NORTHAMPTON — Regardless of the eventual outcome, the 2025 Municipal Election already appears to be a historic one for Northampton.
More than 45 candidates successfully submitted nomination papers to run for various offices, including an extraordinary 23 candidates for City Council. City Clerk Pamela Powers told the Gazette that even more people had pulled nomination papers, but had not submitted the required signatures before the deadline, meaning they will not be on the ballot.
The number of candidates is a remarkable contrast to the previous municipal election in 2023, when many candidates ran unopposed for office.
“The number of people taking out nominations was very high this year,” Powers said. “But that’s a good thing. It’s good to see people want to participate in local government and in democracy.”
Under city rules, any position that gets more than twice the number of candidates must hold a preliminary election to determine who will be on the final ballot. While preliminary elections are not unheard of in Northampton, mainly for mayoral races, this election will see five different preliminary contests, something not seen in the last 25 years, according to past municipal races posted on the city’s website.
The preliminary election is scheduled to take place on Tuesday, Sept. 16, while the municipal election is set for Tuesday, Nov. 4.
“Since I’ve been city clerk, the only time we’ve had a preliminary election is for mayor, and once for Ward 7,” said Powers, who has held the position since 2017. “As a rule of thumb, we generally don’t have preliminaries for ward councilors.”
The surge in municipal candidates this year can in part be attributed to the Northampton Public School budget. Though increasing total spending on the schools, the city’s budgets have led to reductions in staff and services, leading to public backlash and the formation of the Support Our Schools and Services Political Action Committee, which has pledged to support candidates advocating for greater school spending.
Other issues likely to play a role in the election include the city’s Picture Main Street project for remaking downtown and construction of both affordable and market-rate housing in the city.
While the Northampton School Committee will see no preliminary elections, the committee stands to look remarkably different following the election, with seven of its nine members not seeking reelection to their current seat. Only Anat Weisenfreund of Ward 2 and Michael Stein of Ward 4 are running again for their current seats, while current Ward 3 Committee Member Emily Serafy-Cox is one of three candidates running for two at-large seats.
The preliminaries this year will be held for the mayoral race, which will feature four candidates; two at-large city council positions with six candidates; Ward 1 with four candidates; and Wards 3 and 5 with three candidates apiece.
Here are the details regarding candidates in the upcoming preliminary races.
Race for mayor
The mayoral race will feature incumbent Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra and three challengers that include former Downtown Northampton Association Executive Director Jillian Duclos, former Northampton Police Department officer David Dombrowski and former radio broadcaster Dan Breindel.
According to the state’s Office of Campaign and Political Finance, Sciarra has by far outraised her opponents in the race, with $25,810 raised since last November, compared to $8,490 raised by Duclos, $1,535 by Dombrowski and $870 by Breindel.
But the Support Our Schools PAC has raised $25,916 in that same time period, outpacing Sciarra and possibly benefiting her challengers. Both Duclos and Breindel have publicly advocated for more school spending.
“Budgets are moral documents that must combine logical predictions and real life consequences,” Duclos’s campaign website reads under a section regarding public education. “I want to bring my collaborative leadership style to this core challenge, helping our community figure out how, not if, we can bring together the resources and ideas needed to make Northampton schools thrive.”
Breindel’s website also advocates for increased school spending.
“In a progressive community, we should be discussing places to make our public schools even better, not areas where we can skim off a little cash,” his website states. “A vote for me is a vote for fully funding the public schools, and then some.”
At-large council race
The council’s two at-large seats have six contenders, including one incumbent, Garrick Perry (the other incumbent, Marissa Elkins, will not seek reelection). The other five candidates are Deb Henson, Benjamin Spencer, Meg Robbins, William O’Dwyer and Yakov Kronrod.
Both Henson, a former public schools social worker in New Orleans, and Robbins, a former Northampton School Committee member, have spoken in favor of higher school spending. Spencer has centered his campaign around supporting building developments and Picture Main Street, often aligning him with the mayor.
“More housing must be built, and we must do it where it makes the most sense: where there is already housing and close to the two urban centers of Downtown Northampton and Florence Center,” Spencer’s website states under his campaign priorities.
