totient | Entries tagged with endorsements

There aren't so many contested primaries this year as there sometimes are, and two good candidates (Sonia Chang-Diaz and Quentin Palfrey) have dropped out of the ones there are. But there are still some. So:

- For Lieutenant Governor, Tami Gouveia. This is a close call, as Eric Lesser would also be good, but I like her list of endorsements better than his.

- For Attorney General, I will be voting for Andrea Campbell, but it's an even closer call and Shannon Liss-Riordan would also be excellent.

- For Secretary of State, Tanisha Sullivan. Galvin is a machine politician who had to be dragged into the 20th century. Sullivan has been running the local chapter of the NAACP. The choice is clear.

- For Auditor, Christopher Dempsey. An even clearer choice; he's a progressive (and also helped shoot down the Boston Olympics bid.) His opponent is a pro-cop "moderate" who votes with the Republicans a lot.

- For State Representative, Erika Uyterhoeven. The only one of these that I've put up a campaign sign for. Though I don't really think her challenger has much of a chance.

I posted recently about strategies to result in a 6th place finish for Jack Connolly, and I think there is one.

Last time Connolly got votes from just shy of 55% of voters. This was good for fifth place, a bit over 7% behind the fourth place candidate. Let's imagine he gets 55% again. (Each voter gets four votes.)

Let's also imagine that a fair fraction of Connolly voters want him to win and are therefore more likely to vote for last year's top three, which were Mary Jo Rossetti with 81%, Stephanie Hirsch with 69%, and Bill White with 64%. These are the candidates who will come ahead of Connolly anyway, who have been around Somerville forever, aren't firebreathing progressives, are white, and got lots of crossover with Connolly last time. Plus a vote for Hirsch is insurance; if Connolly doesn't get elected and she quits, he has a second chance.

If votes were independent you'd expect 34% of voters to vote for both Connolly and Mbah, based on last year's numbers. But Connolly voters are not super likely to vote for Will Mbah or Kristen Strezo because those are the candidates who might beat out Connolly, and also because they're the most opposed to Connolly's politics. So the number has to be less. It can't be too much less, though: last time at least 17% of voters voted for both Connolly and Mbah, as their totals added up to 117%. Let's imagine that somewhere between 20 and 25 percent of voters will vote Connolly-Mbah, and between 10 and 15 percent will vote Connolly-Streza.

Allocating the remaining Connolly votes more or less proportionally, and leaving a few for the two fringe candidates or for undervotes, let's guess that 40% of voters will vote Connolly-Rossetti, 35% Connolly-Hirsch, and 30% Connolly-White.

The remaining 45% of voters are just enough to get Streza ahead of Connolly if we all vote for her. We then want to allocate our other three votes among Rossetti, Hirsch, White, and Mbah so that each has a comfortable margin. If we do this optimally we can get each of them a 10% margin. We do this by all voting for Mbah, 77% of us voting for White, 66% of us voting for Hirsch, and 55% of us voting for Rossetti.

In fact not every anti-Connolly voter will be following this playbook. Probably Hirsch will be underrepresented and Rossetti will be overrepresented.

So my recommendation is to roll D6. If it comes up 1, leave White off your ballot. If 2, leave off Hirsch. 3 or higher, leave off Rossetti.

If you don't like playing dice, this rounds off to endorsements for:

Stephanie Hirsch
Will Mbah
Kristen Strezo
Bill White

I don't expect Strezo to make it to 4th place. In fact even playing by this strategy she might not come ahead of Connolly for 5th place either. But it's super unlikely that this leaves you in the position that there's someone you could have voted for who would have beat Connolly if you had, and almost as unlikely that your vote put Streza on the council over an incumbent either.

Crossposts: https://totient.livejournal.com/171475.html

Election day in Somerville today. In ward 6 I like both candidates and wish I could vote for one of them for ward alderman and the other for alderman-at-large. Lance Davis is better organized but Elizabeth Weinbloom is more willing to commit to actual ideas. I'm feeling idealistic this morning so she'll probably get my vote.

