A Short and Sweet Cambridge Municipal Election Guide - Nov 4, 2025

IDGAF Just Tell Me Who to Vote For Guide (Nov 2025 municipal elections)

Oct 31, 2025

Hello! We are a group of friends who love Cambridge and want to stay here. Most of us want to see more housing, bike lanes and good environmental/social justice policies enacted on City Council.

🏆 City council ranking

Here’s who we’re ranking. Feel free to switch up the orders if you want, just vote! Early voting is happening now and you can go to any polling place! Otherwise, find your polling place!

Burhan Azeem: aka the GOAT. Nothing will get done without him. Wrote the multifamily housing zoning ordinance and Affordable Housing Overlay. Perfect voting record on bikes. What more can you ask for? Excellent fashion sense?
Ned Melanson: Super aligned on housing and bikes.
Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler: More of a DSA flavor but incredibly progressive and reasonable, definitely want him back on the council. Led the charge to get rid of broker fees!
Dana Bullister: Has interesting ideas and is not an incumbent so probably needs your vote more, but we like our top 3 better so that’s how it is. You could move her to #6 if you prefer tried-and-tested incumbents with a good record.
Marc McGovern: Overall a pretty solid pick, but in our opinion he wavers a lot based on public opinion and compromises even when he doesn’t need to.
Sumbul Siddiqui: Also generally solid but this gave us pause last term.

📋 Charter Question: Vote yes.

🎓 School Committee

These two are endorsed by the Cambridge Advanced Learning Association.

Eugenia Schraa Huh
Arjun Jaikumar

🤷‍♂️ You can rank these people

ELECTION TIME NOTE: We have updated this section and recommend ranking people because ranked choice voting means there might possibly be a runoff between these not-terrible candidates and the second coming of the NIMBY apocalypse (Already submitted my mail ballot RIP)
Ayah Al-Zubi is meh because she’s skeptical about market-rate housing and that’s just not going to work for us. Build, baby, build. (pls my landlord raised my rent by $300 a month)
- However, she is good on bikes, so you might consider ranking her.
Patty Nolan is also meh because she bases her decision on the data. And the data is . . . whatever she thinks will get her the most votes? Aka the most inconsistent and long-winded person on council.
- However, she has voted in favor of bike lanes and housing on occasion, so it would still be better to have her on the council than, say, Zusy.
Moving Denise Simmons to this section because she is pretty solid on housing but terrible on bikes, and in a matchup against Flaherty or Zusy you definitely want Simmons.
- However, Denise Simmons also oversaw the disastrous superintendent search which just unearthed a previously undisclosed $40k payment to a firm that bypassed regular protocol, which is generating a lot of backlash.
Ayesha Wilson is okay on housing (the 3+3 plan, which would have watered down the housing bill, was called the “Wilson Proposal,” so not great) and incredibly callous about bike lanes.
- She is just not informed. Like, she is always asking city staff to make decisions for her when she’s an elected official, aka that’s literally her job.

🚫 Who are we NOT ranking?

Elizabeth Bisio, Zion Sherin, Cathie Zusy, John Hanratty, Robert Winters, Stanislav Rivkin, Tim Flaherty: all of them suck on housing. And bikes.
- Zusy voted like one time in favor of bikes because she actually biked down Broadway and it scared the bejesus out of her, but like . . . if the testimony of several kids saying “please I don’t want to die riding my bike” doesn’t get you to change your mind, should you really be on council?
LaQueen Battle: who?
Louise Venden: who? (She’s a write-in, she’s literally not even on the ballot)

✅ Why vote?

🏡 Housing

Last term, City Council passed the multifamily housing zoning ordinance. Before it passed, 85% of buildings in Cambridge were illegal. That means if they burned down, you literally could not rebuild them!
- It also made it easier to build more housing! YIMBYism!
But since then, only FOUR (count ‘em) buildings have been proposed and they have run into new roadblocks.
- The Historical Commission was like “oh a dentist lived here in the 1800s pls don’t destroy” 🥺
- Interesting fact: the four buildings combined would be 350 units of new housing alone. If the zoning had not been passed, the City (in 2020) was projecting 350 new units of housing over the next TEN YEARS. That’s how terrible the zoning was.
Meanwhile, NIMBYs are fired up and spreading misinformation and trying to repeal the zoning. (Ironically, more than a few live in buildings that would go back to being illegal if they repeal it.)
- Do they have ideas on what to do instead? No, obviously. Kick rocks, renters.

🚲 Bikes

Once upon a time, City Council passed the Cycling Safety Ordinance. That created a roadmap for an east-west protected bike lane path through Cambridge.
- Then the car freaks turned out a bunch of people to vote and sued the city and got enough people on council to delay the bike lanes.
And then THREE PEOPLE DIED while cycling.
City Council un-delayed the bike lanes but since they were already delayed, they were no longer back on track.
We NEED strong supporters of bike lanes because it is literally a matter of life and death.
- Which Ayesha Wilson like, hates being forced to think about.

😡 Backlash

So Cambridge got bike lanes a few years ago and then watered them down and now we’re still sorting out that mess.
THIS IS GOING TO HAPPEN WITH HOUSING TOO IF WE DON’T TURN OUT THE VOTE

DID WE LEARN NOTHING FROM THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

🟠 Tr*mp

Cambridge is fighting back against Trump and we need people who will defend our residents.
- And not people who think that the white, educated class are being canceled.

Cambridge Yimbys

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