Greenfield, Massachusetts local elections, 2019: Allis Lost

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

My town, Greenfield, which has a city form of government (mayor+council) but is legally named the Town of Greenfield, has off-off-year local elections. This year we’re electing a new mayor since nonpartisan center-right incumbent Bill Martin is retiring, as well as electing half the City Council and voting on two referenda to uphold or abrogate ordinances that the Council passed (by a margin of iirc 10 to 2 in one case) but that a hard core of local conservatives launched successful petitions against. The Council had a progressive majority of 7 to 6 (more or less) following the 2017 local elections, which were basically an anti-Trump wave writ small; that’s since expanded to 9 to 4 because two members of the conservative faction resigned and the progressive majority named their temporary replacements. If memory serves neither of the temporary replacements is up for reelection this year, but I could be mistaken about that. The only new candidate I'm familiar with, for one of the four at-large seats, is a former tech journalist named Phil Elmer who seems reliably progressive On The "Issues" but also wants to make Greenfield "a destination for entrepreneurs"; gag me. In any case I expect the majority to stay where it is or even expand, since all four of the remaining conservatives are either up or retiring this year. There are three mayoral candidates so there’s a primary next week, on the tenth, followed by a runoff in the general November election.

The mayoral candidates are:

Brickett Allis, incumbent member of the City Council. It's no secret that Allis is your typical Trump Republican; he prides himself on having encouraged his constituents to abuse "petitions to rescind" and abrogative referenda to obstruct every attempt that the current Council majority has made to implement progressive local policy, from the safe city (read: sanctuary city but slightly less so) ordinance to the approval of a new library building, both of which will be on the November ballot along with the mayoral runoff and will hopefully finally be resolved then. The latter is a culture war and anti-intellectualism issue masquerading as a bread-and-butter issue since it might involve raising property taxes; Allis's actual campaign (so far) is a single-issue low-tax campaign, and unfortunately this is resonating because one thing that distinguishes Greenfield from nearby Northampton and Amherst is its higher rates of homeownership even among the lower middle class. His campaign signs say "A NEW VISION FOR OUR COMMUNITY!", sic, with the word "our" emphasized in three different ways. He is less than forty years old and comes from old Yankee stock, hence the unusual name.

Roxann Wedegartner, a Greenfield old-timer who's done various stages of the cursus honorum of town politics (School Committee, Planning Board, chairmanship of both at different times) over the past few decades but currently holds no office. Wedegartner isn't actually a Greenfield native--she was born and raised in Texas--but she's lived in town since the 1970s and is the candidate of Greenfielders who don't want Allis but do want someone with extensive roots and connections here. Her campaign slogan is "Vote for Progress" and she's running a center-left campaign that's supportive of the safe city ordinance and the new library but has a vaguely technocratic ethos. I don’t think anybody considers her a particularly ideological figure but she would probably happily cooperate with a progressive Council, unlike Mayor Martin, who’s cooperated but dragged his feet much of the time. If the off-off-year mayoral electorate was the same as the electorate for statewide and federal races, she'd be a shoo-in in in the runoff, and probably favored to net a plurality in next week’s primary as well.

Sheila Gilmour, another under-forty City Council member. Gilmour is a Navy veteran from a disadvantaged background who also holds an administrative job at UMass Amherst and is a leader in one of the unions there. She's the dyed-in-the-wool leftist in the race and my family and I are supporting her but she isn't as well-connected in town as the other candidates. Thus she appears to be struggling to marshal support outside her Council precinct, which is in one of the relatively well-off parts of the downtown area (although still not that well-off since Greenfield is a poor town). Gilmour's signs just say "Sheila Gilmour for Mayor" and are a canary in the coal mine for (I criticize because I love) a rudderless and colorless campaign. She's the change candidate and the progress candidate but in the various forums and debates so far she's been vague on actual policy. I'd be very surprised if she made it to the runoff.

Will Allis (as I predict) get the plurality next week or will Wedegartner edge him out? Will anybody get close to an outright majority? Will Gilmour upend expectations by making it to the runoff? Stay tuned to find out!

[The Arizonan]

So, do you think Greenfield politics plays a noticeable role in the grand scheme of things?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

So, do you think Greenfield politics plays a noticeable role in the grand scheme of things?

