If Charles Norton from both Chestnut Hill and Dover is the illustrious and recently become infamous "Chip" Norton he found a way to come up with $11,650 for the election while ducking more worthy creditors. Petty got $6,450, Mero-Carlson got $3,750 and poor Kate Toomey came in a distant third with $1,450. Maybe these three - (3) can refund these donations into a gofundme for his creditors or directly into assumed property tax arrears.
Although I'm not in District 5, Tim Murray's $600 to the Rivera campaign is a gut punch to anyone who admires his opponent as much as I do.
Vote for change! The outcome of the election can be based on the turnout of folks that cannot afford to donate to candidates!
This was interesting enough that I paid for a subscription in order to comment. I like what you're doing here. You're not actually the first - I have been doing this for twenty years now, and for a while my students were doing annual projects on this, with the cooperation of some of the council members and candidates.. See here for details:
I don't make data available during the election because (a) I don't want to be accused of helping or hurting any candidates, and (b) it is hard to get a sense of fundraising during the campaign, especially before the preliminary. But I think what you are doing serves a useful function in informing voters during the election campaign, which I haven't done.
A couple of constructive comments on how to make this better, though: First, it is misleading to use percentages of receipts to describe candidates' fundraising base, as you do here. True, Gary Rosen has received a large percentage of his funds from out-of-state donors, but come on, the guy barely raises any money. Same goes for the other people you've listed at the top. All of them have raised pretty tiny amounts of money. List them by amounts instead.
Second, the individual donation cap in Massachusetts is sufficiently low that you can't really learn much about candidates by seeing who their largest individual donors are. By the end of the campaign, many new candidates will have raised a lot of $1,000 donations, and the incumbents will have raised $2,000 from many people just because they have been raising money for longer. You're going to have to make choices about which $1,000 or $2,000 donors you list, and those decisions will likely be arbitrary. Or your list will just be too long to be all that useful for the more competitive candidates!
Instead, what I would recommend is (a) pay attention to which PACs are giving. Those are easy to track. Those also give you a better sense of what candidates' priorities are; (b) figure out how much overlap there is among candidates' donors - that tells you far more about their politics than who some of their top donors are; and (c) see how much of the money you are looking at here is self-funding.
It is also really important to download the independent expenditure (e.g. Super PAC) disclosures. There won't be that many of them, but they can be pretty consequential.
I'm happy to talk with you about this sometime if you want.
I mostly agree with this except about the PAC part, mostly because a lot of individual donors wind up effectively being PACs. One couple donated $4,000 or almost 10% of the money that Jose Rivera has ever taken in, for example. I do think the individual donor page might be more useful if it listed each candidate's donations in this cycle as opposed to all time, though.
Love this! Speaking of aggregating election data, I have been thinking about how handy it would be to have an aggregated calendar of volunteer opportunities for all the progressive candidates. So you if have a random Tuesday night free, you could easily see how to plug in. An election squad project??
Very valuable site. I used information from worcesterelection.com to reply just now to Steve Quist, who claimed that Etel Haxhiaj has $131,000 in her account, lots of it from outside Worcester:
"You are claiming Haxhiaj has all that in her account? Her lifetime fundraising is close to that figure. You think she didn't spend a cent of it in all her campaigns? She has raised $25,000 this year, 66 percent from Worcester.
"By comparison, Joe Petty, who has raised $820,00 lifetime, already raised $88,000 this year, only 40 percent from Worcester, including $18,500 combined from Kathryn, Barry and Janet Krock, whose abandoned properties have blighted Park Avenue for decades without city intervention; and $3,600 each from PhD Satya Mitra and Duddie's son, David Massad. And Mitra himself has raised $92,000 this year, only 24 percent of it from Worcester.
"So I'm not sure where you get off criticizing a non-resident like me for casting a jaundiced eye on your favored candidates. They're both backed largely by non-Worcester money.
"By the way, members of the Krock family have donated a total of at least $33,550 to six people in the council race this year, with the second largest donation ($6,250) going to Candy Mero-Carlson (who has raised more than half her money from outsiders). All of that Krock largess went to four members of the majority troglodyte cabal, with the exception of $300 to Gary Rosen, who is currently on the outside looking in, and $2,500 to Khrystian King to hedge their bets. That's called paying to play."
Despite his bizarre views on Worcester politics, and in particular his grossly unfair attacks on the council minority, Steve remains my friend and I will continue to help him up. He was running anti-Trump rallies in Lincoln Square before Worcester Indivisible was formed.
yeah I've been around long enough to remember a time he was generally on the right side of things and a nice guy, pleasant to talk to. His trajectory over the past 3-4 years is a readymade case study in the deleterious effects of Too Much Facebook
I too am a victim of those deleterious effects. For musicians, performers, people in general who like continuous affirmation and validation, it is horribly addictive and your mind and sleep pay a big price.
