Peixoto Runs as Political Outsider

Helder S. “Sonny” Peixoto is not your typical City Council candidate—he has never held elected office, and he paints himself as an outsider in a campaign whose frontrunners have racked up endorsements and political experience.

An MBTA police officer whose only newspaper coverage this summer stemmed from a skirmish with his wife’s ex-husband, Peixoto is the consummate anti-politician.

He called the remaining local political party—the Cambridge Civic Association (CCA)—“a country club within itself” after he didn’t gain their endorsement.

But according to a recent poll conducted by Peixoto’s own campaign, he’s number four in the city—out of a pool of 19 candidates seeking nine council seats, including incumbents.

“The poll is 500 phone calls,” Peixoto says. “It wasn’t a push poll at all.”

The Decision To Run

Peixoto, who made an unsuccessful bid in 1999 for a council seat, says he decided to run again this year when he heard that one-term CCA councillor Jim Braude—known for his liberal stances on everything from street perfomance ordinances to zoning—had decided against running.

“It was the worst news—he kept it very secret, that he wasn’t going to run again,” Peixoto says.

In his effort to gain the support of Braude’s would-be constituency, Peixoto tried to get the endorsement of the CCA, known locally as the activist liberal party.

He was unsuccessful.

“It wasn’t so much criteria as it was a process issue,” CCA President Ken Carson says. “A really simple one—that is, that we had put out an announcement about interviewing candidates who were interested in the endorsement, and there was a deadline. Mr. Peixoto did not contact us before that deadline passed.”

All six of the candidates that did actually make the deadline received the CCA endorsement, Carson says.

Even without their endorsement, Peixoto says that he agrees with CCA on many issues.

“I support many of their causes, and will work with them,” Peixoto says.

But as for Brian Murphy, one of the CCA’s top candidates—who bills himself as the “pragmatic progressive”—Peixoto says that the first-time candidate is not original.

“I’ve been using ‘pragmatic progressive’ since 1999,” Peixoto says.

Housing And Harvard

Peixoto says he is confident he will be able to rely on women for many of his votes.

“One of my main agendas is affordable housing. We as a city should not accept a system where having a child is an economic liability,” Peixoto

A real estate tax benefit for having children is among one of Peixoto’s many proposals to give families in Cambridge a boost.

Still, although affordable housing is one of Peixoto’s chief goals, the candidate thinks that Cambridge has done enough with its Just-a-Start for affordable housing program—and that now it’s Harvard’s turn to step up to the plate.

“I see a problem with Harvard University,” Peixoto says. “They’re buying up three-family-homes, six-family-homes, and that’s happening weekly. I think it’s unfair and deceptive and we must preserve and increase our housing as well as open space.”

But Mary Power, the university’s senior official forgovernment and community relations, says that Harvard simply isn’t buying up property in Cambridge, and that with programs such as 20-20 2000 program the University has helped make affordable housing available to Cambridge natives.

“Contrary to a widely-held belief, Harvard has sold more property than it’s acquired in Cambridge over the past 10 years,” Power said. “Between 1987 and 1997 Harvard sold three times as much property as it acquired.”

Traditionally, Harvard compensates Cambridge for taking property away from the city’s tax base with an in-lieu-of-tax payment, the dollar value of which is an annual source of contention between the city and the university. But this payment is not enough regardless of size, Peixoto says.

“I don’t think any amount of money can make up for it,” Peixoto says. “Basically what’s happening is that the residents are selling their houses.”

And although most areas of the city are scheduled to be rezoned by mid-October, Peixoto stands for fresh zoning.

“I don’t think enough’s being done to design zoning in areas not previously zoned for housing,” Peixoto says.

The Campaign

Born and raised in Cambridge—his mother Lorena is an employee of Harvard University Dining Services—Peixoto’s roots in Cambridge go wide and deep, he says.

“We’re going door-to-door, handing out campaign literature [and] bumper stickers,” Peixoto says, adding that he won’t be replicating his last campaign, which was known for an incredible amount of signage throughout the city.

“We met with the Green Tree Group, and they said ‘Sonny, you’ve wasted so much wood,’” Peixoto says.

And he says an incident this August, in which he allegedly exchanged harsh words with his wife’s ex-husband and a police officer, isn’t as damning as he first thought it was.

“Actually, I first saw it as negative, but people don’t like when people get attacked in the newspaper,” Peixoto says, adding that many people have commended him for his actions.

“They say, you do something that a lot of people don’t do lately—that’s stand up for my wife,” Peixoto says.

The incident might even have been helpful to Peixoto, he says.

“I’ve gone up in the polls after that incident,” Peixoto says. “There’s an old saying, any publicity is good publicity.”

But according to Cambridge political pundit Glenn S. Koocher ’71, Peixoto doesn’t stand much of a chance.

“My sense is that he’s in the third tier of candidates,” Koocher says.

Koocher points out that Peixoto only claimed 315 votes in the last election, in which the quota—the number of final votes which all 9 winners got in Cambridge’s complicated proportional represenation system—was 1878.

“He had ubiquitous signage—he created the appearance of a quick start to his campaign,” Koocher says.

But this time, Peixoto, whose e-mail address begins with “Peixoto2002,”is hoping to nab a seat on the council.

With two current councillors not running for reelection, Peixoto has a chance to fulfill his e-mail address, which names the year in which his term would begin if he is elected Nov. 6.

—Staff writer Lauren R. Dorgan can be reached at dorgan@fas.harvard.edu.