I hope that you all vote today if you can.

As the left gained power, many cities switched to off-year elections and non-partisan candidacy. Removing party affiliations from the ballot servers as a kind of poll tax, it forces people to spend time researching each candidate individually instead of just knowing they support a particular party. For those in Cambridge, MA, I have tried to help out by doing the research for you.

Cambridge has the additional complication of having a decent voting system, so you can list your candidates in order of preference. There are two questions on the ballot. For city council, there seem to be three basic categories: People with good ideas, people with no ideas, and people with bad ideas. I have listed them in that order:

1. Lawrence J. Adkins (more public services, affordable housing and health)
2. Mark Flanagan (homeless shelter)
3. Larry Ward (inclusionary zoning)
4. James M. Williamson (elected mayor, street nusiances)
5. Kenneth E. Reeves (Harlem Children’s Zone)
6. Charles Marquardt (fire the city manager)
7. Gregg Moree (energy efficiency, living wage)
8. Kathy Podgers (housing vouchers, parks)
9. Tim Toomey (fuel efficient vehicls)
10. Marjorie Decker (community engagement)
11. Neal Leavitt (achievement gap)
12. Silvia Glick (neighborhood protection)
13. Sam Seidel (afterschool)
14. Henrietta Davis (goo-goo)
15. E. Denise Simmons (311)
16. Minka vanBeuzekom (transparency)
17. Tom Stohlman (do nothing)
18. Craig Kelley (traffic enforcement, no TV for kids)
19. Leland Cheung (promote entrepreneurship, school reform)
20. David Maher (segregated schools, service cuts)
21. Edward Sullivan (tough on crime, homeland security)

School issues are inevitably depressing. Everyone says they oppose the achievement gap and so on, so my first test was to see how people felt about standardized tests (ordered from opposition to support):

1. Marc McGovern (community education centers)
2. Alice Turkel (portfolios, high quality preschool)
3. Richard Harding (no high-stakes)
4. Nancy Tauber (no teaching to the test)
5. Patty Nolan (no drill and kill)
6. Alan Steinert, Jr. (tests are “something to be endured”)
7. Joseph Grassi (desegregation)
8. Fred Fantini (more assessment)
9. Charles Stead, Sr. (tight ship principal)

Happy Election Day!

UPDATE: The winners were (in order): 9, 14, 15, 20, 5, 18, 19, 13, 21. And: 4, 3, 1, 8, 5, 2.