A Sturbridge resident is trying to run for a Worcester state rep seat

The #2 thing you have to be, after alive, is a resident of the district you want to represent

So I got a hot tip that local gourmand Domenic Mercurio is not only running against Mary Keefe for the 15th Worcester District State Rep seat, but that he’s doing so fraudulently… given he lives in Sturbridge. It took me all of 10 minutes to confirm that.

According to the Worcester County Registry of Deeds, Mercurio’s last recorded declaration of homestead, from 2023, makes his official domicile about 20 miles away from the 15th Worcester District, where he has to live, legally, to run for the seat.

Here have a look for yourself. (Redacted the exact address because there’s no reason to be like that about it).

May I direct you to point #1 of the above document wherein it reads “our principal residence.” And how that principal residence is in Sturbridge. Lmao. The 15th Worcester District is entirely in the city of Worcester, stretching from Main South, up Vernon Hill, and into the shrubby suburban territory Grafton and Shrewsbury will lay equal claim to once Worcester is mercifully Balkanized. None of that happens to be in the town of Sturbridge, where Mercurio lives.

On his campaign filings in OCPF and elsewhere the Worcester Public Market’s address is the address given. He is a manager there and owns a business there. Some sort of wine bar. And that’s all wonderful but you do have to live in a district to run for the right to represent it in state government. That’s one of the top criteria, in fact, of the position of state representative. First, you have to be a living human being and probably an adult one of a certain threshold though I’m not sure of the specific language on that. Second, you have to live in the district you seek to represent. You can be many other things besides that, and state reps often are, but you do have to be alive and reside in the district.

On Mercurio’s campaign website, knowing what we know now, it’s funny to read his opening line: “I grew up right here. In this district. On these streets.” ...then I moved, he didn’t say. He then has the balls to say Mary Keefe, who lives in the district, has not been “present enough” in it. Whereas he—a commuter from the town built around a fake pilgrim village, conveniently located just off the Mass Pike, halfway between New York and Plymouth Rock—would be much more present. Surely. Also, in his bio he speaks about having served as a legislative aide on Beacon Hill back in the 90s. Someone like that should know about the residency requirement. Hard to decide which is more disqualifying, his knowing or his not knowing.

It’s hard to tell how serious Mercurio is. He has $28,000 in his campaign fund, which looks like a lot until you realize it’s all one personal loan from candidate to campaign. He’s spent all of three dollars, on a deposit fee from TD Bank. The website is an obvious template from some or another Act Blue-adjacent enterprise.

Mary Keefe doesn’t deserve this. She is one of the rare good ones and does as much as we can hope for a state rep to do in this state, where the reps can’t do very much at all. I wonder who put him up to this? I’d say Tim Murray but Tim’s already put another poor sucker up to it: Ron Waddell, a nice enough guy from what I can tell, who has also decided to try to unseat Mary Keefe for reasons that will never be clearly articulated but are nevertheless pretty obvious.

Here’s a bit from the platform section of Waddell’s website that may as well be straight from the Chamber Exchange.

Third, our small businesses are the heart of Worcester’s economy. From neighborhood shops to local entrepreneurs, these businesses create jobs, strengthen communities, and help Worcester grow. That’s why Ron believes supporting small businesses means reducing barriers, encouraging innovation, and making sure local entrepreneurs have the resources they need to succeed. Because a thriving local economy benefits everyone.

His fourth priority is government transparency. “Government should work with the people, not behind closed doors.” But nowhere on his website is there any mention of the power broker he’s partnered with in this endeavor, who very much runs city hall and does so behind a series of successive closed doors, designed to slam shut when the one in front of it opens, like the locks of a canal. Don’t forget about Economic Development Council, folks! Especially when we get to our next segment.

As always the truth is in the bank reports. Among Waddell’s first donors are Tim Murray, Vincent Pedone, Paul Giorgio, and their shared attack dog, Steve Quist. To read the March report makes it plain to see: Waddell’s campaign is just the next front in Murray’s weird little war on progressives. Encouraged by his ability to get a real-life Geodude elected over Etel Haxhiaj in City Council District 5, Murray now sends his troops deeper into the Eastern Front.

