Nothing to do but ignore ‘em
Nothing to do but ignore ‘em
Plus, more election analysis from Greg
Just a few quick notes to get us through to a much needed Thanksgiving break.
First and foremost there’s a protest on Friday in solidarity with Palestine from 2-4 p.m. at City Hall. Here’s the Facebook event. See you there!
Secondly mark your calendars for December 4, 8 p.m. Ralph’s Rock Diner! I’m doing a feature spot for the Dirty Gerund, a long running and esteemed poetry open mic at Ralph’s on Mondays. It’s gonna be weird!
Katie is doing the art auction for the Gerund that night as well! She’s making a very cool Ralph’s-themed stained glass. Follow @bigsassglass for updates. Also small update on the cancer front, treatment is going to take a little bit longer than we thought, so if you can, please swing some cash to the GoFundMe.
And of course as always my hat is in my hand asking that you consider a paid subscription to keep this whole thing going. It is my sole source of income and this newsletter wouldn’t exist without it! You sign up for a paid subscription, you’re my boss.
Tips are just as nice: (Venmo / Paypal).
Today, few short updates from me and then I hand it over to Greg Opperman for a very good concluding thought on the results of the municipal election earlier this month! His pre-election predictions, included in the fifth edition of our election guide, were unfortunately very spot on.
If you want to write for Worcester Sucks my inbox is always open! Billshaner91 at gmail.
Nothing to do but ignore ‘em
Heading into the Council meeting Tuesday, it seemed all but sure we were going to be subjected to a “townie uproar” over the Mill Street bike lanes—a cause du jour for local conservatives of late. We were all but primed for it by way of this citizen petition from one John Dick:
First to speak on the issue Tuesday night was Fred Nathan, a stalwart public comment gadfly of the “fricken liberals” persuasion, and he gave us a flavor of the dozens of upset townies sure to follow.
“You’re going to be hearing chatter about Mill Street for as long as you’re mayor,” Nathan said with extreme confidence. “And as long as the City Council stays in this current form.”
Threatening!
“The average person has told me they’ve only seen maybe one bike maybe a week.”
Comprehensive polling, Fred. It’s also November.
“I hope no one gets seriously hurt or killed,” he said unconvincingly. Then, much more convincingly: “I hate to tell ya but I think the city is culp-table here. So if you think you’re having lawsuits up until now, get ready for the avalanche.”
Mr. Dick, the petitioner, similarly implied that the new bike lane would have real safety repercussions—not least of all because his pick up truck only just barely fits in the new parking spaces.
For the uninitiated we’re talking about a street redesign here. It’s just a bike lane. It is a widely valued and welcome change to a dangerous street. But for months and months the cranks—led at one time by Worcester Housing Authority spokesman Walter Bird and his failed City Council candidate Jose Rivera—have tried to rake the city over the coals for a change they loathe for... reasons.
We saw it in August (an absurd meeting I covered in detail). There was another “public information meeting” last week. The City Council meeting last night was primed to become another in a string of grievance-airing sessions for reactionary whites.
But just the opposite happened. It was pretty neat! Of the 13 people who spoke on Mill Street, only Nathan and Dick spoke in opposition. Everyone else’s comments were positive. Oliver Chadwick said “Mill Street before this change you have to remember was fantastically dangerous.”
“The average speed was 12 miles an hour over the speed limit and there were 269 crashes over the last five years. It’s really a miracle no one has been killed on it. The reason why is because when the road has two lanes that are too wide, people automatically treat it as a highway. It’s not a choice. The wide road simply makes us feel like we’re going too slowly.”
You’d think after an election that lionized the right, they’d be all over this, and the stir in the crank corners of Worcester internet of late would transfer to the Council floor. But it didn’t! And without it, none but the crankiest of the crank city councilors felt any pressure to cater to it.
District 5 Councilor Etel Haxhiaj motioned to “file” Dick’s petition (delete it, essentially) and it passed 7-4. Predictably, the four who voted against the file were Donna Colorio, Moe Bergman, Kate Toomey and Candy Mero-Carlson. None of them put up much of a fight for their crank constituency. They barely tried, defaulting to tired appeals to the need to hear out the public.
This 7-4 vote should put to an end the sense that these “neighborhood concerns” about modern street infrastructure require any response at all.
We especially need to keep that in mind because Chandler Street is next. From Mass Streetsblog:
The city's plan, which is still being refined, would mitigate the risks of crashes by consolidating the street's motor vehicle traffic into a single lane in each direction, with a center left-turn lane.
The street's on-street parking lanes, which have relatively low levels of utilization, would be consolidated to one side of the street only.
