NORTHAMPTON — Candidates Ryan O’Donnell and Marlene A. Morin face off Thursday to fill a vacant at-large City Council seat. But before they go head to head, they’re going door to door.
O’Donnell and Morin both plan to hit the streets of Northampton this week, knocking on doors, talking to residents and encouraging voters to head to the polls on voting day or cast an absentee ballot at the city clerk’s office.
O’Donnell was the top vote-getter in a preliminary July 7 election that narrowed the field from four candidates to two. O’Donnell received 1,444 votes, while Morin came in second with 307 votes. Candidates Andrew B. Smith and Blue M. DuVal were eliminated in the first round, receiving 216 votes and 104 votes, respectively.
The at-large seat opened in May when former City Councilor Jesse Adams resigned, triggering a two-part special election. Adams declined to comment on the race to fill his position.
Only 10.3 percent, or 2,090 of the city’s 20,423 registered voters, cast ballots in the preliminary election.
Despite trailing O’Donnell by over 1,000 votes in the first round, Morin has faith she could pull ahead this week and win the election. The deciding factor, she said, is whether her fellow residents head to the polls and vote Thursday.
“This extra month has given me the chance to talk to people and encourage them to get out and vote,” Morin said.
Though it has been a scramble to launch a campaign and raise money to compete with O’Donnell, Morin said she gained valuable perspective from friends and residents. Morin, 62, has lived in the city for more than 40 years. She lives on a small farm at 121 Florence Road and works as a general practice attorney out of her office at 53 Gothic St., including work for indigent criminal defendants.
“For me, when I listen to people I meet on the campaign trail, affordability is always an issue, especially for retired people,” Morin said.
Morin said her priorities as a city councilor would be to increase affordability in the city and take a closer look at the budget to trim excess costs. She pointed to a report from Matrix Consulting Group that found that the Department of Public Works “has consistently overestimated its budgetary requirements in recent years,” according to the report.
She said she hopes to catch needless proposed spending and purge it from the budget to “give people a break.”
The charter, she said, invests the City Council with a serious fiscal responsibility. “Councilors should go in, look at each department budget and understand it,” Morin said. “The City Council can bring in a department member, and do that in a friendly way. It isn’t negative, it’s just doing business.”
Jeremiah Micka, owner of Platform Sports Bar, donated $200 to Morin’s campaign fund. As a fellow property owner, Micka said he trusts Morin will represent his interests as a resident and business owner. He said he considers her a transparent candidate and he views the legal experience she would bring to the council as a bonus.
“Marlene has the experience and the know-how,” Micka said. “She’s just a better candidate.”
Nancy Rhoades also donated $200 to Morin’s campaign, according to a campaign finance report. Rhoades is married to Micka’s business partner, David N. Fortier. Although her name appeared on the check, Rhoades said her husband is the one who donated the money.
“We’re all friends as well as business partners. We have the same interests,” Micka explained.
“This is a decisive election,” O’Donnell said. “It’s been an honor to go around and meet people in the city … People will be thinking about who they want the person to represent them to be.”
O’Donnell is the current Ward 3 councilor, vice president of the City Council and chairman of the Transportation and Parking Commission. As an at-large councilor, O’Donnell said he would foster an “active City Council that proposes new proposals and gets results for people.”
“I will listen to everyone in the city, even if I disagree at first, even if I’m in a different situation than them and they’re in a different situation than me. I hope people see me as someone who has been fair and active on City Council.”
The Ward 3 councilor said he wants to expand his work in Ward 3 to make the entire city more affordable. “Affordability in the city is paramount. Northampton has to be a city where people of all income levels can live. I favor affordable housing in many different ways. In Ward 3, there is a zoning code that encourages affordable housing,” O’Donnell said. “We need laws like that to apply to the whole city.”
O’Donnell said he hopes to change the way people view the city’s downtown economy and to ensure equity across the city by distributing services and funding equally among people who live in Northampton, Florence and Leeds.
The candidate is fueling his campaign with $3,451.09, according to the latest campaign finance reports released Thursday. From June 21 to July 17, O’Donnell spent $1,186.96 on campaign supplies, signs and food for an event. O’Donnell raised $250 in the period from three donors, including a $100 donation from Ward 4 councilor Gina-Louise Sciarra.
“I’m very happy to support Ryan’s campaign,” Sciarra said Thursday. “He is running a really straightforward and honest campaign. Ryan is very old school in terms of campaigning and how he does public service. He goes door-to-door … He talks to voters, and it doesn’t take a lot of money to do that. It takes time and effort.”
Sciarra said she supports O’Donnell’s effort to advance from a Ward 3 councilor to the at-large seat, saying his work on behalf of Ward 3 constituents has often benefited the entire city. Sciarra plans to campaign with O’Donnell heading toward election day.
O’Donnell told the Gazette earlier this summer that his move to the at-large seat would not be a burden to the city because the election for a new Ward 3 councilor would likely be bundled with the presidential election in November. He works as a political consultant and is a renter on Day Avenue.
Citing a 2008 article from a Maryland newspaper, Morin said O’Donnell told the paper that shorter election cycles favor better-known candidates with established support.
“The playing field is not fair in a special election. The time is too short,” Morin said, referencing O’Donell’s statement to The Gazette in Montgomery when he was an executive director for nonprofit Common Cause. The newspaper ceased publication in June 2015, but the article is available on the newspaper’s archive website.
O’Donnell said he stands by his 2008 statement, and that he hopes the City Council will revisit the city’s charter and improve the way special elections are run. He said money is an issue in all levels of American politics, referencing an ordinance he wrote as a city councilor to cap campaign funding in Northampton.
“It’s the only ordinance of its kind in Massachusetts,” O’Donnell said. “And it’s actually stricter than the state law.”
When it comes to local elections, money only goes so far, O’Donnell said. He said he relies on going out and talking to voters to gain support.
Finance reports show Morin enlisted Ryan McCollum, a political consultant from Springfield who runs RMC Strategies. Morin said she realized that he was too pricey for her campaign budget. The Springfield political consultant did not provide campaign advice per se, but helped by designing lawn signs and printed campaign materials, Morin said.
Morin began the last reporting period with a 94-cent campaign fund, raised $995 and spent $688.32 on website work, the strategist, lawn signs and postcard printing.
As an elected member of the Community Preservation Committee, Morin attended about 50 percent of the meetings, according to the attendance records included in meeting minutes. Morin said as a volunteer member of the committee, much of the work could be done from home by reviewing applications online and attending meetings when votes were held.
“It was a regular practice to miss meetings, I was present for every vote,” Morin said.
Because the City Council seat is a paid position and there is “a lot more going on,” attendance would be a priority for her.
A longer string of meeting absences in spring 2015 can be linked to trips to Danvers to see her mother, who later passed away, Morin said. According to Morin, she often had to drive east to assist her sister in taking care of her mother, who remained at home until she died in her early 90s.
“I didn’t think I needed to resign,” Morin said. “I knew I was doing the work.”
According to City Clerk Wendy Mazza, the preliminary July 7 election cost the city $20,524.04. She anticipates the Aug. 4 election will cost about the same amount, bringing the total cost for the special election to roughly $40,000. Election costs include printing ballots and voter lists, vote machine coding, paying election workers and paying overtime to office staff, Mazza said.
“The biggest piece of the election is the workers,” Mazza said. “It’s a 13-hour workday.”
Every precinct in the city will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. for voting. Registered voters who will not be in the area during the polling period may vote at the city clerk’s office during business hours, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Voters can apply for an absentee ballot until noon Aug. 3.