Incorruptible Mass

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Incorruptible Mass

Election Results

January 06, 2026 • Anna Callahan • Season 6 • Episode 22

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This week, we take a look at November's municipal elections here in Massachusetts with special guest Elaine Almquist. We talk about election results from across the state, what those results mean for local communities, and what they might tell us about the future of progressive politics in Massachusetts in 2026 and beyond.

You’re listening to Incorruptible Mass. Our goal is to help people transform state politics: we investigate why it’s so broken, imagine what we could have here in MA if we fixed it, and report on how you can get involved.

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JORDAN

Hello, and welcome to Incorruptibles Massachusetts Podcast. Our mission is to help you transform state politics. We know that together we can make Massachusetts policy reflect the needs of the vast majority of the residents of our beautiful state. As you can tell, I'm not Anna. I'm sorry for being the person who is introducing it this week, but we have a lovely guest and today we're going to talk about the election results. What we can learn from the Massachusetts election results in 2025 for the municipalities and how that sort of plays out, we think in 2026. But before we get to our illustrious guest, Elaine Almquist, we're going to introduce ourselves, the normal regulars. Jonathan Cohen, go ahead.

JONATHAN

Hello. Jonathan Cohen, he/him/his. I'm joining from Boston in the South End, and I've been active on progressive issue and electoral campaigns here in Massachusetts for over a decade now. Jordan.

JORDAN

And I'm Jordan. I use he/him. I'm here in Worcester, Massachusetts. I've been also involved in politics for over a decade or more, no, maybe maybe three decades at this point. And I'm really excited to be here talk about it. And I'm sorry that I'm the person introing it, but the good news is that we have Elaine Almquist here with us. If you'd like to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself.

ELAINE

Sweet. I'm Elaine Almquist. I use she/her pronouns. I live currently in Somerville. I have lived in so many cities and towns across the North Shore and greater Boston area, and I've worked in politics in Massachusetts for 22 years and have been a professional campaign consultant for the last six. I have my own consulting firm, Almquist and Associates, where I help progressive candidates run for office, and I help issue advocacy organizations. And I'm also a trainer. So you listening may have taken a training with me at some point. I've trained thousands and thousands of people on many topics across Mass. And if there is a progressive issue organization, constituency group, a lefty group, my hand is probably in that pot somehow. So thrilled to be with you guys. Thank you.

JORDAN

Yeah. Well, let's get into it. We're gonna start by talking about Boston, which was an exciting, somewhat exciting mayor's race and then became less exciting. But, Jonathan, you want to talk a little overview, right?

JONATHAN

So like for the general election in Boston, the mayoral race was not. Was not the main show anymore, Right. For much of the year, the mayoral race was the main item on the ticket with kind of billionaire Josh Kraft running against the kind of mayor Michelle Wu and. And she won by an almost 50 point margin in the prelim in September, which given that Josh Kraft and. And Daddy, Daddy kind of Robert Kraft and his friends spent so much outside money and Josh Kraft loaned himself like several millions of dollars only to lose by almost 50 points. He in the first good decision of his campaign decided maybe I won't do two more months of this because he doesn't have that degree of masochism. So that made that create like a different kind of nature to the race heading into November. Right. So it was no longer a hotly contested high media mayoral race because of how kind of. Because it was.

JONATHAN

Michelle Wu can't lose the race and she's the only name on the ticket name on the ballot. So kind of kudos to her for having won by that much of a margin. But that then also leads to the attention going to some of the other races on the ticket with the at large race being the main item for November especially I think the main question from a lot of folks in the political world in Boston was about the fourth place for at large for the city council at large with the kind of assumption being that three of the incumbent councillors who had served over multiple terms at that point would be easily reelected. Ruthy, Louisiana, who's topped the ticket top the ticket last time and was expected and to do so.

JONATHAN

Julia Mejia and Aaron Murphy were kind of all expected to be reelected. Henry Santana, who got elected for the first time last year, was viewed as more at risk. And Frank Baker, who is a former district councilor in Dorchester.

JONATHAN

Kind of wanting a comeback bid for at large and and raising a sizable amount of money, kind of almost like disgusting amounts of money that he had been raising that year that made it sound like maybe we could see Frank Baker back. Unfortunately we didn't the in the difference. So between the atlar between the prelim and the general turnout, like a lot of people were wondering which turnout crater knowing that there's no contested mayoral election and people often understand racist through the top of the ticket, it ended up just marginally higher than the prelim. So it's not high buffering standard. But all of the at large candidates, both the incumbents and the non incumbents, all gained votes from the prelim as people who largely paid no attention to the existence of an at large race suddenly realized that that's the main thing on their ballot and so paid attention. So like Rutsy topped the ticket now by more. It was again nice to see Rusi and Julia have comfortable leads over, over Aaron Murphy, who was the third place finisher kind of on a basis of a conservative constituency. And Henry Santana also increased his margin over Frank Baker, who is a well behind fifth this time despite having raised so much money. One thing that was nice to see in this is that we've seen in a number of elections in recent history in Boston that if we can get, let's say white liberal Boston and communities of color in Boston to vote for the same candidate, that candidate can easily be the kind of conservative old guard in the city. And like that was, I think most recently, that was kind of what was going on with the, the clerks race last year between Allison Cartwright and Aaron Murphy. Aaron Murphy who was not an attorney and had no reason to be running for a clerk's office.

JONATHAN

But the. But was a known, known name. And that kind of that map you saw there was also similar to like way back when, when Rachel Rollins became a district attorney was the map on which she, on which she won. And it was the kind of the coalition map of the general election of Michelle versus Anissa Asabe George in 21. And so it was nice to see that hold and also nice to see Frank Baker knock it back as he is a blatantly racist, terrible human being who Google it brought back the troubles to the Boston City Council and also.

ELAINE

Famous for yelling at his constituents. There are many videos of him yelling.

JONATHAN

Oh, I remember seeing that.

ELAINE

Yeah.

JONATHAN

And also notoriously believed to be the counselor counselor who used the Boston City Councilor shared Globe subscription to comment offensive comments about 11 of the 13 other city councilors and the mayor.

JONATHAN

And another great, great Boston Globe story that you should look up. You can also get a subscription. If you don't have a subscription to the Boston Globe, check out your local library. They probably do. You can get the article for free.

JONATHAN

But so was the. I think the highlight was not seeing Frank Baker come back. Like the highlight of the prelim was Michelle's like 50 point, almost 50 point win. But seeing Henry Santana win and Frank Baker not was. Was a good, was a good thing for the future of the city. But Elaine, you were a former constituent of Frank's.