I suppose this is my first dispatch on the 2026 campaign trail, such as it is. While city races are a “big deal” for this newsletter and its mandate, statewide races are a little less so. For instance there’s no real practical difference between Governor Healey and any Serious Republican that poses a threat, though that doesn’t appear to be the case this year, as the Mass GOP nominated a penis-looking gentleman from the MAGA set.

The rent control ballot question is a different animal. That will likely be my focus as we move to November. Great op-ed in the Telegram on that front from Keith Linhares, per usual.

And oh yeah actually my first dispatch from the campaign trail was actually the post about Joe Petty’s opposition to rent control a few weeks ago. And, would you look at that, as of press time it appears the man is at it again: “Opinion/Guest column: Rent control not the fix for housing crisis.” In this op-ed, published today, Petty retreads many of the points made in the real estate industry orchestrated “you’ll never believe what these 13 mayors think about rent control” article in the Globe, the subject of my last post. He asserts it would be catastrophic to the city’s budget, but doesn’t explain how. He again presents the city’s housing production plan, a compliance document for towns that want to avoid building affordable housing, to give an air of responsibility to his inherently Reaganist, supply-side argument against what is a tepid regulation of the real estate market. If you know how Joe Petty speaks you’ll know he didn’t write this. And down to the phrasing, it’s got real estate lobby all over it. For example, these two sentences in Petty’s op-ed...

Rent control has been shown to disincentivize investment and new construction starts desperately needed to address our housing crisis. St. Paul, Minnesota, saw a 79% decrease in new apartment construction permits after adopting rent control in 2022. Montgomery County, Maryland, saw new multifamily permits decrease from 2,093 to only 54 between 2024 and 2025 after adopting rent control.

...are straight up copy-pasted from a fact sheet crafted by the real estate lobby’s opposition campaign, cynically named “Housing for Massachusetts.”

God, what an asshole.

Good a time as ever to move to the briefest possible council coverage. But first....

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Please Support This Outlet!

Time for the plug! The thing I always write last because it’s a chore. Today (Saturday) I picked up a landscaping shift and I’m so sore from pushing wheelbarrows of mulch up a hill that just typing is giving me grief. So today, extra chore.

But I really do love writing this newsletter and editing its growing roster of other writers and recording a podcast every week and doing a live podcast for the first time and speaking at four different classes at Claremont Academy about journalism and advancing all the various other special projects. The time and freedom to do these things is due 100 percent to the paid subscribers. For $5 a month you basically will this thing into being. I haven’t worked a shift at another job before today in quite some time. And the exhaustion I’m feeling right now underscores that none of the many facets of this enterprise get done if I’m working even part time somewhere else. Blessed I’ve been able to give it my all for so long and I promise to continue to do so as long as you keep giving me $5 a month.

Also be sure to check out the live podcast if you haven’t yet! We raised $450 for LUCE off the ticket sales and the recording is pretty special I think.

Also two our esteemed guests for that program, Etel Haxhiaj and Jillian Phillips of LUCE were honored with the Center for Nonviolent Solutions’ 2025 Peacemaker Award earlier this week.

“At a time when immigrants around the country are being subjected to violent raids and violation of their rights, the Center is proud to honor two people who have stood up for them at great personal cost,” said Center Program Director Claire Schaeffer-Duffy. “As community organizer, Jillian has advocated tirelessly for immigrants while Etel has embodied the courageous compassion needed to counter their dehumanization.”

Very nice!

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Council hits new level of uselessness in almost eight hour meeting

The council spent 7.5 hours to take four meaningless votes of support on four department budgets. Those 7.5 hours were, as I predicted in my last post, filled with a lot of complaining and comparatively little analyzing of the budget. The four departments were, in order, the DPW, Transportation and Mobility, Emergency Services, and the WPD, which was naturally afforded the courtesy of the last time slot, when it was “getting late,” a reality councilors used to launder their lack of scrutiny as a courtesy. For instance, Moe Bergman opened his comments on the police budget this way...

