville local elections, but people need to know it when signing nomination petitions.

I don't know if it's also true for other cities' and towns' local elections.

[jimmyfergus.livejournal.com]

I'm disinclined to vote for Charlie Chisholm because when he came to our door he was utterly ignorant of many significant issues in the area, though he was very fortunate that my wife clued him in on them. So anyone who got a visit from him after our house encountered a much better informed Charlie Chisholm. If he'd encountered me instead he would not have had such good tutoring.

He even asked my wife how she found out about some things, like the West Branch Library meetings and plans (that he was totally ignorant of), that are well publicised... It's not just that he wasn't informed, he wasn't even aware of what he should be informed about.