This is the first Newton election since at least 2001 in which there were no council/alderfolk upsets; incumbents who ran won. (I can’t find the 1999 results, so can’t tell who was an incumbent in 2001.) And, slightly less rare, all 24 incumbents ran. (Two of the incumbents — John Oliver and Tarik Lucas — held their seats for a partial term after winning them in the March special election.)
The lack of upsets can’t be attributed to few contested races. This year’s eight contested races (four at-large and four ward) is relatively high in this century.
The power of incumbency is particularly interesting given that the field divided itself into two very distinct, issue-oriented, candidate-defined slates, with only one candidate — Jim Cote — not falling neatly onto one list or the other. Incumbency trumped slate.
Another reminder that yard signs don’t equal votes. I was almost certain Kevin Riffe would win Ward 1 based on the huge imbalance in terms of yard signs (and also from Save Nonantum). Definitely saw more signs for Amy than Ruthanne. In Ward 6, in terms of signs it was Vicki Danberg > Lisa Gordon ≈ Alicia Bowman, but Alicia actually got more votes than Vicki (which I was also a bit surprised by).
Despite the fact that most of the candidates I supported won, these results are a bit unsettling.
In a healthy election a few incumbents get unseated. The ones who are weak candidates with strong challengers lose. That’s a healthy system.
In this election there was two opposing slates of candidates with two possible outcomes – status quo or sea change. That’s not how elections should work.
What appears to be unfolding is a mirror or our national politics. It’s not Democrats vs Republican but TeamA vs TeamB
Jerry, I respectfully disagree. This election was a referendum on the way Newton is being governed, from the Mayor’s race on down. The fact that all of the incumbents won was a reflection of the fact that Newton voters are fairly content with the way things are, for the most part, or at least not unhappy enough to want to make a change.
The only cause for concern, in my view, is that there were school committee candidates who ran unopposed for vacant seats. They never had to get out and run, so the public never got a chance to learn who they are, why they ran, and what their positions are. I’m not casting aspersions on them. But the lack of competition for vacant seats sort of indicates a general malaise, and that is never a good thing, in my opinion.
Like the national elections, Newton should pass its very own For the Peoples Act to eliminate PAC money in local politics.
Also interesting that the slate campaigning didn’t seem to work. There was a mix-and-match across that divide. Voters picked candidates not slates.
@THM
Incumbents all winning shows that money supporting the status quo is effective. That side raised more money from Fuller on down.
Money in Newton politics is increasingly a problem. As our lobbyists that distort the debate and our governing.
Agree with all of this. We had a healthy number of contested races for city council which I see as a plus. In addition, almost all of the candidates who ran against an incumbent have a robust history of community involvement.
However, over time (not just this election), the school committee has had new members enter in uncontested races, or had a candidate who was unknown in the community run against a candidate with high name recognition. In fact, we’ve had members serve for eight years without a contested election. I completely agree with Ted: this in no way casts aspersions on these people, all of whom have worked very hard while in office. However, a contested race is good for the candidate and good for the community. Kathy Shields ran in a contested race for the first time in this election and IMO, the larger community had many opportunities to hear her speak on a wide variety of issues and she had an opportunity to connect with a wider swath of the community in a robust way.
I suspect the reason for this is very mundane – in this day and age, most parents, who are the likely candidates for SC, simply don’t have the time to take on the responsibilities of elected office. I see how hard my two sons and their spouses work to keep their heads above water. I returned to work right after having my sons and it wasn’t easy. However, I see a significant difference in the demands on families between the 80’s/90’s and now. I hear the same sentiment from my friends who have grown (dare I say) kids. We’re all aghast at the pressure cooker that families are living under in the best of times – and these sure aren’t the best of times.
A possible change that could address the problem: the tradition of the 3-minute statement at public comment segment of a school committee meeting may be outdated. I’d encourage the new committee to rethink how to communicate effectively with the parents in the community.
I’m always wondering: What happens if no one want to run in a certain race? It never happened in all my years in Newton, but if it’s common to have one candidate in a race, sometimes you gotta have zero.
