Last modified: Sun Mar 5 21:26:21 EST 2006
The Cambridge Election Commission has an opening, due to current Commissioner Lynne Molnar's decision not to seek reelection. The Commission has four members, two from each of the mainstream political parties; Molnar holds one of the Democratic seats.
The selection process is, in my opinion, rather bizarre; the party with an open seat selects three candidates, using whatever mechanism it choses. Those candidates are referred to the City Manager, who then appoints one. The process as defined by the Cambridge Democratic City Committee (CDCC) has a "meet the candidates" meeting on Thursday, March 9th at the CRLS Media Cafeteria, 459 Broadway, beginning at 6PM, followed by a vote by the CDCC on Monday, March 20th at a location TBA to select the three candidates who will be referred to the City Manager.
The Cambridge Democratic City Committee's document page has links to statements by the four candidates; I repeat those links here, along with links to my own PDF versions of the Word documents provided on the CDCC web site (for those who can't or won't use Microsoft Word). These are responses to an Election Commissioner candidate Questionnaire (PDF) provided by the CDCC.
The only one of the candidates I know personally is Robert Winter, and I think he'd make a fine Commissioner. For years he has published the Cambridge Civic Journal, an online compendium of Cambridge politics (it was started before the term "blog" existed...). I've had a few interations with him regarding election information, and he's been very helpful. I wholeheartedly endorse him.