For Alderman-at-large my favorite continues to be Bill White and I like what I see from Sean Fitzgerald, who has learned from his past defeats and gotten more progressive and more specific about it. None of the other candidates' web sites seem to say much, though perhaps Dennis Sullivan is a weak third place. If I had a particular candidate I wanted to get rid of I'd vote for the other four. This time around I think I care more about Fitzgerald getting the job than I do about any particular incumbent losing it, so I'll probably vote for just two candidates.

Crossposts: http://totient.livejournal.com/162957.html

I spent a few minutes just now looking over the MA election candidates' websites and also social media about them. As usual,

cos gets it right, and I agree with his endorsements of Berwick, Healey, and Cheung, and his lamentation of the lack of a challenger for Galvin. He calls the Treasurer a tie but I think I prefer Conroy (who has a lot more government experience) to Goldberg (who is a little more idealistic). Now to decide who to write in for Secretary of State. Not that there will be enough of them to be tabulated.

Crossposts: http://totient.livejournal.com/158944.html

Elections in Somerville today!

Once again I have two endorsements and an anti-endorsement for Alderman-at-large. Bill White continues to be awesome, and Dennis Sullivan also gets my endorsement. In an effort to oust Bruce Desmond I recommend voting for Todd Easton and Michael Nionakis, who I think have the best chance of coming in fourth -- both of them had sign-holders out, and they have been campaigning more heavily than Sean Fitzgerald, besides which I don't think I like Fitzgerald very much.

Crossposts: http://palmwiz.livejournal.com/148258.html

cos has some very well thought out endorsements for the MA election. I am not as convinced as he about question 2 (it seems a tough call to me), and I will be going ahead and voting for Jim Henderson for Secretary of State though Cos stops short of making an endorsement there. If you vote in the US, don't forget to do so tomorrow!

I got a letter the other day from Jack Connolly, Bruce Desmond, and Dennis Sullivan. You may have too, if you live in Somerville, but even (especially) if you don't: These are the three biggest old-school machine politicians left in Somerville government, the ones I'd most like to see defeated every time Aldermanic elections come around. They're endorsing Guy Glodis in the primary election for Auditor, and they're why you should go vote for Suzanne Bump today. These guys -- and Glodis himself -- got where they are by having a machine, and defeating them requires good turnout.

For Governor's Council: Michael Callahan. Callahan's opponent is a big fan of mandatory minimum sentencing. That's reason enough for me to recommend you vote against her and for him.

For Register of Probate: write in Sean O’Donovan, 30 Warwick St, Somerville (though just "Somerville" enough of an address). The effect of this vote, in the likely case that Buonomo wins the primary and then withdraws, would be to influence who the party committee picks as a replacement.

For Senate: Ed O’Reilly. Not that he has any chance of winning, but this is a good way to let Kerry know where his constituency stands on things like single-payer healthcare.

I don't usually make endorsements for districts I don't live in, but if you're in 34th Middlesex and care about progressive politics at all, I heartily remind you to write in "Carl M. Sciortino, Jr. 17 Orchard St, Medford" for state representative.

Jack Connolly, Bob Daut, and Marty Martinez are running for the at-large alderman seat vacated by Denise Provost. I don't know what endorsements Connolly has picked up as his web site is for an election he lost in 2005. Martinez seems to be making the most of his endorsement from Provost, but he has one from Bill White as well, and a host of well-reasoned opinions which show a much improved understanding of the real issues facing the city since a couple of years ago. Daut has a website now too, where he pays lip service to some of the same city issues, but he doesn't seem to get it: development in Union Square is not going to work without transit, and the big condo and retail projects the developers want have school and traffic costs he's not thinking about, while neglecting local jobs and affordable-housing benefits.

I'd be voting for Martinez even if Daut were a stronger candidate than he is, because I want to send Connolly packing convincingly enough that he doesn't run again at the next regular election. But now that I've had a chance to see what Daut is about, I'm prepared to suggest to my friends that they do the same. Martinez is clearly prepared to think about the issues. This kind of thinking is why I've endorsed people like Provost and White in the past, and it will be nice to have another voice of reason in City Hall.