So actually…Kessler raised the most money in the W3 race, Getz raised the most in the W5 race, and Gordon topped the W6 fundraising. Riffe raised almost 3x what Greenberg raised. And ironically, Emily “we need ward councilors so that people can get elected without money!” Norton was the 2nd highest fundraiser among all the council candidates…without even a real opponent (opponent dropped out for personal reasons and never really got the campaign off the ground). Cumulatively since she has been in office Emily has raised more money than any other councilor by a wide margin.
Why in the world do people think money makes any difference in a local election? Another flyer going straight to the trash? A $50 booth on Village Day? A sloppy hit piece on Facebook groups? Please give us voters a little more credit than that. As Rhanna said, the results show absolutely zero correlation with fundraising.
The amount of uncontested spots makes me really feel like our city council is way too bloated.
As for school committee, that may need a rethink too. It feels like nobody wants to serve on it which I get – I wouldn’t want to either, it’s a tough gig.
So now we have a bunch of councilors and school committee members who didn’t have to make connections with voters or the community this time and just skated right into their spots.
One of my predictions was right though, that slates didn’t matter as much as it would appear by reading online.
On a positive note, happy to have Andrea Kelley for another term. I think she’s one of the best we have.
It’s too easy to say that a candidate’s victory is based solely on their ideals, and a defeat is only due to big money. Both “slates” if you will had plenty of money to spend (judged by yard signs and mailers), and voters decided they were satisfied with the incumbents. Let’s give them some credit.
@Rhanna
So actually…
If you read a bit more carefully, I didn’t say incumbents raised more, just that money is effective. There has always been an incumbent advantage, and enough money can solidify that. There is a lot more money in our local elections these days and it has a distorting effect.
Second, I don’t get your attitude. Your side overwhelmingly won the election. Losing side wants to lick their wounds and share perspective, and you’re right there twisting words.
PS the continued pettiness with Norton is brutal. She is under attack politically more than any other councilor, and now your begrudging her for fighting back? Just petty and brutal, Rhanna. Not what we need in Newton from either side. Do better.
I was surprised at the high turnout for a local election (about 1/3 of voters), especially the high turnout in Ward 1 at Large. I would have not guessed John Oliver to be the top voter getter on the Council or for Pam Wright to win so handily, disproving that money wins a race.
I agree 100% with Jerry.
Maybe part of the problem is that less in person contact is happening between candidates and voters.
@Rhanna
To clarify, incumbents as a whole raised more, that was my point. There may be small differences at the ward level, but this was effectively a slate election as others pointed out. (and we don’t even have all of the fundraising data yet.)
I’m reluctant to pull any broad, sweeping conclusions from this other than that voters seem to be satisfied with the overall direction. There are a lot of things happening on a precinct by precinct that should give us pause. Also, the very aggressive use of the “bullet vote” in this campaign, which, according to several long-timers, is a political norm that has been changed*, had something of an impact on final tallies. This is where the slates may have been a disadvantage, especially in places like ward 3, where a number of us backed two candidates. We saw this in the last election in Ward 2 in which RSN backed two candidates and lost both, whereas they backed one in Ward 3 and won with bullet votes.
* I’m told that in the past it was supporters who called for bullet votes, not the candidate themselves and was often used sparingly. The very aggressive and more broad usage is a subtle, but effective change that we should be watching.
Geez Chuck. It almost sounds like North Korea complaining about how people aren’t submitting their ballots “properly”
I sort of agree that single shot voting might of played a small role in the outcome ( if you look at the totality of the undervote ward to ward ) but this is the anticipated effect of having too many candidates, for too many positions. Reduce the size of the council and this problem would likely go away.
For a casual voter ( like me ) the ballot looked like a menu from the Cheescake Factory. Too many choices ( mostly good choices -maybe ) spread out over multiple pages. Confusing and a little intimidating and we pick the items we know.
