On the 2025 election results
On November 4th, the voters of Medford elected me to a second term on City Council. Going by the number of voters, with 14,175 ballots cast and about 180 provisional ballots yet to be counted, this was the highest-turnout municipal election in Medford of at least the past 16 years, since we started to post results online. I'm grateful to everyone who put their trust in me to continue this work.
The full, unofficial results of the Medford City Council and School Committee elections that happened on November 4th are as follows (following the Tufts Daily’s coverage of bold being the winners and italicized being the incumbents; I have also added a “*” for candidates endorsed by Our Revolution Medford and a “+” for candidates on the Independent Voices slate):
City Council:
Emily Lazzaro* - 7205
Isaac B. “Zac” Bears II* - 7133
Anna Callahan* - 7120
Justin Tseng* - 7037
Matt Leming* - 6726
George Scarpelli+ - 6599
Liz Mullane* - 6585
Miranda Briseño* - 6498
Rick Caraviello+ - 6234
Melanie Tringali+ - 6140
Paul Donato Jr.+ - 6063
Nicholas Giurleo+ - 5185
Patrick Clerkin+ - 4852
Nate Merritt+ - 4709
School Committee:
Jenny Graham* - 7865
Erika Reinfeld* - 7348
Jessica E. Parks* - 7178
Aaron Olapade* - 7165
Michael Mastrobuoni* - 6910
Paul Ruseau* - 6840
Nicole Branley - 5835
Lisa Dover Kingsley - 5526
John Intoppa - 5480
Charter: 8647 yes, 3824 no
It is statistically unlikely that the remaining provisional ballots to be counted will have much effect on the final standings (most of them were counted Friday at City Hall, anyway, and no big shifts happened then).
In short, differing from the results of the preliminary elections, which had a much lower voter turnout, Our Revolution Medford candidates fared well, maintaining a 6-1 majority on City Council and sweeping School Committee 6-0. With the passage of the new charter, we’ll be having, starting in 2027, eight ward and three at-large Councilors and four district and two at-large school committee members.
What drove this election
This term, Our Revolution Medford incumbents on City Council pursued a rezoning project that proposed to implement the Medford Comprehensive Plan, which marks the first time in recent memory that Medford’s really tried to follow through on one of its own plans. This rezoning project also triggered an anti-campaign. Did that harm ORM candidates (particularly incumbents) this election? Absolutely — even with historically high turnout, Zac and Justin received fewer votes this time than they did in 2023. But on the whole, voters saw that this City Council was actually trying to go in a positive direction and not kick the can down the road. It was also in trend with the times: November 4th saw Democratic wins across the country, which serves a progressive slate well. And, when we’re going through a housing crisis, anti-development and anti-rezoning arguments don’t really hold water (over in Cambridge, none of the candidates endorsed by the Cambridge Citizens Coalition won, except for one incumbent).
I think the opposition — particularly after the prelims — was unsuccessful because they repeated the same communication patterns we saw in the overrides in 2024: they put out over-the-top doom-and-gloom messaging, they lied a lot, and they pushed non-sequiturs, like insisting that candidate slates are bad, so everyone should vote for another slate. ORM candidates were also attacked for petty things like serving lunch to kids or moderating comments on Instagram. That sort of communication can inflame and entertain a base that already doesn’t like a group of candidates, but it doesn’t really attract new voters.
Generally speaking, progressives were just better at outreach and getting feedback from the average person, and this has consistently allowed us to form a cohesive platform that reflects the will of the voters. My campaign revolved around engaging people, asking them what they wanted to see, having conversations with as many people as humanly possible, and communicating concrete things that I have done and want to do.
What’s next
Last term, three new progressive candidates got elected to Council (Emily, Anna, and myself), and we pursued a couple of projects that, while I still think they’re good policy, were poorly presented and didn’t result in anything more than six-hour meetings where we got yelled at a lot and unnecessarily lost political capital. I doubt that’ll happen again this term to the same degree — we only have one new progressive Councilor this time, and she has a better head on her shoulders than I do. As a body, Council will likely be busy trying to renegotiate the rezoning initiatives with the Mayor, which screeched to a halt back in June and has overall seen very little progress since. The election results were a resounding mandate to continue with the rezoning in some form, though it also requires that the Mayor agree to that, since she gets to set the contracts with the consultants we’re working with.
In the immediate future, I’ll personally be spending time working on a vacant building ordinance with some of my colleagues, which is the latest incarnation of the commercial vacancy tax I discussed last term, and I’ll continue to find ways to fund the affordable housing trust.