ELAINE

Yeah, I used to live in Frank Baker's district. I lived in Dorchester for several years and that was not great. His office literally never called me back ever. When I contacted him. We had a lot of development proposals in the area and we had community forums on development to talk about what was going on. And there were many times when constituents of his were deeply concerned about for Example, the development that was going on in the former.

ELAINE

What's the former television station on Morrissey Boulevard there.

JONATHAN

That's.

ELAINE

There were some roads that are dead ends, but they had access ways into that area that otherwise you would have to go all the way around the rotary and go down Morrissey Boulevard to get access to the waterfront. And there were proposals to close that because of development. And when his constituents brought it up, he would argue with them that they didn't know it was good for their own neighborhood. It was just really embarrassing to watch somebody be that antagonistic to the people that he's supposed to represent instead of listening. And so I had the pleasure of working with Stephen McBride, who was the candidate who ran against him in the last contested race that he had for the district seat. And I think Stephen was a great candidate, a young, progressive, queer candidate, worked in the tech industry, just was a very normal young professional who lived in the neighborhood and felt like his representation wasn't what he wanted and decided to run. He wasn't like a super ambitious person. He hasn't run again. He's not like a super deeply political person. But he was like, I think I could do better. And as basically a political nobody, he did really well in that race. And Frank had to work hard to get reelected for the first time in a long time. And after that he left. I don't think he really liked having to work that hard to get the support from his constituents. And I think that's part of the reason why he left, which is this is a bell I'm going to ring over and over again. Contested elections are so important to our democracy. They're important to make sure we have good representation and we see things like that. I saw Frank Baker's supporters and signage at the Labor Day parade this year and I was deeply nervous. And I'm really glad that Boston made the right choice this cycle and didn't give him a place back on the City council. And the thing that really struck me as why this was a good decision again is that in one of the wrap up articles where he was interviewed about his loss, he had a quote that said something to the effect of, I just didn't realize how big the city of Boston was. As if he just like forgot that like a bunch of the constituents in the city existed. And I think if you can't have a good understanding of how big your city is, you don't deserve a seat at an at large city council table.

JONATHAN

Yeah, it's a very parochial way of.

ELAINE

Viewing the city Yeah, I think I'm really happy that Bostonians chose not to give him a second chance on the city council this time. I think they got better representation than. Than that. Yeah, happy to see that.

JORDAN

I mean, I think, I think generally speaking, the old townies overestimate how much they're sort of people liking someone they know or sort of like vaguely seems more moderate that they're actually in for the like, really racist terrible ideals they often have, which Frank, not like the anti vax sort of proto, like Trump light sort of things that he was doing on the city council. Yeah, I think, I think they overestimate how much people voting for them is. Is alignment with that. Right. And not just like, oh, the like nice guy that I so vaguely know. But, you know, they benefit the sort of. The incumbents generally in Massachusetts for municipals benefit from the total sort of abandonment of journalism across Massachusetts as a whole and the total abandonment of covering local politics as a whole. So they benefit from no one really knowing what's happen and not really sure what to do. And they'll see a familiar name and it seems like they, you know, as long as they're not making news, it's like, oh, it seems fine. I could probably vote for that person because they're coming. They're usually showing up for something where it's contested and they have some ideas on who they want to vote for. Right. So in a world where you have a contested at large, a contested mayor's race, and you're trying to make a decision there, Frank Baker scoots by. By people not really knowing much about that district and wanting to know. We see that across Massachusetts all the time, that they overestimate both how old, how conservative and how. And how in line with their narrow and sort of racist views people are. And in fact, people make decisions about municipal elections for a lot of reasons. And they're usually not that ideological, which is hard for those of us who are ideological to understand. And so. Oh, go ahead.

JONATHAN

Oh, no. It's always just such a surprising thing. If you ever get a chance to volunteer on a recount, always do it. Because it is something Elaine was doing the other day is I feel like recounts are such humbling experiences to work on because as somebody who's very deep into the political world. Right. And I will assess candidates from an ideological lens as soon as they. They get in, it's easy to think that other voters do so as well. And when you do a recount and you actually see the ballots themselves, you see how like you will find so many ballots that make absolutely no sense to you.

JORDAN

They don't just make no sense to you. They don't make sense because they don't make sense. If you have a goal for policies or things.

ELAINE

Exactly.

JORDAN

Or ideas of what you want your community to be. They're like totally at odds. Yep. Yeah.

JONATHAN

Yeah. My go to.

JORDAN

Yeah, we're going to talk about Worcester in a second.

ELAINE

Yeah.

JONATHAN

My favorite. And then we can, we can switch to Worcester after this. My favorite example of like the totally incoherent bat bell is back in 2019 when there was the kind of one vote Boston recount. I just remember somebody noting like at that year Althea Garrett, perennial Canada Garrison's campaign literature said stop the radical agenda of city Councilor Michelle Wu. And there are people who'd be like, okay, let's do Bubble and Michelle Wu, Bubble and Althea Garrison. Done.

JONATHAN

It's like voters contain multitudes.

JORDAN

Yeah. Yeah. I want to say really quickly too about Boston. It's really hard to run against a mayor. We don't, you know, Boston does not unseat mayors.

JONATHAN

Yeah.

JORDAN

It was a weird decision to begin with to run and then to have Trump base basically be running a reelection campaign for Michelle Wu by like dragging her in the press like I was.

ELAINE

Or have a national stage on which demonstrate your leadership.

JORDAN

Right, right.

JONATHAN

No, I would often see kind of yinjuncious from.

JONATHAN

Where. Where is he master less now Comment. I don't know if it might have been a Commonwealth beacon at the time comment about how Trump keeps giving like.

JONATHAN

Basically like that kind of like free press or like in kind contributions. That's the word I'm thinking of the number of like it's like does this need to be reported to OC for how large of an in kind contributions?

JORDAN

Yeah. I've been joking that Trump is. Was Michelle wu's campaign co chair. Reelection campaign co chair because of how much free press he gave her. But I think people can also overestimate that and sort of. And really, you know, Boston still has a lot of issues ahead of it.

JONATHAN

Yeah.

JORDAN

I'm still sour on like the way the redistricting process went down in Worcester. I mean in Boston. So I think that Boston's also poorly represented by its current district makeup and how the lines were drawn.

ELAINE

Oh, Jordan froze a moment.

JONATHAN

Okay. I didn't know that. I didn't know if I froze. Jordan, I think you unfroze now.

ELAINE

You'Re good.

JORDAN

Assume I'm freezing. But just, I'll just say really quickly. I think like people can overestimate progressives, can also overestimate the lesson of Michelle wu's victory. And not really get that. Like, it's just, it can tell us something, but we shouldn't overestimate what it's telling us.