Wow, @Joe. You have an amazing ability to take a very even comment about changing political norms and try to make me look like some communist dictator. Exaggerate much?
I saw that bullet voting was being encouraged in the Ward 1 At Large race in particular, but based on the vote totals (Oliver and Leary were 1-2 in total votes among all Council candidates), that didn’t seem to have much of an effect, at least in that race.
As for the Ward 1 Councilor race, the result basically proves that Ward 1 is more than just Nonantum, and that messages geared to Nonantum did not resonate in the rest of the ward. So, true- signs don’t vote (or more to the point, many people without signs do).
@Alec, I guess you missed that thread where Emily joked about running over my dog.
But anyway, my intention was just to add to the dialogue, not to twist words, my apologies if I missed the mark.
What a bunch of useless speculation. Lacking some polling, nobody here actually “knows” anything. Worse yet, it would appear that many of the things you all think you know are wrong. Maybe it feels good to opine? Maybe it is just an abject lack of self awareness and humility.
It is one thing to partake in such speculation among friends and family where the impact of rampant idiocy is at least privatized and perhaps checked by your more level headed compatriots. It is quite another to do so in a public forum which many of the same speculators tout as a replacement for journalism. Just another stream flowing in the sea of social demise.
Seems there still some election night adrenaline flowing out there, or possibly the post-Halloween candy twitch.
This *is* speculation amongst friends and family. We’re all V14 neighbors in a village where, yes, many of us have waterfront property on the sea that Elmo so eloquently describes.
The key is to buy sandbags for when Election Day comes around.
Wow- what is it with you guys? Such a turn off. @Elmo what the heck is wrong with you? ” Social demise”? Post election analysis is baked into our political cycle. Its what people (voters) do. I thought the observations by @chuck and @doug insightful and relevant. We really need to tone it down.
I am delighted that Newton voters, as I suggested beforehand, took a heterodox view of the slate, and I’d like to believe that many residents measured each candidate one at a time. Not that political alliances are unnecessary but that on a city council or school committee, a variety of views may lead to better decisions. We were fortunate, in my opinion, to have two outstanding candidates for mayor, and their race seemed honorable and clean to me.
It seems a waste of time to engage in ad hominem attacks on candidates who genuinely disagree with my own perspective. Not every high-density advocate is a pawn of powerful developers, and not every skeptic about the size of those developments is a NIMBY.
My $.02 –
Voting on an entire council, school committee, and mayor at the same time is burdensome on the electorate. It spreads our attention thin, with hours of debates to watch, and dozens of articles and pithy comments to write. It encourages the slate-system and raises the “i don’t know who all these people are, may as well just vote incumbent” factor. We might see a better articulation of issues and differences between candidates if half of the council was up every-other year, or perhaps one third of it every 3 years.
Voting to elect mayor, 16 at-large councilors, a ward city councilor, and eight school committee members, is too much, even if there are several uncontested races. While they may be aware of the mayoral candidates, the average voter who doesn’t follow city politics closely, of which there are many, are not familiar with many of the city councilor candidates. This is where incumbency plays a decisive role. In the absence of not recognizing the names of people on the ballot, voters will either leave it blank or just vote for the person already in office. Frankly, it is a lot for voters to know each of these candidates for city council. The city council is too large and bloated, but that isn’t going to change anytime soon.
So interesting (and gratifying) that John Oliver (11,669 votes) and Tarik Lucas (11,266) were the top 2 City vote-getters. Even higher than the winning Mayoral count (10,796).
I hope they’re the next Council President/Vice President.
Agree with Brendan – the 24-member city council is simply too large for people to have much time to research the candidates, so slates, huge incumbency advantages, and undervotes are going to happen. In this race alone, across the 7 contested at-large races you had 18 candidates to consider, and add another 2 if your ward had a contested ward councilor race.
In a hypothetical fully-contested race each voter will have to consider at least 44 candidates for 26 positions (16 at-large city council, 1 ward council, 8 school committee, and 1 mayor). This is simply too large for most voters to be able to research every candidate. Other cities have much smaller city councils (Boston has 13, Cambridge has 9, Medford has 7, Somerville has 12). Newton’s 24 is enormous by comparison.
