Marc McGovern

As 22 candidates vie for election to the Cambridge City Council, Mayor Marc C. McGovern insists that he’s one of the few able to deliver on his campaign promises, pointing to his track record in office thus far.

McGovern, who has served as mayor of Cambridge since 2017, is one of eight incumbents running for City Council. He cites the legal defense fund for immigrants in the city and the free breakfast program for students in Cambridge public schools as two of his greatest accomplishments as mayor. If elected Nov. 5, McGovern will start his fourth term on the council.

McGovern said the primary focus for his campaign is the affordable housing crisis in Cambridge. Though thousands of new job opportunities have opened up in the Boston metropolitan area in the last few years, Cambridge’s housing market has largely not kept up, according to McGovern. Many low-income and homeless individuals cannot access the housing market, and many middle-income Cambridge residents do not qualify for vouchers or subsidies and are pushed out of the city.

McGovern plans to not only build more affordable housing and provide vouchers to low- and middle-income Cambridge residents, but also assess the root causes of housing instability.

“We're surrounded by all this prosperity, but we have a higher poverty rate than the state average,” said McGovern.

He said he will examine job training, salaries, and wages so that Cambridge residents who enter the job market will be able to experience the upward mobility required to stay here. McGovern said he will also address the issue of no-cause evictions so that tenants can have more stability within the market. In some cases, landlords evict their tenants so that they can sell their apartments or raise rents in a very competitive housing market.

Though many other candidates have made affordable housing a central platform in their campaigns, McGovern said the best way to differentiate between candidates it to look at their past accomplishments.

“We're all talking about similar things, but I think you have to look at people's records,” he said. “There's a lot of talk in politics and sometimes there's not enough action. We take concrete action to get results.”

McGovern said he has already taken steps to improve the lives of local residents. In addition to the free breakfast program and the legal defense fund — which aids immigrants in getting legal representation — McGovern has created programs to combat homelessness.

“When homelessness increased in Cambridge, what did we do? We opened a warming center for the homeless and we started a program to help homeless people obtain their vital records like birth certificates and social security cards, which are often obstacles to them getting into housing.”

McGovern has largely focused on direct voter outreach and contact in the last few weeks leading up to the election. He said his team has knocked on more than 10,000 doors and made thousands of phone calls.

“Really trying to establish that grassroots person-to-person connection is really important,” he said.

Explaining the proportional, ranked-choice voting system is a challenge his campaign team faces, according to McGovern. In Cambridge, voters rank their chosen candidates in order of preference. McGovern said he has met people who believe he already has broad enough support to be reelected and subsequently vote for another candidate as their number one choice.

Some voters also do not understand that the incumbent mayor must run for council and then be elected by the other councilors to the mayorship, according to McGovern.

Above all, McGovern said his deep love of Cambridge drives his service to the city.

“This city has given so much to my family and me, and that’s why I continue to do this work.”