Bob La Trémouille reports:
I have been looking at all the sources I can think of. It appears that Robert Winters' website has the best information.
It would appear that Leland Cheung, with MIT connections, will replace Larry Ward on the Cambridge City Council.
Ward was the mid-term replacement for a Harvard related city councilor (and environmentally destructive "environmentalist") who took a job for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He was elected through fine print in the election process of 2007.
I have been trying to figure out if Cheung was endorsed by the Sierra Club. If anybody can pass that on to me at boblat@yahoo.com, that would be appreciated. My memory is that Minka vanBeuzekom was the only non-incumbent so designated.
That lack of endorsement is good. I consider an endorsement by the Sierra Club a kiss of death, first of all because they have consistently endorsed environmentally reprehensible incumbents. Secondly because I see people very visible in the group who have extremely bad environmental records in Cambridge.
The Sierra Club people I see spent significant time over a decade destroying the Cambridge Zoning Ordinance with zoning petitions written by the Cambridge City Manager, lovely words, terrible AND UNDISCLOSED fine print. The very visible presence of these people combined with terrible Cambridge endorsements makes the Sierra Club, as far as I am concerned on local matters, a Cambridge City Manager influenced organization.
Non-endorsement by the Sierra Club is most definitely not to guarantee that he is a good guy, but at least he does not appear to be tainted by a very bad organizational situation.
The next oddity is the MIT connection. His MIT connection is very much a mixed situation.
MIT is one of the big beneficiaries of the environmental destruction on the Charles River and one driving factor behind the massive environmental destruction is the institutions.
However, and a very big however, is that Mr. Cheung's MIT connection is as an MIT student. The Charles River White Geese and RESPONSIBLE environmental behavior on the Charles River have had major support from MIT students and staff.
A similar situation exists at Boston University except that both camps, the institution and its student/staff have been much more visible, both for good and for bad.
We will watch the situation very closely.
Congratulations to Mr. Cheung, but Cambridge politics is a very bad world if you live in reality rather than the very strange substitute for reality which Cambridge pols live in.
We will see.