Alas, we decided against making the council smaller in 2017, but I hope this conversation can come up again.
@Barbara – Best comment of thread!!
Bulleting in the City Councilor At Large races is a product of a defective system, which mandates that each ward must choose two at large councilors out of four possible candidates. That is a recipe for bullet voting if ever there was one.
Instead of holding (IMHO expensive and wasteful) preliminary elections to narrow down the choices, Newton should only hold general elections for Mayor, 8 School Committee members, and 24 City Councilors, and chooses the winners by Ranked Choice Voting. Ballotpedia describes Ranked Choice Voting as follows:
“A ranked-choice voting system (RCV) is an electoral system in which voters rank candidates by preference on their ballots. If a candidate wins a majority of first-preference votes, he or she is declared the winner. If no candidate wins a majority of first-preference votes, the candidate with the fewest first-preference votes is eliminated. First-preference votes cast for the failed candidate are eliminated, lifting the second-preference choices indicated on those ballots. A new tally is conducted to determine whether any candidate has won a majority of the adjusted votes. The process is repeated until a candidate wins an outright majority.”
It has worked well in Cambridge for 80 years, and is much less complicated to implement with the use of high-speed computers to do the calculations. In the old days before computers tabulated the votes, vote counters would gather in the high school gymnasium with piles of ballots and sort through them by hand, putting them in piles, until they figured out who won.
And, while we are on the subject of computers expediting the tabulation of votes, what in the world is going on in Ward 8? Every election, Ward 8 is the last to report to City Hall, and last night, none of the precincts in the ward had reported its results until well after all of the other precincts had reported. Because of cybersecurity concerns, the results are physically copied from the hard drives of the voting machines and driven to City Hall. Are the polling places in Ward 8 that much farther away than any others in the City?
RCV has pros and cons. Did not go well in NYC local elections a couple of months ago. I realize a lot of informed people have advocated for it, and it theoretically reduces extremism. On the other hand the winner may end up being a person that very few voters actually wanted to represent them (i.e. was not the #1 choice of a majority or large plurality), and therefore lacks any mandate or support to do anything once in office. RCV can also muddle how to interpret voter policy preferences, and lead to accusations that some candidates’ supporters gamed the system, further eroding confidence.
For example, there is a city councilor who won yesterday whose statements on policing I disagree with. However, more voters chose him as #1 than they did his opponent, so I need to accept that his constituents find his views acceptable (or at least non-disqualifying). If he only received a plurality of #1 votes, but won due to a RCV formula, I would be able to say that he doesn’t really represent the views of the majority of voters.
@Rhanna –
Well you already twisted Emily Norton’s words once here already by claiming Emily said “we need ward councilors so that people can get elected without money!” so afraid you you might have to forgive those of us who aren’t exactly interested in tracking down some thread where you claim Emily said something about running over your dog (insert eye rolls here because to know Emily is to know that she can’t kill a bug never mind a dog). This would really be an awfully good time to just bury that hatchet Rhanna. Last time I checked, Newton is still a pretty small city and whether we agree, disagree, or agree to disagree I think it’s pretty obvious that people in general really want Newton to be a great place to live and raise their families. I sure do and I’m sure you do too.
So to Mayor Fuller and the City Councilors – thank you and congratulations. You have your work cut out for you as we continue forging ahead digging out of the this once in a centennial pandemic. To the City Council and School Committee challengers who were not elected, thank you for bringing your voices forward – we are better informed and democracy is better served when there is active debate and differing view points.
To the many new members of the school committee thank you for stepping up. To those who stood for re-election – may your past service on the school committee give you wisdom as you go forward as better and more capable leaders ready, willing and able to take on the challenges ahead. The children of Newton, their parents and NPS are counting on you.
