Even if you don't live in Somerville, chances are you've heard a lot about its mayor, Joe Curtatone, over the past few years. His high-profile progressive stands have repeatedly made headlines, and with a municipal election looming — in a city where Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by nearly 75 points — that's likely to be an asset.
Among other things, Curtatone has defended Somerville’s status as a so-called sanctuary city; tangled with the lowbrow website Barstool Sports; vowed to open Massachusetts’ first supervised consumption site despite the threat of prosecution from the state's U.S. attorney; and hung the Black Lives Matter flag on in City Hall.
“Making a commitment to our community to put our progressive values into action means standing up for who we are and what we believe in,” Curtatone said recently, during an interview at his home in Somerville’s Ten Hills neighborhood. “Our values not just locally but as a nation, to be diverse and tolerant and compassionate.”
But Curtatone's opponent — Marianne Walles, a Massachusetts Department of Children and Families social worker and union official — is making her own pitch to Somerville's left-leaning voters. When it comes to economics, she argues, Curtatone’s progressive image doesn’t hold up.
"For the last several years, our city has taken the wrong direction, and working families have been increasingly displaced,” said Walles, who has never held or run for municipal office before. She spoke to WGBH News recently at her home in Winter Hill. “So I feel like it’s time for me to run to make some changes."
Wallace claims that even though Curtatone has backed rent control and a new 20 percent affordable housing requirement for developments in the city, he hasn’t been aggressive enough in pushing back against the market. As she tells it, that falls to Somerville activists and city councilors, who push the mayor into positions he then takes credit for.
If elected, Walles says, she would take the opposite approach.
“I’m not a person that generally is a media person,” Walles said. “I’m a person that believes in doing the hard work, and the day-to-day work, without being in the limelight of things.”
In the September preliminary, boosted by an endorsement from the Bernie Sanders-backed Our Revolution, Walles got 37 percent of the vote, compared to 57 percent for Curtatone and 5 percent for a third candidate who didn't advance. Because turnout was low, Curtatone and Walles were separated by less than 1,100 votes.
Now, with the final election looming, Curtatone is defending his record — arguing that the very areas where Walles criticizes him are actually strengths.
“My administration’s created more housing, and affordable housing, than any previous one,” Curtatone said. “Just since 2010 alone, we’ve created more than 2,200 units of housing, of which 430 will be affordable by the end of 2019.
“I was the first mayor to come out in support of Representative [Mike] Connolly’s rent control bill,” he added, referring to legislation that would remove the state’s longstanding rent-control ban. “We’re ... working to set up a local land trust, which can move to control our existing housing stock, and preserve housing stock in the future. We’re fighting for tenants’ rights. We revised our condominium-conversion ordinance.
“We’re doing a lot as a community, collaboratively, to lead for bold, systemic change,” he said.
But Curtatone also offers a caveat: Somerville — where the median average home price tops $700,000 — doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
“We have a housing shortage in [the] Greater Boston region that’s impacting us all," he said. "And in places that are popular to live, like Somerville, it is especially stressful."
Whatever happens on Election Day, Walles can already claim one victory: Curtatone recently pledged not to take any money from for-profit developers, and his campaign says he’ll continue to reject those donations if re-elected.
However, a WGBH News review of Curtatone’s campaign filings identified several donations from individuals who seem to be developers, or in the development industry, in recent months. They include $1,000 contributions — the maximum permissible under state law — from Collin Yip, the founder of Rafi Properties LLC, and Colin Watters, Rafi’s director of operations. Last year, Rafi Properties acquired Ames Business Park in Union Square, a 300,000 square foot mixed-use site.
Also donating to Curtatone: Rob Dickey of Leggat McCall Properties, which is currently engaged in a large redevelopment project on South Street; Andrew Kaye of Criterion Development Partners, which is involved in a hotel and residential project on Inner Built Road; and Russel Preston of Principle Group, which is active in several Somerville development projects. Each gave $500.
When asked about those donations, the Curtatone campaign said it is now reviewing them and will return them if appropriate. They added that state records don’t capture the number of developer donations that have already been returned or preemptively rejected, though did not immediately provide more information about those returns to WGBH News.