ELAINE

Can I want to say something else, too, about the role of Donald Trump in this Boston municipal election. And I think it might be, like, surprising when you hear it, which is that Trump, the Trump administration, has basically, like, given the residents of the city of Boston a common enemy because he has attacked every constituency group. Right. Like, he's attacking our major industries in Boston.

JONATHAN

Yeah.

ELAINE

Our education and health care. Right. He is attacking science, he's attacking health care, he's attacking immigrants. We benefit. So, first of all, we are a tremendously immigrant community, and we have been since the very first pilgrims that landed here. Those were the immigrants. We have never stopped being an immigrant community ever in our history of, you know, after European colonization. And we also have seen him attacking our Latino population, our, our women. Like, we know probably nobody has unified Boston as much as Trump in a very much electoral way. Right. Like, you saw the October 18th hands off March in Boston. We had 125,000 people in the city of Boston, and there were tons of hands off events outside of Boston. That was only in the city of Boston. We had, you know, greater Boston, other communities in the area, people came together against Trump. And I think something that's really interesting about the Boston elections in regard to this is that not only does, you know, Michelle Wu is kind of the face of it, but when Jordan, you were talking earlier about this misunderstanding of Bostonians as like, overly liking this kind of racist, old timey townie way of being, you saw, Even when the ICE raids started getting up there, these viral TikTok videos of Bostonians playing like the.

ELAINE

The Drop King Murphy's soundtrack round, right? And it was like a fake ICE agent being like, oh, we're going to take your neighbor. And then the Bostonians in the video were like, no, you're not. We love those people. Like, that is actually who we are. We see sound really cranky and angry at everybody. We are totally elitist in the fact that we think everybody is dumb as a brick instead of us, but we are kind and we look out for each other. And I think that when we have politicians running for these offices that don't understand that they are losing, they are actually disconnected from who we are as a community and they deserve to lose, and they're losing. And Bostonians are sending a strong message via the Ballot and candidates should be listening to that.

JONATHAN

So one, one quick thing and then I'd love to get us to talking about Worcester. I remember when, I think it was when I was talking with a reporter about the prelim for the Boston election. The one thing that I think explains the election results, and I think that this is true of many elections, is at the end of the day, a question to voters is, does this person care about people like me?

JORDAN

Yeah.

JONATHAN

And they might not agree with you on every single thing that you're saying, but they need to be able to answer yes to that question. And it was very clear that if you were in Boston, the answer is a much stronger yes. That Michelle cares about people who. People like you than Josh Kraft, because he doesn't.

ELAINE

Yeah.

JONATHAN

And. And people. People got that. And I think that that to me was, I think, a critical like that, like. And I would wouldn't be shocked if you were to even like, look at people's answers to that question to poll. You could see that clear correlation about that as a, like a fundamental question. Be like explaining that big of a, that big of a margin.

JORDAN

I think one of the other things that we saw on election day across Massachusetts, if they, if they had a November election, which not all 351 towns do, but all the major towns do, is that voter turnout was up across the board. And even for a mayor's race in Boston, it was a little down, but wasn't really down. It was pretty par. The primary was up and that didn't have a race. So what we saw across the board is like Worcester was up, Springfield was up. You know, your Fall river, your New Bedford. There was more people turning out across the board, which I think also says a lot about sort of people's mood and wanting to do something to be a part of the process. But speaking of being a part of the process, Elaine, for those of you don't. You won't know this watching it, but we are. We are taping this late at night because Elaine just came back, back from the Worcester recount. So, Elaine, why don't you tell us a little bit about the. What the recount was for, what you were doing there and maybe highlight something that Jonathan talked about the weird decisions make.

ELAINE

I. Okay, I will be so happy to describe all of that. Despite my tremendous. I'm still overjoyed to be with you all. But, Jordan, can I just. I want to put an asterisk over something you said. Oh, because of course, we had municipal elections in the cities. Right. But we have 351 cities and towns. 59 cities. 292 of our communities in Massachusetts are towns. And their municipal elections are often every year and they happen between January and May in even numbered years. And that's more communities and way more seats than we just elected. I think that they get ignored and I don't think they should get ignored. So I just want to make sure that we are giving a shout out to our 292 towns in Massachusetts that have exciting elections that are actually just starting now because the first ones are going to be happening in January. So people are actually starting to campaign for our spring municipal elections right now. We don't really have in Massachusetts an off cycle to our politics because of this unique transition between cities electing in the fall and odd numbered years and the towns electing every year in the spring. Because as soon as the town elections are over in May.

ELAINE

The statewide elections are in full swing in the summer for the September primary and then the November election. So just shout out to the fact that we have a complicated election cycle and that many people are voting in those municipal elections.

ELAINE

Those elections are starting now and people will be voting in the spring. And if you don't live in a city, you should be looking at your election calendar now and planning your votes for whenever your election is. They're not consistent dates. Some of them are even on Saturdays. So, like, make sure you check your election calendar in your town if you live in a town, so you can participate. But now I will certainly talk about the Worcester recount just really quickly.

JORDAN

Most towns are still in November, but. But it's about a. About if last time I checked. No, no, no, no, I did because when I did this for Mass alliance, it was still the majority of towns and cities were in November. There was not. It was not a majority that were in weird times.

ELAINE

I think this is a great time to just plug the fact that.

JORDAN

Yes, you should check it up.

ELAINE

Incredible resource called the Local Election Transparency Project.

JORDAN

Yes.

ELAINE

It is trying to make all of the municipal election information for all Massachusetts cities and towns available so that there's no question, like you could just go to one website, look up your city and town, you'll know which offices are on your ballot when your election is.

JORDAN

Yeah, it's a huge problem.

ELAINE

Who's there? So shout out to that project and everybody who's pitched in on it. So we could switch gears though, and talk about the Worcester because it was so interesting and I live in Somerville, but I have been living in Worcester for the past two days and yesterday I did 20,000 steps and I never left a gymnasium floor. It was a lot of work. We. So the city of Worcester counted, I believe it was about 64,000.

ELAINE

There was a recount for the at large city council race. So the per. They had 12 candidates. You could vote for up to six candidates. So the person who came in sixth and the person who came in seventh. So the last person elected and the first person not elected were only 23 votes apart. If you think about the fact that 64,000 ballots were cast, that's really, really close, which you know, I know. John, you talk a lot about how important it is to vote in municipal elections. This is just absolute proof that we need to be voting in this. Your vote really does matter. It comes down to just little tiny spaces between these candidates sometimes. And even the person who came in eighth was only 100 votes behind that. So those three candidates were in a little cluster very close to one another. So what I think is most exciting about recounts, and I was trying to figure it out, I'm pretty sure this is the 12th recount that I've done now. So I've experienced in recounts. I've seen them in a number of different places now.