Democracy can be messy. Democracy ain’t easy. But democracy WORKED across the Commonwealth yesterday! The candidates on the losing side must reflect deeply on how they neglected to get their unique ‘messages’ out to the people they seek to serve. Nobody failed. You simply lost a seat for elective office. The sun is shining today.
So much committee work is required of a City Council serving 90,000 residents that we need all 24 councilors to adequately fulfill all the legislative tasks. These office holders work hard and earn all that they get in payment, including the benefits. No need, in my opinion, to revisit the size of the City Council- the vote on the Charter Referendum was decisive.
In a Newton Facebook group, Eliot Childs pointed out it was actually used in Newton in 1939 for Mayor and Board of Alderman, only to revert in the next year.
https://archive.org/details/NewtonGraphicNov_1939/page/n9/mode/1up?q=choice&view=theater
(bottom of the first column, top of the second).
It was RCV bolted on top our traditional ward system, replacing preliminary elections.
An alternative that would simplify our voting system, which currently offers voters 17 votes each for City Council alone, would be to do RCV (or Single Transferable Vote) for all of City Council. This is the Cambridge model.
Instead of an emphasis on ward only, it would allow any common interest (ward, ethnic/race/country of origin, special interest) to band together to get a seat at the table. The ward system dilutes these interests. That’s in addition to the fact that our traditional voting system (sometimes called “first past the post” voting) can deny representation to interests that run a strong second in multiple races.
If you use a system like Cambridge does, it world both for less popular and overwhelmingly popular candidates. When a less popular candidate is eliminated, their votes go to their voter’s second choice. On the other hand, when a candidate goes over the threshold to land a council seat, a random selection of their overvotes are also allocated to their voters’ second choice.
One incidental aspect of these voting systems is tone. A candidate simply doesn’t want to alienate voters who might support them as a second or third choice if not as a first. Direct or uncivilized attacks can be punished by the voter more easily.
My suspicion would be that we’d have a City Council that looked more like this year’s challengers than our incumbents. Councilors Wright and Oliver’s surpluses could have floated a lot of challenger boats.
Two caveats. First, given the history of charter reform, this idea will never happen (though it is possible that RCV implemented as an instant runoff would replace our costly preliminary elections, which sounds like the 1939 style).
Second, there’s criticism that the resulting councils aren’t cohesive, that they are a product of many special interests. To understand that, we at least have Cambridge to look at for experience.
RCV in Cambridge does lead to odd forms of strategic voting. To try to avoid being eliminated early, people are incentivized to rank their riskier picks higher. This was likely one of the reasons Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler lost yesterday in Cambridge, despite being a popular incumbent who was endorsed by almost every major organization in Cambridge (from A Better Cambridge to the DSA to Cambridge Bike Safety to Sunrise to Our Revolution to Cambridge Resident’s Alliance to Harvard Dems to MIT Dems). People probably assumed he was very safe, and ranked him lower while ranking riskier candidates higher (which helped people like Burhan make it onto the Cambridge council).
For Newton, I would personally like to see something similar to Somerville where there say, 5 at-large councilors that are not ward restricted (chosen simply by top 5), and then 8 ward-only councilors. Unfortunately this is unlikely to happen anytime soon.
I also don’t know if there are other ways to RCV for multiple seats, and whether RCV itself makes sense for multimemeber elections where you simply declare, say, the top 5 vote getters the winners. From my understanding RCV is mostly done to try to get majorities and avoid vote spoiling in first-past-the-post single-member seats. I personally find Cambridge’s RCV system (which involves vote quotas and transfers of extra votes, and involves numerous rounds of elimination) pretty difficult to understand, and I’m someone who supports RCV for single-member-districts generally.
Now that the election is over perhaps the city council could rethink their plans for 2022 leadership. Our city is divided on several issues. How do we address the imbalances of our city leadership offices? Take a look at the slates. Who is president and Vice President of the council? Who are the committee chairs and vice chairs? It is time to equalize the power representation. That is what this election was all about, a power grab by the most affluent parts of the city which are concentrated in the center of Newton. Let us see some real democracy now and a sharing/balance of power.