Usually around this time of year this journal is full of well-thought-out endorsements of Massachusetts primary election candidates up and down the ticket. This time, I haven't had a chance to do that research, and while I had a pretty good idea what I was doing at the top of the ticket, I found myself looking for endorsements from people I respect for the Lt. Governor's race in particular. Those endorsements might be from people I know and respect personally, or they might be from the politicians whose voting records I most agree with. Denise Provost falls into both categories, and today I got ( this message from her. )

This year's Aldermanic and School committee elections are coming up, and there are more contested seats than usual. Partly this is due to the retirement of several School Committee members, but also the old-school vs. progressive politics in Somerville have come to a tipping point, attracting both candidates and funding to the races.

For alderman-at-large, my favorite candidate and most wholehearted endorsement continues to be Denise Provost. I don't have room here to list all the reasons why she's great, but if I only had one vote instead of four, it would go to her.

Six years ago I voted for Bill White because I thought he had a chance to beat Bruce Desmond for the number 4 spot in the at-large alderman race. He did, by one vote. Since then I have become more familiar with and fond of Bill's positions on local politics, and I can now endorse him as one of the leading voices of reason in City Hall.

That's the end of my list of aldermanic candidates who get my positive endorsement. Bruce Desmond continues to get my anti-endorsement, and in hopes of getting rid of him I recommend that you vote for the two other candidates who you think are most likely to poll ahead of Bruce. My gut feeling on this is that those candidates are Dennis Sullivan and Marty Martinez.

In Ward 6, I plan to vote for Rebekah Gewirtz, not so much because of her position on the Assembly Square development (I'm a moderate here, so I disagree with both candidates) but because of her willingness to articulate it. Though I'm not going to add to them here, I will point out that Rebekah does have a lot of endorsements from the kinds of organizations I think my readers want to pay attention to.

For school committee, I endorse Paul Bockelman in Ward 6, and if you live in Ward 5 I recommend voting for Mark Niedergang. These were the guys who as citizen activists really drove the recent Superintendent of Schools selection process in a useful and productive direction. I met Paul when he came to knock on my door and was impressed with his grasp of the big picture in Somerville right now, something that's generally missing in the progressive vs. old-school debate.

It may not look it, but this is an important, watershed election. Many races are going to be close. Please go and vote even if you don't vote for a full slate.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is Primary day in Massachusetts. Ordinarily this doesn't amount to much. But this time around it's a very important election. The legislature is closely divided on the proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. And the issue doesn't break down along party lines, so in heavily partisan districts (which is most of them) the primary is often the contested part of the race.

Of particular interest is the 34th Middlesex district, in which many of my readers reside. Openly gay Carl Sciortino is challenging anti-gay-marriage Vincent Ciampa in the Democratic primary, and there is no Republican candidate. If you live in southern Medford or western Somerville, voting in this election is probably more important than voting in November.

Also interesting is the 26th Middlesex, a race between two pro-gay candidates, one a Progressive and one old-guard. Bay Windows published an interesting endorsement of the old-guard candidate and I think I agree.

There are plenty of other contested races out there, and even if you don't live in one this is a good occasion to give money to a worthy candidate.

my endorsements for tomorrow's Somerville municipal elections:

After reading a bunch of literature I have decided that Joe Curtatone has more well-reasoned positions on the Assembly Square development and has a record of voting sensibly on tax and budget issues. This combined with endorsements from some reasonable people (most notably Scott Harshbarger and Warren Tolman) and the attack ads from LaFuente have convinced me to vote for him.

There are seven candidates for four Alderman-At-Large slots. Elio LoRusso is an antitax demagogue, and Frank Bakey seems not to understand what it is that the city government does. If in fact it didn't do anything he'd have a point but in fact we do a lot of things right, so he lands in the "bad" pile. Bruce Desmond is a tool of the developers and seems to think that football is the cure for all ills. Denise Provost and Bill White get my vote for generally being the source of most of the good ideas in the city over the last few years. I'm also going to vote for Dennis Sullivan and Laurie Foley even though I don't think they'll be very effective, because one of them might come ahead of LoRusso or Bakey but neither is likely to bump Denise Provost or Bill White.

phi

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