ELAINE

And it is like a shining example of democracy and the integrity of our elections. If you have a question about what the results are in your election, and if an election is within 1%, then a person can petition the city by collecting signatures to have a hand recount. So that means that they make every part, not just the ballots, but every part of the election system reopened, observable, open to the public. It is a public process and anybody can go and look at it. So, like, usually it's the candidate who comes in really close behind who petitions for a recount. But anybody can petition for a recount. And what happens is they let you inspect all of the materials. They let you inspect the boxes with the locks that the ballots are kept in. They let you inspect all of the information that was given to the wardens to run the polling places. And then the. They open up all the ballots and then they bring them to tables and poll workers, temporary poll workers. They sit down and they put them in stacks of 50 and they pick up every ballot and they read aloud all the votes that the voter made. People get to stand over their shoulder and make sure that what they're saying out loud and what was marked on the ballot is exactly the same. They have a chance to object if they think that the ballot is not being counted correctly. There's a whole process that they go through. There's an election commission in every city and town. It's like a panel of people that if you don't agree with how it was counted, a panel of people review it. They're required to have party diversity. So it's not just Democrats, it's not just Republicans. You get people of different parties on there who designate and look at it and they go through every single one. And you get to look at some of the other materials. Like you get to make sure that you can see all the ballots that were rejected to confirm that they were rejected correctly. Like some of the ballots we looked at at the end of the day today were the ballots that came into the election office too late. A person who had a mail in ballot and they only mailed back the envelope and the ballot, they left the ballot out, which is so heartbreaking when you see something like that because clearly the person took the energy to request a ballot and to mail the envelope back and the ballot wasn't in it. And that is just heartbreaking to see. But ultimately the result was the same. The same winners won. The same people who didn't win, didn't win. Usually the numbers change very little. They only changed by about 10 net votes across 64,000 votes. So this is, I think, something that really shows that we can be confident in the integrity of our elections despite all of this federal nonsense about our elections being stolen. Every part of the process is visible if we ask for it. And you can observe as just like a member of the public, you can come and sit in the room and watch it done and make sure it's done correctly.

JORDAN

Well, in Massachusetts at least.

ELAINE

In Massachusetts, yeah. I mean, we're talking about Massachusetts.

JORDAN

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

JONATHAN

But any, any takeaways with, in terms of that was with like the recount in Worcester. Any takeaways overall about like what happened in Worcester's election? What, what is your kind of any analysis coming out of that?

ELAINE

I mean, for me, what I learned, and I don't live in Worcester, is that there were lots of volunteers who took place who took part in the process. So there was a lot of interest in what the result was going to be. And I also think that something that I noticed was that this was probably the best run recount that I've seen. I was really impressed by the Worcester Elections Division and the people that were running it today, like this weekend. Obviously I don't participate in Worcester elections otherwise, really. So I don't have anything to say beyond this weekend. But, you know, the recount process was run very efficiently and professionally. And that was really nice to see. And it was just nice to see so many people who were invested in the process and wanting to make sure that every vote was counted and every vote was counted accurately. But I will say one thing that again, this goes to the heartbreaking part. At the end of the night of every recount, we go through the materials, and the materials include always the ballots that were rejected. We look at people who tried to cast a ballot who maybe weren't on the election registry. And we don't have same day registration in Massachusetts, we have also a deadline to register. And we have confusing things like people often are renters and they move and they miss deadlines. We have great bills in the State House to make it easier for these kind of things that disenfranchise legitimate voters. In Massachusetts, we can update our laws to make sure that every citizen who wants to participate in our democracy actually does have their ballot count and not get rejected because of some of these archaic deadlines. And the State House has not moved on these bills. We do have a ballot question about election day registration coming up next year, which I think is exciting. But I also just want to put like a little asterisk on that, which is it's being proposed by the Secretary of State. He has consistently gone to the elections committee hearings and opposed same day registration. So, I mean, I always want to see people moving from the wrong side of the issue to the right side of the issue. But I question the motivations a little bit, you know, like, why now?

ELAINE

I am hoping that it passes because it's good for voters. And when you go through a recount and you see voters who tried to vote and their vote didn't count because of these kinds of this kind of red tape, like, we can do better and we should do better.

JORDAN

Yeah. So Worcester's a. Worcester. I would say for Worcester, it was a mixed bag for the city council. So we. So Worcester, for the positive side, we replaced Candy Carlson, who had precipitously moved right over time on her time in politics to be just a reactionary racist. Her husband sort of took over the Worcester local AFL cio and then all of the local unions no longer are a part of it. So he runs it as a small fiefdom of literally five or six people out of a bar. He doesn't invite all the candidates to it. So he gets to say that the Worcester AFL has endorsed, even though it's five or six guys who don't represent the nurses, don't represent the teachers, don't represent the majority of working and labor folks in Worcester. And you know, and so it was nice to see Candy lose considering the sort of reactionary, racist, backwards politics that she was pushing on the city council. And also just like not just nonsensical sort of old fashioned pay us money. They're on boards of things where they don't deserve to be on boards to get extra pay for play. This is sort of old fashioned like cronyism where if you give her money, like a developer gives her money, she's going to come and like be supportive and if not like, who knows? And so it was just really terrible for some place for a city, for, for a part of the city that requires good oversight because it has so many parts of so many important sort of economic things happening like around the ballpark, like around CSX and our. And the trains, right? There was so much she was leaving. There was like she could request money for remediation for the CSX trains coming through. She wasn't doing the bare minimum to do that. Like it was just, we just, it just, it just deserved better representation than it was getting. And it's just nice to see Rob Bilater win that election. Running basically on competence and desire to actually serve residents and be a voice for them and also to sort of, you know, I think Rob sort of brings another perspective which is just really important to say.

JONATHAN

Castle, I want to shout out. Although Candy Merrill Carlson is a, is a terrible person with bad politics. She created one of my favorite pieces of campaign mail this session is which when she called her opponent a quote, nice man from a good family.

JORDAN

Yes. As a negative. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, thank you for that shout out. It was so.

