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This election (Nov. 9) is a critical one in Cambridge to get big $$ out of city politics. Cambridge Citizens Coalition Action Committee was founded in part with this issue in mind. Vote for all 8 on the CCC-AC slate. Find out more on individual candidates and issues at CCCSLATE.ORG.  There is a lot of big money in this election. VOTE all 8 on the Cambridge Citizens Action Coalition slate: RE-ELECT Dennis Carlone, Craig Kelley, Quinton Zondervan and ELECT Derek Kopon, Patty Nolan, John Pitkin, Ben Simon, Nichola Williams ALL HAVE PLEDGED NOT TO TAKE DONATIONS FROM DEVELOPERS and others doing business before the city. Go to CCCSLATE.ORG to select your # 1 to 8 rank order For information on each candidate also go to http://CCCSLATE.Org And Volunteer/Donate via Act Blue
Donations from February 1, 2018 to early October 2019 Average per councilor donations in each incumbent slate group Donor Groups CCC-AC SLATE ABC-AF Pro-Building Trades SLATE Real Estate $83 $7,220 Unions (includes building trades) $667 $5,650 Non-Cambridge donors 29% 46% (% of all receipts) Curious how candidates finance their campaigns? See http://cambridgecivic.com/?p=6383 (the Cambridge Civic Journal, a Robert Winters website).* Goal: Slow the impact of big money on Cambridge housing and real estate. It displaces current middle- and low-income residents. We must, for example:
Goal: Reduce the negative impact of big money on essential City services. Problems with city-wide up-zoning proposal called The Affordable Housing Overlay (AHO): it was a developer-driven housing model and ignored impacts on other major City issues, including:
Returning the same entrenched ABC-AF councilors to revisit and re-vote on flawed proposals does not allow for fresh ideas or solutions. The CCC-AC slate supports the need a more balanced City. Elect all 8 on the CCC slate! BLOG DONATIONS update *In the most recent (Oct. 25) report by Robert Winters on campaign donations, one of our slate candidates, Councillor Craig Kelley is tagged with $1650 in Realtor donations: http://cambridgecivic.com/?p=6965. CCC-AC contacted both Robert Winters and Councillor Kelley about this. Robert Winters writes: "Craig has received money from the following three people 10/10/2019 Rothman, Stuart $150 First Cambridge Realty 10/24/2019 McNerney, Andrew $500 CFO, Residential Construction Group, LLC 10/24/2019 Steinbergh, Alex $1000 CEO, Residential Construction Group, LLC I have known both Stu Rothman and Alex Steinbergh for a very long time. Stu (and his father George Rothman) acquired a lot of properties during the rent control era. They were never 'developers' in any sense of the word - just buying and keeping properties for rental income. Even though Alex Steinbergh's company (RCG) has "construction" in its title, I don't know that he's ever actually built anything in Cambridge. " Councillor Kelley also responded to our query, saying that "Those are friends of mine who do not develop real estate in Cambridge. They work in Salem and in other states. They own property in Cambridge but have no business before the City." For CCC-AC this is an OK donation. We have specifically stated that our concern is about individuals or companies doing business before the city. ON PRINTER CHOICES AND OTHER ATTACKS Advocates for the opposition slate (ABC-AF) have criticized CCC-AC for using a small family run printer on the Cambridge-Belmont border (a firm that many Democratic politicians also use) because they are not a union shop. We called to ask their wages and were told that 6 of the 9 employees are family members (now senior grandparents, children and spouses) as to wages. She provided their wages they are ABOVE union wages in the Boston area, that average $18.40 to $38,27. So for a former Cambridge City Council member and State of Massachusetts Democratic Party official and others to say we use scab labor is pretty strange. Advocates for the opposition slate (ABC-AF) have also criticized CCC-AC saying that we and some of our candidates have taken money from a racist. Meyer is past president of . the Cambridge, Boston . and Massachusetts realtor associations. He wrote an opinion piece in February . 2018 (see below) about the proposed Affordable Housing Overlay (AHO) city-wide up-zoning plan, which saw attacks introduced by the Mayor and others in ABC-AF disparaging certain neighborhoods . as racist gated communities because property values are so high they preclude public housing development such as those being promoted in . the AHO that . would remove . current citizens rights of appeal . and Planning Board design . oversight. Here is what Meyer wrote:: "A uniquely-fine feature of our small-city Cambridge is: We’re a harmonious union of quite-different neighborhoods! Yet this obliterating new proposal of additional “all-affordable” buildings 50 percent higher than our existing structures, citywide (as proposed), is not an appropriate idea for our more suburban single-family neighborhoods. Is it smart to drive rich people out of town? Must the aim really be to make our already-traffic-congested Cambridge now become more like the most-crowded sections of, say, The Bronx, just for dubious claimed theoretical benefits of “equality” and “fairness?” Is proposed pseudo-progressive zoning really realistic, fair or virtuous?" Many of us reproached Meyer for the Bronx reference, but to attack him as a racist, as people affiliated with ABC-AF have tried to do from the outset of this debate about the city-wide up-zoning is not tenable. Here is the article: https://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/news/20190228/guest-column-proposed-zoning-override-in-cambridge-is-major-assault 
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Celebrating the Arrival of CCC-AC, our New Website, and our 2019 Endorsements for City Council10/13/2019 With this blog, we are pleased to announce publicly our newly formed Cambridge Citizens Coalition Action Committee, our new website (and PAC) and also CCC-AC's Executive Committee decision on Sunday October 6, 2019 to endorse our first slate of candidates for City Council. We based our decisions on answers to our questionnaire, the candidate performances at the October 6 CCC-CA Open Forum, our overview of votes incumbents have undertaken in recent months at City Council, and the candidates' willingness to take our pledge with respect to donations. All candidates on our slate have agreed not to take donations from developers and others doing business before the city. We hope that other candidate slates will come to similar conclusions. CCC-AC, like our sister organization, Cambridge Citizens Coalition (CCC), is NOT a single issue civic group, but rather we are interested in a variety of issues that will continue to have importance in the years ahead (see a partial list below on the right). Please return to this site at CCCSLATE.ORG to follow us during this election period. Please consider donating to our PAC and election efforts by way of ACT BLUE or by check (information on the front page). Also consider joining our efforts at CCCoalition.Org.
Candidates are shown below in reverse alphabetical order. Links to candidates' websites are below   Links to Candidate Web Pages are below Dennis Carlone http://vote.cambridgecivic.com/carlone.htm; http://www.denniscarlone.org/ Craig Kelley http://vote.cambridgecivic.com/kelley.htm;https://www.craigkelley.org/ Derek Kopon http://vote.cambridgecivic.com/kopon.htm; www.kopon4cambridge.org Patty Nolan http://vote.cambridgecivic.com/nolan.htm; www.pattynolan.org John Pitkin http://vote.cambridgecivic.com/pitkin.htm; www.johnpitkin.org Ben Simon https://www.cctvcambridge.org/node/668107 Nicola Williams http://vote.cambridgecivic.com/williams.htm; https://www.votenicola.com/ Quinton Zondervan http://vote.cambridgecivic.com/zondervan.htm; www.votequinton.com We urge voters to VOTE ALL 8 of our candidates on NOV. 5 to Get Big $$$ Out of City Politics. Read the candidate bios either at the tab above or on the front page of this site: CCCSLATE.ORG. On October 6, we welcomed a large group of candidates and audience members to CCC-AC's first Open Candidate Forum at Washburn Auditorium, Lesley University. We look forward to working closely with these candidates in the weeks ahead leading up to the election. |
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