Great job. I have one big question. The family of Barry Krock, who died last year, seems to be supporting Mitra strongly. Lots of signs on the house they own at the corner of Salisbury and Forest and in front of their big hilltop house just down Salisbury Street from that intersection. The Krocks' vacant properties have blighted Park Avenue between Chandler and May Streets for years and some winters they don't even plow the Park Ave sidewalks. They are not listed on your page among Mitra's top donors. Can you tell how much they have given him?
School board candidates report to the city, not the state, so their reports will be available as pdf files in January 2026. If you are interested in candidates who ran in the past, however, you can look at those.
One thing to note if you want to geek out about this is that the city used to provide all of the pdfs for all of the school committee candidates in one place, but their new website lumps them in with lots of other documents and makes it very hard to locate them. That is something perhaps people should complain about ...
We call them school committees not school boards. Small, but important distinction. And they are available now, not January. They’re honestly not that hard to find :) The annoying part is you have to download each one.
ughh that's so frustrating. It's on my list to grab available SC finance reports today. Will be sending a strongly worded email at the very least it seems like
Come on! Gary Rosen wins the out of state over a matter of $600? By your own figures, Gary has raised around $3000. In your opinion Not a Serious Candidate (having less than five figures in the kitty). Gary is as Worcester as you can find. He could win just by standing out in Kelley Square waving at the cars.
It also feels very important (to me and probably only me) that Gary has had the best campaign freebies in my entire time living here. Somewhere I have a Gary Rosen for City Council comb, and I remember one year he gave out campaign-branded Chiclets.
Gary is the only person--maybe alive--who I'd feel comfortable calling 1. an unserious candidate and 2. a shoe-in. He might get the most votes this year. I'm thinking top 3 at least
I played stickball with Gary Rosen at the intersection of Brantwood Road and Bellevista for several years in the late '50s. I would choose him for a stickball team, but not for a political position.
If Charles Norton from both Chestnut Hill and Dover is the illustrious and recently become infamous "Chip" Norton he found a way to come up with $11,650 for the election while ducking more worthy creditors. Petty got $6,450, Mero-Carlson got $3,750 and poor Kate Toomey came in a distant third with $1,450. Maybe these three - (3) can refund these donations into a gofundme for his creditors or directly into assumed property tax arrears.
Although I'm not in District 5, Tim Murray's $600 to the Rivera campaign is a gut punch to anyone who admires his opponent as much as I do.
Vote for change! The outcome of the election can be based on the turnout of folks that cannot afford to donate to candidates!
And shown what an empty suit Murray is
This was interesting enough that I paid for a subscription in order to comment. I like what you're doing here. You're not actually the first - I have been doing this for twenty years now, and for a while my students were doing annual projects on this, with the cooperation of some of the council members and candidates.. See here for details:
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/rboatright/worcester-campaign-finance/
I don't make data available during the election because (a) I don't want to be accused of helping or hurting any candidates, and (b) it is hard to get a sense of fundraising during the campaign, especially before the preliminary. But I think what you are doing serves a useful function in informing voters during the election campaign, which I haven't done.
A couple of constructive comments on how to make this better, though: First, it is misleading to use percentages of receipts to describe candidates' fundraising base, as you do here. True, Gary Rosen has received a large percentage of his funds from out-of-state donors, but come on, the guy barely raises any money. Same goes for the other people you've listed at the top. All of them have raised pretty tiny amounts of money. List them by amounts instead.
Second, the individual donation cap in Massachusetts is sufficiently low that you can't really learn much about candidates by seeing who their largest individual donors are. By the end of the campaign, many new candidates will have raised a lot of $1,000 donations, and the incumbents will have raised $2,000 from many people just because they have been raising money for longer. You're going to have to make choices about which $1,000 or $2,000 donors you list, and those decisions will likely be arbitrary. Or your list will just be too long to be all that useful for the more competitive candidates!
Instead, what I would recommend is (a) pay attention to which PACs are giving. Those are easy to track. Those also give you a better sense of what candidates' priorities are; (b) figure out how much overlap there is among candidates' donors - that tells you far more about their politics than who some of their top donors are; and (c) see how much of the money you are looking at here is self-funding.
It is also really important to download the independent expenditure (e.g. Super PAC) disclosures. There won't be that many of them, but they can be pretty consequential.
I'm happy to talk with you about this sometime if you want.
I mostly agree with this except about the PAC part, mostly because a lot of individual donors wind up effectively being PACs. One couple donated $4,000 or almost 10% of the money that Jose Rivera has ever taken in, for example. I do think the individual donor page might be more useful if it listed each candidate's donations in this cycle as opposed to all time, though.
That's great feedback. I'm going to reach out via e-mail to continue the conversation
Love this! Speaking of aggregating election data, I have been thinking about how handy it would be to have an aggregated calendar of volunteer opportunities for all the progressive candidates. So you if have a random Tuesday night free, you could easily see how to plug in. An election squad project??
