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Jesse Gordon, hands planted firmly in pinstriped pockets, shoulders
hunched and neck atilt, peers out at the dozen or so Cantabrigians
gathered in the dreary ballroom that sits atop the Ryles Jazz Club in
Inman Square.
The scene is a forum hosted by the Cambridge Republican City
Committee, and Gordon—an intense man running as a challenger in next
week’s City Council election—is pleading his political case.
Perched on a bare stage with a lone microphone, Gordon
sprinkles his arguments with epigrams and political puns—a skill he
says he picked up while earning his master’s degree in public policy
from the Kennedy School of Government in the early ’90s.
A North Cambridge resident who has combined internet expertise
with political activism, Gordon helped launch Mass for Dean, an online
campaigning site for presidential hopeful Howard Dean, and worked as a
technical director for Robert Reich’s failed gubernatorial bid in 2002.
A self-described “passionate progressive,” Gordon now wants to
reform a City Council that he says is “really threatened by the concept
of openness.”
“I realized that the problem with the Democratic Party is the
problem with the City of Cambridge,” Gordon says. “We have a very
strong establishment that claims to be representing progressive values,
and it does not.”
It’s no easy task for a first-time candidate to steal a seat
on the all-incumbent City Council. But Gordon’s wonky appearance belies
a publicity hound who says he isn’t afraid to take on the “city
establishment.”
“The thing I’m best at is making a stink in public,” he says with a touch of glee.
‘BORN AN IDEALIST’
A New York native and graduate of Brandeis, Gordon writes in
one campaign pamphlet that he “was born an idealist, and his ideas led
him to become an activist.” His campaign platform includes calls for
citywide wireless internet, expanded voter rights for 17-year-olds and
immigrants, and greater transparency in city governance.
But local discontent over recent property tax increases lies
at the heart of his appeal to Cambridge voters. Gordon argues that
higher taxes have driven working-class and middle-class residents out
of Cambridge, and says the current council is not working to ease the
burden on homeowners.
In 2004, city residents were surprised by a steep rise in real
estate values and an attendant tax increase. The City Council voted in
September to offset the increases by buying down the debt with city
funds.
Gordon says he’d been arguing this policy before the council in the months leading up to the vote, to no avail.
“Up until the moment of the vote, literally 10 minutes before
the vote, they were still saying this policy was dishonest,” Gordon
says. “Then 10 minutes later they voted for it. So I guess in those 10
minutes it converted to an honest policy.”
But Robert Winters, editor of the Cambridge Civic Journal,
says the council’s action was a routine policy, and Gordon’s lobbying
made little difference.
“What [Gordon] was saying the city should do is what the city does every year,” Winters says.
This difference of interpretation has cropped up elsewhere in
Gordon’s campaign. The candidate has irked city officials and observers
alike with a series of glossy flyers and pamphlets lambasting the
municipal status quo. Some say not all of Gordon’s claims hold water.
“He’s the George Bush of the local left,” says Glenn S.
Koocher ’71, a veteran Cambridge political pundit. “He says whatever he
needs to say to get his points across.”
Winters laughs when asked to describe Gordon’s campaign. “He’s been really over-the-top,” he says.
Last month, City Assessor Robert P. Reardon said one of
Gordon’s flyers on tax rates misled voters by misclassifying Cambridge
properties and reporting inaccurately high reassessment figures as a
result. The weekly Cambridge Chronicle splashed the story across its
front page with the headline, “Gordon Uses Fuzzy Math.”
Gordon smiles when asked about the incident. He dismisses the
assessor’s accusations as backlash from the political establishment.
“The establishment is very self-protective,” he says. “The
city manager is appointed by the City Council, the assessor is
appointed by the city manager. They all owe each other their jobs, so
it’s not surprising at all that they basically are teaming up against
the challenger.”
“Frankly,” he adds, “I’m right, he’s wrong.”
Asked whether the figures on the flyer were correct, Gordon concedes some inaccuracy.
“On my original flyer there were some mistakes, but, the thing
is, I went to a public source, the Bank of America’s website, and the
Bank of America got it wrong, and what [the assessor] was pointing out
was the errors that the Bank of America made,” he says. Such
inconsistencies, he adds, are rooted in a lack of civic transparency.
“It’s all well and good to say the Bank of America made
mistakes and therefore I should be dismissed, but what it really means
is this information is not accessible to the public—and it should be,”
Gordon says.
JUST THE FACTS?
The “fuzzy math” fracas was not an isolated case. Assertiveness
has trumped accuracy, some have alleged, elsewhere on Gordon’s campaign
trail.
In September, Gordon modified a flyer claiming an endorsement
from current City Councillor Kenneth E. Reeves ’72, after Reeves
requested that his name be removed. Reeves is also running in Tuesday’s
election.
Gordon told the Chronicle last month that the printed flyer was a “misunderstanding,” but he now qualifies his remarks.
“I was trying to be nice to Ken,” Gordon says. “It wasn’t a
misunderstanding. He endorsed me, fair and square, that’s all there is
to it.”
Gordon says that Reeves signaled his support at the
incumbent’s campaign kick-off event last June. Still, according to
Winters, such gestures—which fall within the election-season norm—don’t
imply an all-out endorsement. For many incumbents, gaining a
challenger’s secondary and tertiary votes in Cambridge’s idiosyncratic
proportional-representation system can spell electoral success.
Gordon attributes the confusion to his lack of experience campaigning.
“If you want to have an endorsement from an incumbent, you’d better get it in writing, and I didn’t,” he says.
Reeves could not be reached for comment.
Ultimately, Gordon remains unfazed by the criticisms lobbed against him, saying he’s benefited from the publicity.
“The most important challenge for any non-incumbent is name recognition. I think I’ve succeeded with that,” he says.
He shrugs off his missteps, preferring to emphasize the overall
vigor of his campaign to storm the council. And he challenges his
opponents to refute the substance of his points.
“If anyone says I’m dishonest, let them count through my
arguments,” he says. “I answer everybody who calls me on the phone, I
answer everybody who writes an e-mail. People can go and look at the
numbers themselves.”
He says he considers criticism “the price you pay for running
a public campaign,” and he calls on progressives of all stripes to
support him at the polls on Tuesday.
“A real and meaningful challenge to the system can actually
improve it,” he says. “That’s what my candidacy is in large part
about.”
—Staff writer Michael M. Grynbaum can be reached at grynbaum@fas.harvard.edu.
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