A resident of Florence, Kronrod currently works as a machine learning manager for the music streaming app Spotify and has a background in artificial intelligence. A donation page on the website ActBlue describes him as “a public school educator, a champion for formerly incarcerated individuals, and an AI industry leader at Amazon and Spotify,” who arrived to the United States as a refugee from the former Soviet Union.
Ward 1 race
Ward 1 will have four candidates in the preliminary: Michele Ronco, Niko Letendre-Cahillane, Gwen Nabad and Leigh Graham.
Ronco, originally from Italy, works for renewable energy and manufacturing company Enel Green Power, according to his LinkedIn. Ronco has spoken at several council meetings over the last two years, sharply criticizing the city’s school budget policy and advocating for higher spending.
Likewise, Letendre-Cahillane’s platform includes support for higher school spending. According to the Instagram account “niko4ward1,” Letendre-Cahillane is a founding member of the River Valley Democratic Socialists of America who supports implementing “pro-labor, pro-LGBTQ and pro-public service policies.”
Graham has advocated for a more nuanced approach to the school budget, writing in an op-ed in the Gazette in February that a property tax override to fund the schools could lead to greater inequality in the city.
“In a college town with a lot of renters and some affluent homeowners, who will likely skew whiter and older given the realities of the nation’s housing stock, I wonder about the true appetite for school budget increases in the double digits,” Graham wrote. “They sound fabulous but are very atypical for a city of our size.”
A former member of the Northampton Housing Partnership, Nabad is a 2022 graduate of Holyoke Community College. According to academic profile website Merit, Nabad’s political focus is on “regenerative practices, human rights, non-human rights, environmental justice, food sovereignty, international and domestic policy, treaty law, climate migration and climate disruption.”
Ward 3 race
The incumbent Ward 3 councilor, Quaverly Rothenberg, will face two challengers for her seat — Laurie Loisel and Ace Tayloe.
First elected to Ward 3 in 2023, Rothenberg quickly attracted controversy in her first two years, often evoking an otherwise rarely-used charter objection rule to delay votes on city budgets and other orders she disagreed with. In March, Rothenberg was censured by the council for her conduct during a call to public safety dispatchers, though Rothenberg defended her actions as advocating for her constituents during an ice storm. She is also a critic of the mayor and a strong advocate for higher school spending.
By contrast, Loisel has distanced herself from the Support Our Schools movement, recently writing a guest column in the Gazette declining their endorsement.
“Over the past year, I have closely observed the tenor and content of social media posts and other communications by the political action committee SOS,” Loisel wrote. “These tactics of vilifying public servants of goodwill who choose a course other than the one SOS prescribes, along with the nature of the questionnaire, leads me to decline this endorsement vetting invitation.”
Tayloe, who uses they/them pronouns, has previously served on the Northampton Housing Partnership, and advocates for higher school spending on their campaign website.
“I hope I don’t have to elaborate on the importance of supporting kids, their education, and their wellbeing. Critical to that is supporting school employees,” Tayloe’s website states. “Teachers and staff can’t bring their full care and attention to kids when they’re worried this will be the year their position is axed, or they need to pick up a second job to make enough money to get by.”
Ward 5 race
Council President Alex Jarrett will not seek reelection, meaning his Ward 5 position is up for grabs. The three candidates aiming for the seat are David Murphy, Aline Davis and Luke Rotello.
A former city councilor for 14 years before losing his seat to Jarrett, Murphy will look to return to the council. A real estate broker by profession, Murphy unsuccessfully ran for at-large councilor in 2023, with a position critical of city spending.
Davis currently serves as an at-large member on the School Committee. A longtime educator, Davis has been more critical of large budget increases during her time on the School Committee, saying such an amount is unsustainable for the schools.
“The public schools are a huge part of the city’s operations,” Davis wrote in a statement announcing her candidacy earlier this year. “The Council would benefit by having at least one member who has worked in the classroom, and who has dealt with the challenges of managing our school system’s complex budget.”
By contrast, Rotello’s platform includes strong support for greater funding to the school district. Rotello will also advocate for the removal of defense contractor L3Harris in Northampton, the subject of numerous protests in the city following the outbreak of the war in Gaza in 2023.
“With our public schools in crisis, our democratic process under attack and war profiteers operating in city limits, I believe we can do more to live up to Northampton’s progressive values,” Rotello’s website states.
Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.