Those two changes would narrow down the roadway to encourage slower, safer speeds, while freeing up enough space on each side of the street to build new sidewalk-level bike lanes in the space where the existing on-street parking is...
No one tell Walter Bird. He might have another hissy fit and try to get transportation commissioner Steve Rolle in trouble for the crime of actually doing a good job at City Hall.
ADUs on the move
Speaking of good ideas that cranks hate, the accessory dwelling unit reform proposal advanced to subcommittee last night with no comment from the councilors who openly loathe the idea. Nothing from Moe Bergman, who last time made very... interesting comments about the “character of the neighborhood.” Nothing from Candy Mero-Carlson, who somehow whipped herself up into thinking the ADU proposal would leave the city with “no zoning.”
Although the four crank horsemen of the City Council are bound to fight this tooth and nail, the Planning Board absolutely loved the proposal, endorsing it enthusiastically without any of the fash qualifiers about blood relation of ADU tenants proposed by Bergman.
So now the proposal goes on to a Standing Committee on Economic Development hearing sometime in the near future, and then, likely, back to the Council for a vote. Here’s hoping it goes the same way as the Mill Street vote: 7-4 against the cranks. Who was it that lost the election again? I thought it was progressives. Ah well. For more on that idea, I’d refer you to Jordan Berg Powers’ last piece in here: We’ve Already Won.
They pretend to support affordable housing while actively opposing it. They claim to be pro-choice while declining to use their power to protect reproductive freedom in Worcester. They claim to believe in climate change while working against green initiatives. They claim to be for development then come to Zoning Board meetings with NIMBY talking points.
We are dictating the terms of the conversation, and they’re reacting to us. We set the agenda, and they pretend to support our ideas. They do not publicly advocate their own ideas, because their ideas are unpopular. Despite tax cuts to developers and big corporations being their only economic development plans, the Chamber of Commerce isn’t trying to sell that position.
And for more on Moe Bergman being way out of pocket on the ADU issue, check my last piece on the matter: “It’s The Economic Segregation, Stupid.”
Ok, on to Greg with the final word on the election, which he earned. Have a great break everyone. See you back fresh on Monday, or on Friday at the Palestine rally!
I’ll let Greg play us out, but before that, one more pitch—please subscribe! Not only does it allow for my continued work here, but it also allows me to pay great contributors like Greg!
Tips are just as nice: (Venmo / Paypal).
I especially like Greg’s closing note about how the at-large Council race would have looked if the whole city voted the way District 4 (Main South) voted.
A Surprising Lack of Surprises in the At-Large Election
By Greg Opperman (@gopperman)
There’s no other way to say it: Progressives got completely washed in our city-wide election. If you followed us last time, I predicted the at-large City Council incumbents had a strong chance of retaining their seats, with most having a 75-90% chance of re-election. While the statistical model absolutely nailed it, I was personally surprised by the results. When you compound each individual’s odds of failure, even as small as 10-25%, there was a strong chance of at least one seat being turned over. What I didn’t predict was how record turnout converted previously tight races into runaway victories for incumbents, and how that turnout would be unevenly distributed across the city. To get a real sense of how things went, and how things might look in the future, I took a deep dive into the election results and found some interesting trends.
Turnout was way up
Turnout has been fairly consistent over the last three election cycles, at around 15-17%. In 2021, 17,304 people voted, or 16.5% of all registered voters. Voters turned out in historically high numbers this year. 2023 saw 7,281 more ballots cast for the at-large election than in 2021, representing a 42% increase over the last election. Across the board, we saw vote totals go up for all candidates.
Let’s take a look at our 6 winners, both by raw vote totals and the percentage of votes per total ballots cast. In parenthesis, you’ll see the change between the 2021 and 2023 elections.
Almost all candidates received a significant bump in raw votes received. Surprisingly, every incumbent’s popularity dipped, represented by the percentage of voters who cast a vote in their favor (we’ll come back to this in a minute). Khrystian King put up the biggest increase to total vote share, and the lowest change in popularity.
This year, the rising tide left Thu Nguyen behind. Nguyen’s popularity slipped by 11 points, despite their overwhelming popularity in the last election. In 2021, Bergman, Colorio and Nguyen were separated by fewer than 100 votes. This could be the result of multiple factors. Several members of the council recently derided Nguyen as “divisive” for holding City Manager Eric Batista accountable on the issue of crisis pregnancy centers. This election featured a glut of progressive candidates, which may have diluted the vote. Regardless of the cause, Nguyen may be vulnerable in the next election cycle if they choose to run.