I feel guilty asking too many questions. So I’ll be very brief. It is that time of the night, or morning.

But earlier in the day, Bergman had lots of questions, and did not appear the least bit guilty, as we’ll get to in a bit.

First, I want to put a fine point on how remarkable it was that the council spent basically an entire workday for a normal person doing... whatever it is they do at these budget hearings. A visual breakdown is helpful here, courtesy Davinci Resolve, the video editing program I do my council reporting on. (Should do a “process” video in case anyone’s interested. It rocks.)

The bar in the middle, under Kate Toomey thanking the police chief one of the several times she did, is the full tape, which I cut and color coded by department. In case it’s hard to read on your device, it’s three hours complaining to the DPW (orange), two hours complaining to Traffic and Mobility (yellow), a little shy of an hour complaining to emergency services about the 311 service (green), an hour and a half on police (blue).

Somewhere in the middle, Joe Petty made the executive decision to let other departments go home, saying police would be last. It was a strategic decision if the goal is limiting police oversight. The council always has a hard stop at midnight, meaning the last department to be reviewed is the only one with a finite amount of time in which to do it. Here’s the timeline laid out roughly along the 4 p.m. start time of the meeting.

They finally get to police at 10:15 p.m., with less than two hours of available time. Versus the seemingly infinite time spent on the DPW and Traffic and Mobility, which is a small department, in many ways a DPW appendage. Five hours of very serious and often insulting questioning of public works. Less than two hours of very unserious questioning of the police, with the exception of Khrystian King.

Moe Bergman’s approach to the DPW and Transportation and Mobility, versus the police, is worth examining for a moment. Remember when he said he’d “feel guilty” asking too many questions of the police chief. This is how he opened his comments to Steve Rolle, head of Transportation and Mobility...

I’m going to start off by saying it’s a little bit like a spelling bee. The questions are going to get a little bit harder.In both cases, he was antagonistic and highly critical.

First of all: Oooo we got a tough guy. Second of all his questions weren’t hard: they all boiled down to “why do we fund pedestrian improvements when most people drive?” An easy question, Moe. It’s because everyone driving everywhere in perpetuity as the city grows is unsustainable and irresponsible. Trying to keep it so you can drive across town in 20 minutes, sacrificing consideration for every other form of mobility, allowing them to be legitimately deadly in a routine way, is what we were doing here from 1960 to 2020. This approach produced a reality in which you cannot get across the city in 20 minutes, but you nevertheless expect to, there being no other alternative....

Everyone driving at a given time experiences this disconnect between what they want and what they got, inching along in frustrating spurts, shielded from society and its social expectations in their expensive steel boxes, irritated and angry, surrounded by other anonymous contextless people in their own boxes of steel, who could at any moment do something unexpected that would kill you... and yet you inch closer to the rear bumper of the car ahead of you, you start and stop more dramatically, you attempt increasingly dangerous maneuvers... driving in heavy traffic is a strange liminal space we’ve come to accept as a fact of life. It can and often does resemble a mass psychosis event. People who’ve learned to forget themselves once behind the wheel drive to die or to kill. And so they often do. It is crazy making and it is cooking the earth and any investment in relieving “congestion” by expanding accommodations for cars produces more cars and thus more congestion.

Phew got a little carried away there. All’s to say it is insane that these councilors like Bergman have a politics built 90 percent on roadway inconvenience grievances and yet they kick and scream at every attempt to correct the horrible transportation policies that produced, continue to produce, our horrible roads. Baby brain behavior. Petulant and visionless.

I pulled the entire exchange between Bergman and DTM Commissioner Steve Rolle referenced above because it really is something that needs to be seen to be believed.

I think Etel Haxhiaj hit the nail on the head with a recent post putting Bergman’s comments up next to horrifying recent stories of gruesome pedestrian crashes.