JORDAN

I think the. And then, you know, and then I think the. When you get. And then of course we saw Attel Hajii who got international politics for trying to, for responding to ICE coming to stalk some children and holding children hostage. ICE was holding children hostage to get the parent and grandparent deported with like no concern about what happened to these children. And holding children hostage is normally the sort of thing that terrorists do. And Attel came there to de. Escalate it. The police and ICE unfortunately escalated the situation. Attel tried to step in and ask them and ask them to like do the right thing and let. And, and they arrested her and made national news and. But that isn't, you know, that isn't actually what happened in the election. What happened in the election for Attel is that more people voted. She actually got the same number of votes every time she ran and two years prior that was plenty of votes to win reelection. But there were so many new voters, especially non English speaking voters who show who are in this district, who, who I think we just didn't do a good enough job connecting with or talking to. And combined with two years of people running against her, just constantly taking her down opposing things that they were for like two or two days earlier. But just because she became for it, they then started to oppose it. Just like really just aggressively aggressive politics of just opposing and opposing a tell loudly and being sort of awful to her. I think that sort of pulled her, you know, sort of. That galvanized people. But ultimately she didn't actually lose votes. They just had so many more people participate across Worcester. So Worcester saw a huge increase in voters. You know, we, we saw.

JORDAN

We saw about 10,000 more voters from four years ago and six years ago and 5,000 from the year before that, two years before that. So we are see seeing exponential growth in participation and that sort of I think caught up unfortunately in this race. The other things that happened in our at large race so we, we two went just was not running for re election. So we had an opening that is how there would recount for our at large race. I was very excited for Gemma. I was sad that she didn't quite get on. We also had another amazing. Caden was another amazing candidate who didn't get on and instead we had person who cheats poor people with his tax preparations and became rich cheating poor people for taxes, got backed by the chamber and got onto the city council. I honestly don't know what for. He seemed like people like he's a nice guy. And I was like he seems like a nice guy. He's like wants to do charity. I was like, well then why is he running for city council? Like he does. It's not. He didn't run to do anything that a city council does. His lit, he sent a ton of literature, notably most of it in fact were not things that city councils work on. But it did say nice things about the things he plans to do. And you know, and ultimately he got on. Mitra got on. So our city council and then Gary Rosen also got on and we kicked off one of our most conservative members, Donna Colorio, who famously was the Worcester chair for Sarah Palin for president. So it's sort of like. So we got rid of somebody terrible. We almost got rid of Bergman, who's another person. Bergman as a City councilor once got the endorsement of Planned Parenthood, and then he recently voted against Planned Parenthood funding. Like he's just become a reactionary and a racist in a really terrible way. He was one of two people to support ICE in the city of Worcester. Even the, Even. Even the most reactionary people weren't willing to go that far. Caloria was the only person who voted for that. So he's really moved far to the right and I think overselling how much he thinks the city is in line. And I think mostly people don't really know how far right he's moved. And when they find out, they're shocked. I think he overestimates how sort of towny and racist people are. So that's sort of Worcester in a nutshell.

ELAINE

I'm sensing a theme about the underestimating that part.

JORDAN

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think people overestimate, but I think you could. You can actually attest to that because people think. Think that people are making ideological decisions, but when you see the recount in Worcester, people were making all sorts of weird decisions.

JONATHAN

Yeah.

JORDAN

About. About who they were voting for and against. And it didn't. It didn't map onto the sort of politics that people would assume based on what they themselves. What the candidates themselves are saying that they want in the world. The other thing I'll just say really quickly. People ask me about the mayor's race all the time. And we had a mayor, Connie Lukes, who had a Sasha that said mayor on it. And she would joke that that's the only thing that is good for. And that's in fact true. Our mayor holds no real power. They are on the city council.

JONATHAN

Yes.

JORDAN

Committee. That's their only real power.

JONATHAN

It's like a city council presidency.

JORDAN

Yeah. So. So while I. Well, you know, the mayor's race was not. Is not as important as the city manager who's unelected. So. So the city manager is the one who holds all the power in Worcester. The city council holds mostly traditionally before to. Before to. And Attel got there, they would just. They would just vote on whatever the city manager told them to do. That was it. That's what the city council meetings were. And that's probably likely what it'll go back to.

JORDAN

Yeah.

JONATHAN

Well, when you're talking about. What's always so interesting to me is that that higher turnout in an election benefits those who are driving higher turnout or from those who try to speak to those who are newly turning out. And that's always something that.

JORDAN

I think.

JONATHAN

The People, whenever there's like turnouts charging election, people can think that it inherently helps some people or another. And it only helps you if you're talking to the people. And that's not a knock, that's not like intended as a knock on anybody in this case. It's just that like.

JONATHAN

One needs, one needs to adapt.

ELAINE

When you engage voters in a conversation about like what's important to you and what kind of community you want, they ultimately think to themselves, like, I have a stake in this game and I'm gonna go and cast a ballot for people who listened to me during that.

JONATHAN

Conversation while I was looking at this like a tell. Actually, to her credit, she got more of like 300 more votes than she. She did two years ago. And it's just that her challenger got more.

JORDAN

I think it's also again about like making sure you're in language media where people in people's first language. And they also played a huge role in the race. There's just a ton of non English speaking voters who moved who, who have been growing in this district. This part of this district maps onto the redistricting that happened on the state level where we, where there was another majority minority district or a district of opportunity because of the increase in voters of color in this district. So, you know, it also just. I think it's important to always do that. I want to say the other thing. I think it's really important to. I feel like I would be remiss if I didn't point out that our school committee is also being. I think it's important to note that there was our former, our city, our school committee had a former principal who had a credible allegation of child, child rape and child and sexual assaults that the victim of that came forward and talked about it. The victim recently got their report from the police. The police appear to have wanting a charging document for the person, for the principal who became a school committee member, that person. Also the DCF found credible evidence that that something had occurred. And yet our people currently on our school committee are defending that person. And they are overstated. They think that because they won reelection it means that they should be able to bring this school committee person, this former school committee member back into the schools, which is a shocking thing to be occurring. And I think again, overplaying and overstating how much people are in line with whatever weird thing you care about as an elected official. But I think that also is something if you're looking for news out of the election and what to look for in 2026, I think. I think more shoes will drop vis a vis a vis sort of the harm that's been done in the Worcester schools and to Worcester students. That's already, you know, there's already more and more reporting about what's, you know, we know these things because there's been public reporting about sort of these things happening. And it over. And it will. It will be an important story coming out from the election on our school committee because there's still work to be done to make sure our kids are safe in our schools. Just a few years ago, there was a Racism. Racism wps, which was a place for students to talk about racist things they were seeing in the Worcester public schools. And that quickly came into them reporting sexual, unwanted advances, things that were said by staff, by teachers, by other young people that were being under. That were. That were not being addressed by our former superintendent, who is now on the school committee. So this isn't. This is a bubbling issue. Just a reminder that sort of national politics around this sometimes, unfortunately also looks like local politics.

