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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 
19 Comments
nope
10/19/2019 07:20:41 pm
Will Craig Kelley be returning the $1000 donation he accepted from a real estate developer just over a week ago? https://www.ocpf.us/Filers?q=14104§ion=Reports#
CCC-AC
10/20/2019 11:44:43 am
This comment is incorrect. We follow the Robert Winters site on Campaign Contributions. According to the most recent information at this site, Kelley has received $150 from real estate. He does receive union funding. You can find the funding information here:
It is correct. OCPF filings are legally required. It's publicly available data and you can visit the site yourself. Reporting to Robert Winters' site is not legally required and the data there may not be current.
CCC-AC
10/20/2019 05:04:07 pm
We are following the delineation of donations by Robert Winters and Cambridge Civic. You can contact him if there is a disagreement. In the mean time we are happy to reach out to candidates on our slate - Councillor Kelley and others. Please email us the name of the person or group that you find problematic.
Nope
10/20/2019 06:03:49 pm
It's better to rely on publicly available data rather than one person who doesn't disclose his methods, because the former can be checked for accuracy by anyone, and the latter can't. If you'd like to ask Kelley about the donation, it's a $1000 donation from Patrick Barrett, a real estate developer, on 10/10/2019.
hafajivi@umail365.com
10/20/2019 08:38:04 pm
Once you verify the facts, will you be asking Kelley to return the donation, retracting your endorsement of him, or amending your site, ads, and other materials to reflect that some endorsees do accept donations from developers?
CCC-AC
10/20/2019 08:53:09 pm
We have consulted with Councillor Kelley and have looked at the state donations list for confirmation: https://www.ocpf.us/Reports/CityCouncilReports.
Nope
10/20/2019 09:13:58 pm
So it is your intention to continue to say your endorsed candidates take no money from real estate developers, even though you now know at least one of them does?
Nope
10/20/2019 09:19:31 pm
What part of this are you even denying? There are five elements:
CCC-AC
10/20/2019 10:57:38 pm
Patrick Barrett is a zoning attorney, hotel owner, rental property owner, and sometime development investor. Robert Winters does not identify Patrick as principally a developer for this reason in his donation chart. If you have a problem with Winters tabulation on this - please take it up with him.
Nope
10/20/2019 11:22:13 pm
Barrett's own LinkedIn profile identifies him as owning a real estate company, and several news articles about his business over the years identify him as a real estate developer. His donation to Kelley as recorded in the OCPF data identifies his occupation as "real estate." He's a real estate developer.
CCC-AC
10/21/2019 12:03:12 am
What you write is incorrect. Patrick Barrett's Linked-in profile lists him as "Attorney. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Real Estate. PW Realty, LLC."
CCC-AC
10/26/2019 09:23:12 am
Update: In the newest report by Robert Winters, Craig Kelley is identified with $1650 in Realtor donations: http://cambridgecivic.com/?p=6965. We contacted both Winters and Kelley about this.
Dan
10/26/2019 10:43:52 am
Could you please explain exactly what it means to “do business before the city”?
Nope
10/26/2019 02:45:19 pm
"We have specifically stated that our concern is about individuals or companies doing business before the city."
Nope
10/26/2019 02:59:46 pm
This is why candidates typically make pledges public by the way, so that voters can evaluate the specifics of their promises. CCC has never released the wording of this pledge. Is there even a specific wording? How do candidates know which donations are okay and which aren't? More importantly, how do voters know what these candidates are actually promising?
CCC-AC
10/26/2019 04:08:41 pm
As we have stated, we contacted both Councillor Kelley and Robert Winters. Both affirm that the money did not come from individuals doing commercial business in Cambridge - but in the past did business outside of the city. We suggest that you contact Robert Winters if you have further issues on this. We feel very good with what our candidates are doing. Meanwhile Marc McGovern of ABC-AF has taken in nearly $100K much of it from developers and people from outside the city. That kind of $$$ influence is where your concerns should be focused.
Dan
10/26/2019 06:15:59 pm
It goes without saying that most of CCC-AC’s donors have given a signicant amount of money to influence their candidates. These donors are vested interests who want to maintain a status quo that benefits themselves at the expense of everyone who didn’t have the good fortune to buy a home in Cambridge before property values began to soar early this decade. These wealthy donors (in my DREAMS can I afford to donate $500) want to keep Cambridge from building more homes for people quite obviously have business before the city. They’re protecting their assets, and their protecting their sheltered way of life. The notion that they are innocent small-fry citizens with pure intentions is laughable.
CCC-AC
10/26/2019 06:43:22 pm
Dan - thanks for coming to CCC-AC. None of CCC-AC donors have developer or building trades commercial business before the city that I know of. Much like in the 1940s and through the 1990s when the Cambridge Civic Association was being founded, many citizens of Cambridge contributed to the founding of that organization and to its election work with the hope that together they could make the city a better place for everyone. I urge you (and others) to go to the CCCoalition.org website and look closely at both our Board of Directors and Advisors. We come from every part of the city, and are of various economic means and housing (some are renters - others own). We all are residents of the city, most of us are active in neighborhood associations and non-profits. Leave a Reply. |
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