You're perfectly free to read other threads if you're not interested in this one.

[Figueira]

As someone who is passively following Greenfield politics since I live nearby, I appreciate this rundown.

How do you expect the ballot questions to go?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Wow all of Greenfield is under an ugly multi layered green field (hey fitting) in Ingress. There seems to be Enlightened linking from Shelburne Falls to a park north of Ashburnham, Princeton (some type of mountain trail there) and Spencer.

Also it seems no one plays Ingress in Greenfield itself. I think the Enlightened in this area operate out of Gardner and Fitchburg.

[Figueira]

Update: Allis didn't even make the runoff. Good job Greenfield!

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Update: Allis didn't even make the runoff. Good job Greenfield!

Yep! Very surprising, at least to me; since pollsters obviously don't bother to poll Greenfield, Massachusetts mayoral primaries, literally the only way of gauging support for the past few months has been muh lawn signs, which implied an Allis landslide. Then again, since Allis was running a single-issue campaign about property taxes, he would appeal disproportionately to people with lawns that they can put signs in.

Allis's third-place finish was, it must be said, a pretty respectable one--he was about fifty votes behind Gilmour in an election in which about 3,200 people voted. A little more than a quarter of registered Greenfield voters turned out--not too shabby for an off-off-year municipal jungle primary "preliminary election". Percentage-wise the result (rounded) was 39% Wedegartner, 32% Gilmour, 30% Allis. Western Mass local news has the exact results here. (Christine Forgey, the top vote-getter for the at-large Council seats, was our first mayor after the adoption of the mayor-council form of local government about twenty years ago, but that was long before I lived here so I don't know what her reputation is.)

Wedegartner is almost certainly overwhelmingly favored in November unless a very different set of people turns out; I guess I could see how Allis and Gilmour would have some crossover in their appeal, but only in the limited, questionably-significant sense in which Trump and Bernie do.

As to the ballot questions: If Allis had done better I would say who knows, but now I tentatively expect both the new library and the safe city ordinance to be approved pretty easily. Then again, center-right incumbent Mayor Bill Martin just vetoed the latter, which was a power I wasn't even aware our Mayor had, so who knows how that affects its status as a legitimate ballot question.

[The Arizonan]

So, do you think Greenfield politics plays a noticeable role in the grand scheme of things?

You're perfectly free to read other threads if you're not interested in this one.

I'm already reading other threads and I wish I could find more information about the Tucson mayoral election (more specifically any polls for the general election). I've already read every post in this thread.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

True to his long history of being Greenfield local politics' answer to Ted Cruz in terms of abusing quirks of the system to get what he wants, Allis is running as a write-in for the position he was just eliminated from the ballot for.

If he'd lost a party primary and was running as an independent write-in in the general I wouldn't necessarily have a problem with this, but even allowing write-ins in the runoff from a nonpartisan primary is such a clear violation of the basic concept of a top-two election that I'm actually really annoyed that neither of the other candidates is calling bullsh**t.

(Also, in what world is a 280-vote spread "less than 2.5%" of a ~3,200-vote primary? Shouldn't the ability to do basic division be a prerequisite for running as a ~fiscal conservative~?)

[Figueira]

True to his long history of being Greenfield local politics' answer to Ted Cruz in terms of abusing quirks of the system to get what he wants, Allis is running as a write-in for the position he was just eliminated from the ballot for.

If he'd lost a party primary and was running as an independent write-in in the general I wouldn't necessarily have a problem with this, but even allowing write-ins in the runoff from a nonpartisan primary is such a clear violation of the basic concept of a top-two election that I'm actually really annoyed that neither of the other candidates is calling bullsh**t.

(Also, in what world is a 280-vote spread "less than 2.5%" of a ~3,200-vote primary? Shouldn't the ability to do basic division be a prerequisite for running as a ~fiscal conservative~?)