JONATHAN

One thing I wanted to make before I would like as a quick transit position before I'd love to hear Elaine talk about what happened in Somerville elections, where she's from, wanted to quickly know that it was a major loss for Worcester with Attel Haji not winning reelection because it really is a. Was a model in terms of elected officials who really do try to try to both, let's say, serve their constituents well, but actively push proactive progressive policy on the council and use that and use the powers actually afforded to them to help their constituencies and as somebody who. And particularly to help make sure that kind of marginalized communities were always at the center of her policy making. So I think that is a real loss for Worcester.

JORDAN

Yeah, well, let's. Let's transition to Somerville, which I always talk about as unfortunate thing that you have to talk about. But, you know, I guess we'll.

ELAINE

Wow.

JORDAN

I mean, the politics are the worst. It's the worst. It's like Boston. But. But even more, everyone thinks that they're the smartest person and fights endlessly about it. But. But you know, Somerville peaked national news because of the polycule, which I thought for sure was going to bring Willie over the top just alone with all the, with 100 people.

JONATHAN

Imagine, like, who could have known that? Like polyamory as a field strategy.

ELAINE

I just want to say I was, I was about a week, I think before the election in a pub like with some of my neighborhood council folks, because we have neighborhood Councils in Somerville. And it was awesome. It's very awesome. Highly recommend having neighborhood councils. We had multiple polyamorous candidates running for our elections in Somerville. And one of them was describe themselves like, I'm the, you know, candy colored hair, polyamorous candidate. I'm like you. That does not define you enough to tell you apart from other candidates.

ELAINE

Actually, there's like two things. Multiple candidates have, like, people named will, three of them running, and then like polyamorous people. So I think three of them running, which was, I think just about the same number of women that were running though, for our city council, like, devastating. That was one of my main takeaways is one of the women who was running that I really wanted to see when our. Our at large city council race. And we can talk about all the races because there were. Yeah, any interesting contested races in Somerville is. I was really rooting for Marianne Wallace. She's an incredible union organizer. She's been working on pilot payment in lieu of taxes for Tufts to be paying their fair share of taxes. I know they're technically campus headquarter is Medford, but most of the Tufts campus is actually in the city of Somerville. She's been. Marianne has been such an incredible advocate for working families in Somerville. She had my vote. She unfortunately didn't make it. I was sad to see that. But we had a lot of really cool, exciting things happening this cycle. Most of you probably, if you were paying attention to anything about Somerville politics, you heard about our cat mayor. And I will say that I accurately predicted that the winner, Minerva, would win, but that's because her campaign sign and slogan was only one word, crime.

ELAINE

It was also incredibly consistent about it when she was asked in her the Somerville subreddit ask me anything cat Mayor forum questions. Somebody asked her, are you for or against crime? And she said yes. So my favorite campaign moment, we had somebody put together a ranked choice voting online ballot for cap mayor, and Minerva was crowned.

ELAINE

And I did vote for her. But listen, for the real, actual governing seats that we have.

ELAINE

Let'S just talk about some of the dynamics. Like, first of all, I think there was an overwhelming dissatisfaction with the job that Katiana Ballantyne had done as mayor. And I have to say, I was definitely part of it myself. You know, being a person who's involved in my neighborhood council, I am really civically engaged in what's going on in my community. And she just wasn't responding to the seriousness of some of our public safety concerns. We have major developments being proposed that people have strong opinions for and against in our communities. She was pretty dismissive of some of the major topics. We also had a very serious public safety issue with our main branch public library, which is just next to our high school. There were students who were there who were being very disruptive and sometimes harming other patrons and staff. The library workers and their union put together what I thought was a really well thought out and planned solution to the problem. And instead, not only did Mayor Ballantine not address it, but she decided to close the library after the school got out. Which I think is just a tragedy. It's one of the few public libraries. I'm a library kid. Right. Like I spent my afternoons after high school in the library. My mom was a single working mom. I had nowhere else to go. And I ended up in a safe place where I could learn and be exposed to art and adults that cared about me and other kids in a safe place. And libraries are just so special. And the fact that she would take away one of our most valuable assets from the students in our city, I know a lot of people were angry about that. So there were multiple things going on. That's not everything. But we had four at large city councilors in Somerville. Two of them decided to run against her. So we had a three way contested preliminary earlier this year for mayor. And I think one of the craziest things that happened this cycle was Valentine was ousted in round one.

JONATHAN

Yeah.

ELAINE

Which is really rarely beat out challengers like that. Usually one of them makes it through the incumbent through and then it's a battle in the second round. And she like some of the. Some of the brand new city councilor at large candidates who were running got more votes than the incumbent mayor got in the.

JONATHAN

Wow.

ELAINE

And that was like many of them did. Many of them, the dissatisfaction was high. We ended up with a major shakeup on our city council because of this. Two of the outlaw city councilors now running for mayor. They're not running for reelection. We had a really crowded preliminary. We brought it down to eight candidates for a general election. And ultimately we did have very much similar dynamics in some of the candidates that were running for our city council at large seats in Somerville, as you mentioned in Worcester, as you mentioned in Boston, we had people who are more old school townie, a little bit more racist, some of them. And then we had some more progressive people who were really speaking for a much broader dynamic of who Somerville is and who they should be serving. And the people who did the latter won, you know, tremendously. So it was really Nice to see people like Ben Wheeler and John Link get to join the City Council after running just, like, incredibly humane campaigns that were about being of service. They spent a lot of those two candidates especially were the challengers. Our incumbents that were running for reelection, Willemba and Kristen Strezzo, they both were reelected. But Ben and John, they spent a lot of time and energy learning the particulars of our very complicated issues in the city. And they doorknocked and they talked to lots and lots of voters. We also have an incredible civic culture in Somerville. We have neighborhood councils, we have constituency groups. One of the challenges the candidates ran into this year is they got invited to so many candidate forums and debates that they were having trouble scheduling them. So our residents were really interested. And as we were talking earlier about Turnout, you know, 2023 was a really high turnout election for Somerville. We got, like, presidential level out in Somerville in 2023, and that turned out 17,000. Like, over 17,000 voters. We. We turned out almost 21,000 voters. Contested, mayoral, contested. We had contested at large city council. We also had contested races in a number of our district, district, city council seats, and a couple of our school committee seats, too. And even in those, what you saw was, you know, for an example, we had a district city council.