First-time candidates did OK
Bolstered by a campaign of progressive solidarity, Maydee Morales and Domenica Perrone each garnered over 6,000 votes while Johanna Hampton Dance netted a respectable 4,394. In a lower turnout election, this might have been enough to give an incumbent a run for their money. I compiled data for all first-time candidates over the last 12 years to see how they compared to candidates past:
First-time At-Large Candidate Performance
Controlling for turnout, Worcester’s first-time candidates turned in a statistically average performance. Voters chose Domenica Perrone and Maydee Morales (right underneath Perrone on the chart) nearly 25% of the time, and Johanna Hampton Dance 18% of the time. Historically, an at-large candidate needs around 35% support to make the cut for one of the council’s six at-large seats.
So what happened?
Looking at the data, we see multiple truths come to light. This election was an absolute blowout for the Worcester establishment, but that establishment doesn’t cut across ideological lines. We can’t assume reactionary efforts were exclusively responsible for turning out conservative voters. Progressive Khrystian King’s popularity rose just the same as centrist Joe Petty and conservative Kate Toomey. The biggest cranks (Bergman, Colorio) and the most progressive (Nguyen) saw the least benefit from record turnout. Progressive challengers did “just ok.” What lessons are we to learn from this? To find out, I dug deeper into exactly who voted, and where.
Who really decided the election
While the at-large council race is decided by the entirety of Worcester voters, looking at the turnout and voting patterns of each district is illuminating. How are our districts drawn, and who is in them?
Here’s how each district turned out in 2023, including the change in turnout from 2021:
Turnout numbers for Districts 1, 2, 3 and 4 are all in line with previous elections. In terms of raw votes, Districts 1 and 5, representing the whitest, most suburban and wealthiest neighborhoods in Worcester outvoted the rest of the city nearly two-to-one. D1 outvoted D4 (Main South) by over a 3:1 margin, while D5 voted four times as much as D4.
District 5 saw a huge jump in voter turnout, for a variety of reasons. Jose Rivera brought a heated challenge to incumbent Etel Haxhiaj, who narrowly held on to her district council seat. District 5, as part of the Worcester-Hampshire district, held a special state Senate election between Jon Zlotnik and Peter Durant. The State Senate race certainly drew more voters, and Durant supporters may have helped run up the score for more conservative city council candidates. The results appear to be both flatter and more polarized. Joe Petty was the top performer with 3,336 votes, which represents only 36% support compared to his city-wide average of 45%. With the exception of Khrystian King, no progressive got more than 2,500 votes. Even with lower than average popularity, the sheer number of D5 voters was enough to pave a wide path to victory for the incumbents.
Meanwhile, the two districts most impacted by the city council’s agenda are the least represented. The council’s unwavering support for the police disproportionately impacts Main South (D4), especially as development and gentrification spill over from downtown. Over in District 2, the ongoing Polar Park development has significantly changed the “character” of the neighborhood, while saddling the city with a huge financial albatross. Not surprisingly, progressives put up their strongest numbers in these districts.
Structural problems contribute to an uphill battle for progressives
The old adage that “elections are decided by those who show up” remains true for Worcester. If progressives want to have a serious chance at winning City Hall in the future, they have to overcome significant structural barriers to mobilizing voters.
Our geography dilutes the value of minority and working class votes by packing together whiter, wealthier neighborhoods and cracking apart minority and working class neighborhoods. District 4, representing Main South, is the only majority-minority district in the city. District 1, a safely middle class voting bloc, gobbles up Great Brook Valley, District 2 is gerrymandered to include affluent Indian Lake, which offsets the less privileged Bell Hill, and so on.
The structural bias of our borders comes more into play in district races, but has a clear impact on at-large campaign logistics. More established candidates with more financial backing can rely on media-driven campaigns that reach the entire city. Smaller (read: progressive) campaigns tend to rely on grassroots and ground-level campaign tactics: door-knocking, neighborhood meetings and neighborhood outreach. Geographically speaking, the spread of working class neighborhoods across the city make organizing, outreach and get-out-the-vote campaigns for at-large elections more difficult.
Progressive Etel Haxhiaj’s success in District 5 is a foundation to buildupon, showing that despite reactionary mobilization, there are many folks at least sympathetic to progressive politics. More outreach in these neighborhoods could flip Colorio and Bergman voters in the future.
Main South (D4) and other lower income neighborhoods are severely under-represented at the polls. Progressives would do well to identify the root cause, and do whatever it takes to remediate the issue. If District 4 voted at nearly the rate that D5 did, the City Council would look much different. I’ll leave you with one last chart. Here’s the election as it took place in District 4:
Imagine a city council with five progressives and Joe Petty. We’re not likely to get there any time soon. With enough hard work, turning out new voters and swaying older ones, we could have a very different City Council.
Greg Opperman is a software engineer and former newsroom developer at the Boston Globe. Follow him on Twitter @gopperman.