You earned my $10 tip, folks. I perused the complete list of donors and although I have a few comments, I'd like to take a long hot shower first.
This is great. I know how hard it is to do such an undertaking, and I am grateful as a local journalist to you for doing it. Kudos x 1,000!
thanks dude!
This is amazing! Great work, everyone. Hoping we see some good results starting tonight.
Very valuable site. I used information from worcesterelection.com to reply just now to Steve Quist, who claimed that Etel Haxhiaj has $131,000 in her account, lots of it from outside Worcester:
"You are claiming Haxhiaj has all that in her account? Her lifetime fundraising is close to that figure. You think she didn't spend a cent of it in all her campaigns? She has raised $25,000 this year, 66 percent from Worcester.
"By comparison, Joe Petty, who has raised $820,00 lifetime, already raised $88,000 this year, only 40 percent from Worcester, including $18,500 combined from Kathryn, Barry and Janet Krock, whose abandoned properties have blighted Park Avenue for decades without city intervention; and $3,600 each from PhD Satya Mitra and Duddie's son, David Massad. And Mitra himself has raised $92,000 this year, only 24 percent of it from Worcester.
"So I'm not sure where you get off criticizing a non-resident like me for casting a jaundiced eye on your favored candidates. They're both backed largely by non-Worcester money.
"By the way, members of the Krock family have donated a total of at least $33,550 to six people in the council race this year, with the second largest donation ($6,250) going to Candy Mero-Carlson (who has raised more than half her money from outsiders). All of that Krock largess went to four members of the majority troglodyte cabal, with the exception of $300 to Gary Rosen, who is currently on the outside looking in, and $2,500 to Khrystian King to hedge their bets. That's called paying to play."
lmao very very happy we could assist you in publicly humiliating Steve quist. Sorry to hear he's still Falling Down
Despite his bizarre views on Worcester politics, and in particular his grossly unfair attacks on the council minority, Steve remains my friend and I will continue to help him up. He was running anti-Trump rallies in Lincoln Square before Worcester Indivisible was formed.
yeah I've been around long enough to remember a time he was generally on the right side of things and a nice guy, pleasant to talk to. His trajectory over the past 3-4 years is a readymade case study in the deleterious effects of Too Much Facebook
I too am a victim of those deleterious effects. For musicians, performers, people in general who like continuous affirmation and validation, it is horribly addictive and your mind and sleep pay a big price.
that’s why I very intentionally pulled all the way out lol
Great job. I have one big question. The family of Barry Krock, who died last year, seems to be supporting Mitra strongly. Lots of signs on the house they own at the corner of Salisbury and Forest and in front of their big hilltop house just down Salisbury Street from that intersection. The Krocks' vacant properties have blighted Park Avenue between Chandler and May Streets for years and some winters they don't even plow the Park Ave sidewalks. They are not listed on your page among Mitra's top donors. Can you tell how much they have given him?
I checked, and so far, the Krocks haven't made any individual donations to Mitra (yet). Kathryn's given to Petty though
Thanks. Something to keep an eye on. Amazing how many people with Indian names are among his top donors.
This is a great idea! You should mention Jose Rivera's career with the Worcester District Court. I think he was a bailiff or something.
BTW, given that I voted on Thursday, you're going to keep this going for future elections, right?
Definitely going to keep it going, now that I have the framework for ingesting the data
What about school board?
School board candidates report to the city, not the state, so their reports will be available as pdf files in January 2026. If you are interested in candidates who ran in the past, however, you can look at those.
One thing to note if you want to geek out about this is that the city used to provide all of the pdfs for all of the school committee candidates in one place, but their new website lumps them in with lots of other documents and makes it very hard to locate them. That is something perhaps people should complain about ...
That’s terrible Rob! This new site is awful. I think they know they need to make a change!
yeah it's so busted
We call them school committees not school boards. Small, but important distinction. And they are available now, not January. They’re honestly not that hard to find :) The annoying part is you have to download each one.
ughh that's so frustrating. It's on my list to grab available SC finance reports today. Will be sending a strongly worded email at the very least it seems like
Come on! Gary Rosen wins the out of state over a matter of $600? By your own figures, Gary has raised around $3000. In your opinion Not a Serious Candidate (having less than five figures in the kitty). Gary is as Worcester as you can find. He could win just by standing out in Kelley Square waving at the cars.
It also feels very important (to me and probably only me) that Gary has had the best campaign freebies in my entire time living here. Somewhere I have a Gary Rosen for City Council comb, and I remember one year he gave out campaign-branded Chiclets.
Gary is the only person--maybe alive--who I'd feel comfortable calling 1. an unserious candidate and 2. a shoe-in. He might get the most votes this year. I'm thinking top 3 at least
The man is clearly in the pocket of Big Boynton Beach
I played stickball with Gary Rosen at the intersection of Brantwood Road and Bellevista for several years in the late '50s. I would choose him for a stickball team, but not for a political position.