ELAINE

I believe it was Ward 5, Naima Saeed, who. Impressive. She's incredible. She actually was running, like, pregnant this year, and she was challenged by a much more conservative candidate, Jason Mackey, who is literally a venture capitalist, and had run against Representative Erica Idarhoven, and she beat him 5 to 1. So it was really nice to see, not only high participation, lots of people actually learning about candidates, talking with candidates, getting facetime with candidates, because they were taking door knocking seriously. They were getting lots of civic opportunities to participate in forums and listen to what they were standing for and ask questions about things that were. They were important, that were important to them, and that was just really exciting to see. And I think the candidates we ended up with, as a Somerville resident, I'm really excited to be represented by the people that are incoming in this cycle. And, you know, that was great. I love it.

JONATHAN

I know one thing I was gonna.

JORDAN

No, I was gonna move us along because we're already almost at the hour.

JONATHAN

My quick parting comment on this is that having talked to two of the. The new ones of John Link and Ben Wheeler that you mentioned, I know both of them had a very strong commitment in their campaign to just, like, knocking on doors and talking to people, and that is always, like, a nice thing. To see when people like, do what you're supposed to do on a campaign and then win because they did what you were supposed to do on a campaign.

JORDAN

So I.

ELAINE

Can I say one more thing? I'm so.

JORDAN

Yes, go ahead.

ELAINE

Because I forgot to actually say who won the mayoral election. And that was important. The mayoral. The two city councilors at large who ran for mayor, Jake Wilson And Willie Burnley Jr. You know, everybody was watching Zoran's race in New York City and there was so much conversation about socialists running for office. And Willie definitely, I think benefited from that a little bit in this race. I think also something that closed the gap a little bit more towards the end was that he got the endorsement of Senator Ed Markey. Ultimately, Jake Wilson won the race. I like both of them. I voted for Willie. I think Jake will do a better job than Katyana. I'm looking forward to seeing what he does with the office. But I do think that, you know, we have elected lots of socialists in Somerville and I think we will continue to elect them. And that race was pretty dang close. It was like 11,000 votes to 8,000 votes. And I think people thought that spread was going to be a lot wider than it was.

JORDAN

Oh, I thought it was going to be closer.

JORDAN

I thought the polycule would pull out at least a little bit closer. So I just want to move us to Bedford really quickly and discuss Anna who's normally. Whose actual. Whose podcast is actually is Jonathan. I technically are guests. And Anna pulled out. There's a. They. So they. They have all at large for their. For their city council. They have a traditional mayor who wasn't um, Who I don't believe was on the ballot. Um, and so they also had um, their city. Their city elections. And um, and Anna won reelection as did all of the um, ours, um, our revolution Medford. And so you know, sort of not.

JONATHAN

All of them but they. But they held on to everything.

JORDAN

They held on to everybody. Yes, they did.

JONATHAN

Not everyone won but on school committee because what had happened in Medford is in the prelim. So our Revolution Medford kind of entered with a six to one majority on the council, but with one of them, one of them leaving this second.

JORDAN

That's right.

JONATHAN

And the prelim and like. So you had. In addition to the progressive slate that our Revolution Medford was running, you had a more conservative slate formed against. I kind of. They've seen a lot of backlash from conservative homeowners and all of like any like, any type of like conservative local backlash issue merged together.

JONATHAN

Into one. They had like a proposition two and a half override recently that also feeds into that. And then the prelim, the kind of conservative backlash candidates did really well and it looked like that they were likely to pick up the open seat and knock off one of the, one of the incumbents running for reelection. And it was nice to see that the kind of or Medford folks who've always been able to run a very strong field operation like kind of put in the work over the next two months to make sure that they did in fact hold on to the seat. They maintained their six to one majority and that the general election results looked entirely different from what the, what the prelim did with obviously higher turnout and them speaking actually doing the work of talk, making sure that they're talking to voters, etc. I think that they're like one of the few places that has like a strong like slate operation that really works.

JORDAN

Well, slates don't always work because they're all at large.

JONATHAN

Exactly. Because they're all at large and all that. You can really say we're running as a team in a way that like mix and match races at large don't always work on slates. But it's a very clear messaging race for that.

ELAINE

I love it.

JORDAN

So the other thing I want to say is Springfield also had the largest turnout that they've had in decades for a non mayor's race or a state race or a ballot where there was a state race on the ballot. They had, they had huge turnout for Springfield. They also had again really close races that ended up being a few votes made the difference. So to you know, to Elaine's point, like one or two votes mattered in those races. Justin Hurst got on and Sean Kern got kicked off the at large which is a huge, I think a big change for, for Springfield. But some of their like district council seats were down to like 18 votes, 20 votes, you know, so you just saw 50 votes for Springfield. So it was just really close across the board.

JORDAN

Yeah, Ward 6 was 18 votes. Ward 5 was about, was a little short of 50 votes. Ward 4 was 34 votes. I think I'm trying to do this quickly. Like it was again 32 votes for Ward 4. This is just like really close. So again these are all why it's so important to engage in your elections because it can make a huge difference. And I think that reflected people in Springfield are feeling angsty about sort of the changes. That's one of the largest increases in pricing for housing is happening in Springfield right now. So they're starting to see the same crunch that we've seen across Worcester and across the rest of the state. So I think candidates who are interested in talking about those, fighting for those things and being really proactive are going to. It's going to continue to be a huge issue. But.

JONATHAN

And then one thing before we wrap up, because we've been on for a while, I do want to shout out Quincy because Quincy was a really exciting.

JORDAN

Yeah.

JONATHAN

Typically, like, I don't think Quincy is a place where people think like, I'm going to hear amazing election results out of.

ELAINE

Out of.

JONATHAN

Out of the city of Quincy. But you had a situation of like a very corrupt local government that you had in the news. The fact that the Quincy mayor had gotten the council to raise for like a massive pay raise for himself that wouldn't like in the Quincy. I believe that the Quincy city mayor is like the third highest paid mayor in the country after New York Angela's.

ELAINE

And Quincy is just not big enough for that.

JONATHAN

No, it's like, it's laughable. And it's like in the. Quincy also doesn't even allow public comment at city council meetings. So at the same time that the city council was like voting for a massive pay race for the mayor, like, you weren't even allowed to weigh in as a constituent on that. There was also scandal around a religious statue in front of the inside of the police department.

JONATHAN

And just kind of. And it reached a point like that inspired a number of Quincy residents to become activists to be like, okay, let's run. And they actually had all of their seats contested this election, which typically doesn't happen. Local elections can be sleepy affairs. Often they shouldn't be, but they often are.

ELAINE

They should never be sleepy affairs ever.