I shared the trial court community service van today (day 5/10) with a young man who had been hit by a car while crossing the street. Left with impaired mobility on his arms and legs.

Roughly same area where a Worcester resident was recently killed. In the most recent budget hearing, councilor Bergman demanded to know (with a lot of righteous indignation) why why City staff don’t prioritize cars moving fast from point A to B.

This while at least two people (one this year and one last year) were killed while crossing the street. This doesn’t take into account pedestrians who’ve been severely injured while crossing.

I didn’t expect to think about road fatalities today during the 5th day of “giving back to my community”, though I’ve been so angry at learning my friend’s husband ( you will hear from her soon) was severely injured while crossing the street recently.

When he wasn’t simply complaining about things, Bergman positioned himself in his comments as someone who needed to be convinced in order for the DPW or Transportation and Mobility to get their funding. Such as in this comment directed at DPW Commissioner John Westerling.

I’m certainly supportive of the fact that money is often needed when it comes to equipment and personnel. We get that, nothing’s for free and if you want things to get better, oftentimes money is a solution.

I’m not convinced it’s the only solution and I’m not convinced throwing more money at problems all the time when the problems haven’t been fully identified, fixes the problem. Certainly going to be supportive of the budget, but let me just say I’m going to be very much like Harry Truman was. I’m going to be the show me guy because I really need to see how this plays out.

But that’s just not the case. Even in the way it’s supposed to work, one unhappy councilor can’t do much but make motions to cut individual line items, and those motions would fail. But in the way it actually works, it’s even more ridiculous. Because councilors rarely make any motions to alter the budget. What authority they could assert does not get asserted. Bergman’s claim to “needing” his grievances satisfied is an empty one. Pure theater, whether or not he knows it.

To put a fine point on it, Bergman, after talking about what he “needs to see,” voted to support both department budgets with the rest of the council, who do so out of habit, as a way to move on to the next part of the ritual. Both votes were 10-0-1. King abstained, rightly pointing out it’s silly to approve individual department budgets before the ultimate, legally binding vote on the whole budget at the end of the process. Automatically undercutting your own leverage, you could say.

Khrystian King, was, as always, the outlier, not only on these department-level votes but across the whole process. He tried to ask useful budget questions and provide real oversight. In doing so, he pried open a few good lines of inquiry. The lack of formal complaints filed about the mold problem we’re told animates the need for a new roof at the police station, the amount spent on new equipment for the DPW while new positions are few and far between, the 30 percent deficit in engineers in the department, and some new information from the police chief about co-response with mental health professionals that seems to contradict past statements made (something I’m interested in and will write about, but need more time to parse). The city is actively trying to get out of the body camera stipend commitment made to patrolman’s union, which still costs the city a half a million annually. Thomas Duffy and the rest of the union leadership have been stubborn on the point they should be paid for body cameras. Batista said as much answering a question from King, and he didn’t sound overly optimistic of the city’s success.

All’s to say King was the only one, for the most part, really digging into the budget. At these supposed budget hearings, you’d think there’d be more of it. But he was the outlier. Bergman was the best example of the normative behavior, using his time to air reactionary grievances, framing them in a way that projects the appearance of authority. Department heads, receiving his peppering gotcha questions, politely answer in overly slow cadences, as if placating an insolent child who isn’t there’s to discipline.

Before we move on, I should stress that it doesn’t need to be this way. The nature of these “hearings” are arrived at culturally. They are as much a ritual or tradition as they are a process of government, perhaps moreso. It falls on Joe Petty, ultimately. A different chairperson could shape a different process. It’s easy to forget that in this city. Joe Petty has presided over the council and school committee for longer than most of us have been paying attention, myself included. Something to keep in mind.

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Odds and Ends

Please subscribe if you can swing it! We work very hard to make Worcester’s local media landscape a little bit brighter. It is at best Sisyphean but here we are.