Yes, the mechanism of the Cambridge system is hard to understand, even if the directions to the public are pretty easy. You really only get this “more voices at the table” effect when you have a multi-candidate pool.
Funny about the loss J describes in Cambridge. Sounds like it didn’t need to happen. Cambridge reallocates overvotes from popular candidates (the “Cincinnati method”), not just from failed candidates. You should put your favorites first. That may point to voter confusion over the system.
Lisa and Barbara, I don’t in general think they Councilors who have only served a full term or less are especially well equipped to be leadership, independent of who they are. There’s just so much to learn. It’s not about ideology, it is about experience. There’s a lot at stake, even from a pure legal point of view.
Specifically to Councilors Lucas and Oliver, they both still seem to be finding their way around. I don’t even think they would disagree.
@Mke Halle Yes overvotes in Cambridge are reallocated, but you really need #1 votes to avoid being eliminated early and so they can pick up other transferred votes. Your #2 vote doesn’t matter if they get eliminated before your #1 vote, so it does lead to strategic voting. This is where RCV becomes awkward – if you support multiple candidates for multiple seats, the order you rank them becomes very important.
E.g. say you support both Burhan and Jivan equally and want to see them both end up on the Cambridge City Council.
If you rank Jivan #1 and Burhan #2, your Burhan #2 vote doesn’t matter if he gets eliminated before Jivan (which, given that Jivan is a well-endorsed incumbent, seems a lot more likely), and the vote that gets transferred is actually your #3 or lower vote. If you think Jivan will do well anyways in early rounds (not an unreasonable thought given everything he had in his favor), you would probably want to do the reverse (Burhan #1 and Jivan #2) if you’re trying to get them both elected. Unfortunately, this really seems to have hurt Jivan, who was eliminated in the final round.
In system like Medford’s (which does top 7), you would simply select both Burhan and Jivan, and not worry about ranking.
In terms of council leadership, considering that every single incumbent one, I’d say that was a strong vote for maintaining the status quo, if the various participants are agreeable. If the tables were turned and there was a sea change at the city council, would anyone be suggesting that Susan Albright remain as council president to help “mend fences” with folks who didn’t agree with the changes? I’d think that would be unlikely…
Also, what Mike Halle said. Plus, I doubt their fellow councilors in their “slate” would ever be ok with that…some of them have worked many terms without being the council president…
@fig, as usual, you hit the nail on the head. I am also informed that at least one councilor who voted against Susan Albright and Rick Lipof last time around will switch their vote. Which makes sense, particularly when it appears that Susan and Rick will remain in their positions, and committee assignments and leadership positions will depend upon whom individual councilors support to lead the council.
@Mike Halle or TH-M: Serious question (although I realize it sounds snarky): what is it about Council President that requires an apprenticeship? The City Clerk & staff are there to advise on rules & regulations.
And if vote totals are used to determine winners & losers, and to justify headlines such as “Incumbent Sweep!”, why not Council Leadership?
BD beating a dead horse: I think numbers talk. 11,266 people made the decision and took the time to fill in the oval next to Tarik’s name in an uncontested race. To quote Willy Loman, “Attention must be paid.”
Beating continuing: I wish there was a binding “None of the Above” option.
Barbara:
But none of those folks who voted for Tarik thought it meant anything beyond voting for Tarik. I voted for Tarik, but I would not have done so if it meant he suddenly became council president if he had the most votes.
It means very little that they had a few hundred votes more than others. It is a good sign for them of course, but has no wider meaning. Our system doesn’t reward folks for voting in uncontested races.
As for John or Tarik being in council leadership, I think that is decided among the city councilors themselves. Perhaps they can convince a majority of their colleagues that they are ready to lead. Absent that, they don’t. Simple as that.
And I didn’t read your comment as snarky as all.
I know I checked a couple sites that had survey questions for candidates to answer, and none of the challengers had bothered to respond. As someone said earlier, lawn signs don’t equal votes. You do actually need to make an effort.