Agreed--the entire point of having a runoff is to ensure that one candidate gets at least 50%.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

With less than a week to go till the """runoff election""" that'll have the same exact candidates as the """primary""", Greenfield does seem to be gearing up to elect one of the candidates who's actually on the ballot. Allis has been successful in getting the word out about his write-in candidacy and most of the lawn signs that were up during the primary are still up, with little yellow stickers reading "WRITE IN" stuck to them next to Allis's name. He also has this hilariously #populist letter to the editor in his favor in the local newspaper. However, many of the people running the election are more or less ignoring him; most of the latest town halls and public meetings have featured the two candidates whose names are on the ballot, and they've also received the lion's share of the public-access television coverage. (However, there have been other debates in which Allis has participated; it depends on how well the people running the specific debate understand the concept of a top-two election and why his continued candidacy is such an affront to democracy.) There are also more and more Gilmour and Wedegartner signs going up around town; I count about a 65/35 split for the "combined left" over Allis. Considering Allis's disproportionate appeal to people who have lawns, I think this is a promising sign.

Of course, I was completely wrong about the primary, so for all we know, Allis could storm home next week on the resentment and #populism of people who think the two-round system is personally unfair to him or something. We shall see.

I do expect the library referendum to pass easily. Less sure about the safe city referendum.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Greenfielders went to the polls again today and, two hours after polls closed, eight out of nine precincts have reported for the mayoral and City Council races (the ballot-counting machine in the other precinct wasn't working so people have to count those ballots by hand ), but they haven't even started to count the write-in votes despite the presence of a prominent and well-publicized write-in candidate, the library ballot question only has four precincts in, and the safe city ballot question only has one precinct in. Every other local election in Western Massachusetts other than the ones in Greenfield is at 100% reporting and has been called. I'm beginning to think our City Clerk might not be very good at her job.

Wedegartner is currently leading Gilmour "53"-"47", for whatever it's worth.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

MassLive calls it for Wedegartner. Yes on the library, yes on the safe city ordinance.

[Figueira]

MassLive calls it for Wedegartner. Yes on the library, yes on the safe city ordinance.

Thank God.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

MassLive calls it for Wedegartner. Yes on the library, yes on the safe city ordinance.

Thank God.

Agreed. I'm not crazy about Wedegartner, and I voted for Gilmour in the second round as well as the first, but she'll be a step up from our outgoing Mayor and she's leagues better than Allis.

[Antonio the Sixth]

What a beautiful day for Greenfield! In addition to Allis getting his due (although 27% is still way too high for someone who had no right to run in the first place) and the ordinances passing comfortably, Nathan also briefed me on the city council results and progressives somehow have expanded their majority even further from their 2017 landslide. It looks like the city is headed to have its more left-wing government in a long time.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Some quick-and-dirty MS Paint maps. The colors for the mayoral candidates are inspired by the color schemes of their campaign materials.



A few notes:

1. The three precincts in which the top mayoral vote-getter broke 40% of the vote are 5 (Wedegartner >40%), 6, and 8 (both Gilmour >40%). 5 is the southeasternmost precinct. Everywhere else was in the >30% range. Gilmour is the incumbent Council member for precinct 6, the easternmost of her two precincts, in which she polled 46%.
2. I live in the only precinct to flip from the primary, precinct 9, which is the northwesternmost precinct. Wedegartner won it by four votes in September; Allis won it by twelve votes last night.
3. In the at-large Council race each voter had two votes and the top two vote-getters got the two seats that were up. Forgey and Elmer were those victors. The map merely points out which of them came in first where.
4. The divide in the safe city ordinance vote is a classic culturally liberal downtown/culturally conservative hinterlands #trendsarereal type divide, although it doesn't seem like every day that one sees it within a town of less than 20,000 people. It looks like a north-south divide because the built-up part of Greenfield skews south of the geographic center, so the two southermost precincts include parts of the downtown but the three northernmost precincts do not.
5. Yes on the library broke 70% in precincts 5 and 6 (the same ones Elmer outpolled Forgey in) and broke 60% in precincts 4 and 8 (4 is the precinct immediately north of the two Elmer precincts, 8 is the westernmost of the two Gilmour precincts). It was in the >50% range everywhere else.
6. Yes on the safe city ordinance broke 70% in 5 and broke 60% in 6 and 8. Everywhere else was in the >50% range one way or the other.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Here are some maps for last month's contests, commissioned by Nathan.





Central/Southeast Greenfield best Greenfield.