The results are in! Thank you, Ward 5, for entrusting me with another term as your Newton City Councilor. This is your triumph, more than it is my own.
We should also take a moment to reflect on the significance of today’s results: Two years ago, you elected me by just 34 votes. I focused on constituent services and committee work (especially on behalf of seniors and vulnerable populations), but I also stuck to my big, bold ideas on climate action and affordable housing. I didn’t take a narrow election as a reason to back down from the platform that got me elected. When it was time for difficult policy conversations amid protests on policing last year, I didn’t shrink from the challenge. Today I've been re-elected by a 26-point margin, confirming that approach.
Moreover, the opposition campaign and the multiple PACs targeting me this year with thousands of dollars decided to make the Ward 5 Councilor race explicitly a referendum against me personally, against comprehensive zoning redesign, and against the Defund the Police movement for a new public safety model. Today's 63% re-election victory is instead our mandate for a very different platform and a positive, uplifting, welcoming vision of our future.
The people of Ward 5 resoundingly rejected the absurd smear tactics, negative advertising, and disinformation campaigns – not just because the voters here know me personally (many of you have known me my whole life and more of you met me face-to-face in the past three years), but also because that is simply not who we are here.
I give great thanks to the more than 1,500 people who voted for me because they know the real me, whether they already mostly agreed with the “slate” of candidates I was on – or whether they were “crossing over” to vote for me because they know I have our Ward 5 interests at heart and will listen to them, even if we don’t always agree on everything.
I've never shied away from telling voters what I believe and why, in writing or door-to-door. When people disagree, I listen, but I also make my case for why they should come around to my position instead. I was raised to practice service to my community through leadership, not to check which way the winds are blowing first. I’m fighting for you every day – and for what I believe in.
I can see in today's re-election victory the progress my supporters and I are making in swaying public opinion voter by voter, even on hot-button and controversial issues. Clear, consistent, and open communication of my deeply-held values and policy positions earns trust. So does putting in the hard work for my constituents every day to make their lives better and easier.
We can get potholes patched, so to speak, and have fearless moral clarity in history-making struggles at the same time. And indeed my materialist political philosophy is that in the long run we cannot succeed at the latter without also working on the former. It is by the basics that we may be bold.
It has been a clarifying election this year in Ward 5. In this unmistakable victory today over clearly-defined fault-lines, amid a wave of nasty attacks against me unlike two years ago, there can be little doubt of the direction I should take my time in this office in order to best represent the people of all of Ward 5. My results-oriented approach in office and my cheerful approach in the campaign (including zero negative advertising or mail from my team, once again) has been resolutely vindicated, and I can report that I have personally emerged quite unscathed. Perhaps there is something to that old “Happy Warrior” style of politics after all!
I’m proud and excited to serve Ward 5 in a second term, and I could not have gotten this far without the support of my friends, family, colleagues, and campaign volunteers. This victory belongs to all of us. Now we can build on the work of the past two years: from climate action to low-income housing; from roads, sidewalks, and new school facilities to working with the MBTA on station improvements; from pandemic assistance to outdoor dining; and from senior services and a new senior center proposal to reimagining the future organization and methods of public safety in Newton. And we can build on all of that in this coming term on an even more solid footing than before.
We have proven that we are on the right track and have the confidence of the voters to continue what we have begun. I hope this is a political model that others can emulate and build on as well, elsewhere in N