JONATHAN

Exactly. And what was exciting to see is how many of the new people running one in. In Quincy that you elected a kind of. They elected a number of challengers, like, and they elected a lot of new, particularly new women onto the council. So actually like, for Quincy to elect like a brand like new kind of group of progressive women to the city council is a great predictive. With a goal of like putting keeping the mayor in check and changing the face of who's in the elected office in Quincy.

ELAINE

Am I right also in remembering that before this cycle they only had one woman on the city council and that woman left the city council.

JONATHAN

Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah.

ELAINE

Tremendous change. And I'm really happy to see that kind of representation get better.

JONATHAN

Exactly. And it also just shows that like, how important is that people run right the fact that they made those seats contested rather than just allow the incumbents to skate by.

ELAINE

Jonathan, you're singing the song of my people right now. All elections should be contested. They're not elections. If we only have one choice, that's a coronation. We live in a democracy. We should have choices. People. It's not that difficult to run for office. Find out who's representing you. If you don't like what they're doing, just put your name on the ballot. Even if you don't do anything else. There's only two ways to run scared and unopposed. You really want your people to run scared so that they earn your vote. Go and do the work that you sent them there to do. Don't let them sit on their tush and get away with it. Not doing anything.

JONATHAN

No. I thought that was such an inspiring thing to see. Like, people who be like, okay, let's, let's contest all these races and they won a number like.

JONATHAN

You love it.

JORDAN

I want to say also that the mayor, there's a ton of like the Fall river mayor's race and which famously somebody went to jail over was in the recount zone, although the mayor was reelected. And then the Everett City Council race, which is a wild race because for those of you who aren't into the politics. Carla Di Maria got accused of many things. Most of those appear to have been fake because he won a defamation lawsuit and closed the paper that was writing them after the person bought a newspaper to basically attack him for opposing a developer.

ELAINE

Opposing.

JORDAN

It was just one guy.

JORDAN

And then it turns out that there was some things that were shady, but not all the things that he was being accused of. And voters, ultimately, I guess, I don't know, I didn't, I didn't follow the race. I don't exactly know what happened, but an at large city councilor knocked off the mayor of Everett. And so there was a change there. Again, something we don't often see, but higher voter turnout, which is something we did see across the way. So I want to close out with people with your thoughts on how, what you think this bodes for 2026. I will say for, for Massachusetts, what I am seeing is, I don't, I think if you, I think the thing, the mistake you can make from my perspective is thinking that the lesson is either sort of two really progressives are winning or either conservatives winning. And I increasingly see politics as people, as people being thirsty to be seen, heard and fought for. And candidates that can successfully communicate that to their base will win, but also that voters are looking to be engaged in Massachusetts in a time of Trump, that people want to do something to fight Trump, to fight rising authoritarianism. They want their democracy and they are thirsty to exercise that right. So people who are, who get, who do the hard work of talking to voters, who, getting in front of voters, communicating that you are going to fight for them, you can win over voters who might not otherwise ideologically seemingly be with you, but they're, but they are thirsty to both be engaged and be engaged by, by, by candidates. At least that's my perspective. Let's go to Jonathan and then we'll close out with Elaine, our guest.

JONATHAN

Yeah, no, I think that's great. I do always like to tell people that the number one reason why people aren't voting for you is that you didn't ask them. Obviously, there are many other things, but that is fully in your control and that people are willing to vote for candidates they don't agree with 100% if they think that you'll fight if you're flat like hell for the areas where you agree. And I think that's always the important thing in any campaign of messaging that you will actually do that work of standing up for people. Doesn't work every time, but it works more than, more than it doesn't often of that kind. And it often helps for people to overperform expectations when, when they, they're able to communicate that really clearly and also just contest races. If you, if you think that somebody doesn't like you think somebody's not doing a good enough job, run against them. Find somebody to run against them because that, it helps put them on their toes.

JORDAN

Elaine, go ahead.

ELAINE

I mean, he stole my thunder.

ELAINE

Because I am on, I'm just been banging the drum of we need our elections to be contested, Massachusetts. I mean, mostly we're looking at state House races, but as I've been working on the local election transparency project, the number of races that are uncontested is actually sickening. And when we talk about the legislature, Massachusetts is number 50 in election competitiveness. Most people, when they go to cast their vote, don't have choices on the ballot. And what that really means is you get a lot of voter apathy. Why would you find a babysitter for your kids or cancel a dinner with your family to go to vote when you only have one option on your ballot and it doesn't actually matter? Your two choices are the person who's there or I could vote blanket like stay people stay home. And I know there's A lot of like hate. Hateful rhetoric about like, why don't people vote? Well, that's a very logical reason to vote is that you actually don't have choices. So, yeah, definitely get people running. We need those competitive elections. I think something thinking about this next year because I am seeing increased interest in having competitive elections for our state House. Actually really like almost all the races, constitutional races, state house races. They're not all progressives, they're not all on the left. We have a lot of Republicans who are pulling ballots, unenrolled people pulling ballots and announcing races now too. But I think that's something we didn't really touch on. Now that is becoming more important. And again, I hate to just connect everything in Massachusetts to the national moment that we're in, but the importance of independent media.

ELAINE

We have very little media coverage of our municipal elections. Yes, there are some great outlets for our state elections, but we are going to need a much more robust independent media ecosystem so that voters really do get the opportunity to be informed about these people that are running on the ballot this upcoming year. So I'm looking forward to people investing in independent media and investing in even individual journalists that are covering their area with things like Patreon and all of the like subscription model ways that you can support local and independent journalism. So I want to just give a shout out for like find the people who are covering politics in your area and make sure you understand how to get them from funded so they can continue to bring you information about who's on your ballot and what are the issues in your community.

JONATHAN

Quick, quick transition for there in terms of people not doing things unless you ask them to and funding. Good.

JORDAN

Oh, I was going to go there too. Go ahead.

JONATHAN

You do it.

JONATHAN

Jordan. I'll hand it, I'll hand, I'll hand that over to.

JORDAN

No, no, no. You could do it.

JONATHAN

You can, you can make the afraid.

ELAINE

To ask for money because. No, no, we're an expert in this.

JORDAN

Like fighting about who gets to ask for money.

JONATHAN

It's just as a reminder, like obviously this like Jordan, myself, Anna, none of us have paid to be on here, but we do have a great team of people who do work of editing kind of editing, putting all this kind of all making sure that the podcasts are able to be listened to. You our loyal listeners and, and, and so contributions greatly appreciated. Donut. It helps. It helps power this and keeps. Keeps us going forward.

JORDAN

Yeah, we've been growing and we've been growing because we have great staff and that's only possible if you donate. So please donate. And with that. Sorry, Anna, this took so long. Thanks so much, everyone.

JONATHAN

Thank you all.

ELAINE

Thank you for having me.