Great piece in Hell World from a real local journalism compatriot down in Pittsburg by the name of Jordana Rosenfeld. “We don’t want them feeling at home and comfortable we want them removed.”The following passage should ring familiar to longtime readers of this newsletter.

Official strategies included a systematic sweep of homeless encampments coupled with the thorough relocation of social services, including shelter beds, to locations that were less desirable and more far-flung. There was a modest investment in “street outreach” and case management ostensibly intended to help people get into housing (whether or not that worked is a different story) and an indeterminate, hotly disputed number of affordable units were added to the market (the only thing clear about how many new units got added is that it wasn’t near enough).

This part may as well have been written about the Downtown Business Improvement District (BID), and the snitch patrol they employ to “beautify” the area—the mobile trash collection kit next to them mostly for appearances, the real tool being the walkie talkie, and the threat of further routine police harassment it implies to an Undesirable. You have to imagine they just have to touch it, like a cowboy’s hand to sling in a Western movie, to show they mean business, to show they have the power and the person who needs to “move along” does not.

More interestingly, however, with some Downtown stakeholders desperate to “do something” about homelessness, others desperate to appear to be doing something, and everyone willing to settle for the homeless people simply going somewhere else, unofficial strategies to clean up Downtown were quietly executed without any public acknowledgement. City and county officials, business leaders, and major nonprofits created parallel and overlapping systems of surveillance, obsessively tracking the presence of unhoused people and tents and maximizing police engagement to harass, arrest, and otherwise induce those people to go elsewhere.

A few of my pieces appear in a roundup Luke included at the end, of a bunch of great stories on homelessness Hell World has published.

This one, from last year, about Healey’s war on family shelters.

And this one, in 2021 about the large encampment demolition behind the Walmart, at the behest of Walmart.

Rosenfeld’s reporting had me thinking about a passage I read in a short new book of political analysis AK Press put out, called “Naming the Moment” by an anonymous as far as I can tell group of writers going by The Emergency Break Collective.

Between the growth of surplus populations arising from automation, offshoring production, and the decreasing reliability of the main labor market regulation strategies established during the late-twentieth century, we now find ourselves in a crisis in which regulation has taken on increasingly fascistic characteristics. Consider, for instance, how the criminalization of immigrants and the hardening of national borders have coincided with explicit efforts to regulate gender, sexuality, and reproductive autonomy in the interest of increasing American (read: white) birth-rates. Such efforts are labor market regulation strategies played out at the level of the population. From this per spective, legislative and street-level attacks on trans people must be viewed as being of a piece with the concurrent growth of fascist pronatalism and anti-immigrant violence.

The concept of “surplus populations” seems to be of ever increasing use, and yet we don’t hear about it much. Is it because the profit motive of AI relies on the generation of new surplus populations, thus tying the technology into a wider fascistic project? After all, something like 92 percent of all growth in American GDP in 2025 was data centers. Hm! Could be people with their hands on the public discourse till would stand to lose some money if the public at large were to connect a certain few dots.

Lastly “drum machine country” is a subgenre I didn’t know existed before NTS put out a stellar playlist of it recently (love NTS, best reliable source for stuff that perks my ears up). But it so happens I’ve been slowly and quietly plugging away at a demo tape that’s right in this pocket. While most of the music I share here or make for the podcast is silly electronic riffing, these songs are rootsy and earnest and my babies and perhaps a real statement. And I think one or two are “actually good,” though it’s the listener that gets to decide that ultimately. Freeing to realize it’s out of your hands. With any sort of art or writing or performance, really. Since you don’t get to decide, it means you don’t have to decide. You just make what you make to your own taste, then you put it out in the world mostly for the purposes of moving to the next tasty thing. That’s a free artist lesson right there don’t say I never did nothing for ya. Next one’s gunna cost you, though. Anyway, I’ll have to call the songs done at some point soon—will share on here of course, then you all, my dear readers, get to be the Deciders of Worth. Prepare your thumbs for the up-or-down.

Ok talk soon!