On Tuesday, Sept. 16, Northampton residents will cast ballots that will narrow the field of City Council and mayoral candidates before the general election on Nov. 4.
There are currently three candidates running for one City Council seat to represent Ward 3, one of whom will be eliminated in the upcoming preliminary election. Early voting has already begun, and scheduled voting hours can be found on the city’s website.
The Shoestring asked each candidate a set of five questions in preparation for these profiles, which are listed in the same order as they’ll appear on the ballot.
Quaverly Rothenberg
Quaverly Rothenberg is the incumbent in the race, having served as the City Council representative for Ward 3 for one term. A former professional cellist and court stenographer, Rothenberg said she entered public service to help build community and reignite grassroots organizing. Reflecting on her first term, she said that she has been fiercely committed to her constituents and fought against “systemic indifference” to the public’s voice in city government.
Rothenberg thinks that one of the biggest issues facing residents today is that their representatives may have a “façade of progressivism” but don’t have the same priorities.
“A lot of our money is being spent on really low priority projects for the public that seem to be high priorities for politicians who want to have vanity or legacy projects,” she said. As an example, she said that Picture Main Street — the city’s ambitious, polarizing redesign of downtown — is moving forward while inaccessible sidewalks don’t get fixed.
Her platform for a second term, which she has named Picture Side Streets, calls for putting citizens’ basic needs first.
“City workers’ wages are way too low,” she said. And that, she added, is causing under-resourced emergency services along with vacancies in the Department of Public Works and the Division of Community Care. While wages remain low, Rothenberg described the housing market in Ward 3 as “colonized by developers.”
Rothenberg said Ward 3 also has unique needs when it comes to schooling funding. She is a mother of three students at the Bridge Street School, which has high rates of poverty and English learners in its student body. “Civil rights are being violated because [kids with special needs] don’t have access to an education if they don’t have the right staff to help them,” she said.
Because of her efforts to better fund Northampton Public Schools — including an attempt to opt into a state law that would allow the City Council to increase school funding directly — she has garnered support from those who feel the mayor and her allies have underfunded education. However, the political action committee connected with the grassroots Support Our Schools movement declined to endorse her or any candidate in the Ward 3 race.
When it comes to the budget, Rothenberg said that she has consistently pushed “a very connected establishment” for greater transparency during her first term. “They will try to get you to move off of a position that really represents the needs of the public,” she said.
While facing these social pressures on the City Council, she said that being autistic has helped her. “You somehow have to have the constitution that allows you to withstand a lot of bullying,” she said.
But some, including both of her opponents, have criticized Rothenberg’s tactics and behavior as a councilor. On multiple occasions, she has invoked charter objections that have resulted in delayed votes, and earlier this year, her colleagues officially reprimanded her for the way she spoke to non-emergency dispatchers during a winter storm emergency.
Rothenberg released a statement about the censure on her campaign site.
“When people attack me for doing my job as a representative, I know that that’s an attack on the people I represent,” she said.
Rothenberg believes that her sense of duty to return power to the public sets her apart from her opponents.
“I will never sacrifice my integrity or the interests of my constituents,” she said.
Laurie Loisel
A Northampton resident since 1983, Laurie Loisel has spent the past 10 years as the director of communication and community engagement for the Northwestern district attorney — the region’s top law enforcement official. But it’s her journalism career that she highlights as good preparation for being a city councilor. For over 30 years, she covered city government as a reporter and editor, most of which was spent at the Daily Hampshire Gazette.
“I come to things with a critical eye, with an open mind, and a desire to get things done,” she said.
Loisel points to housing as a key concern for voters in Ward 3.
“Even if people have generally progressive politics, they don’t want dense development,” she said.
While she empathizes with neighbors who are upset about large buildings going up in their backyards, she is in favor of developing more affordable homes to counteract the housing and climate crises. As city councilor, she said she would try to facilitate conversations between developers and residents to find acceptable modifications for issues such as parking and green space.
Loisel thinks that misinformation is also a core issue facing Ward 3 and Northampton more broadly. In her opinion, a lack of local journalism has led to a “void of information” and a fundamental misunderstanding of how local government operates — a reality that has played out in the city’s ongoing debate about school funding.
“Northampton is not a wealthy community,” she said. “So it’s not like we have all this money that we’re withholding from our schools.”
Loisel said that the mayor is responsible for the budget, and the council’s role is to consult and approve or reject it. To ensure residents have “basic facts,” Loisel would write a newsletter about local issues and City Council votes.
Identifying as “very left wing” and naming human rights as her top priority, Loisel feels some have mischaracterized her as “the establishment candidate.” When asked why, she points to generational differences and a reluctance to vilify the mayor.
“I’m not saying I agree with everything the mayor does,” she said, “but I don’t think she’s a villain.”
Loisel said she finds the establishment label ironic after years of living “on the margin” — growing up poor in conservative Maine, serving on the immigrant sanctuary team at the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence, and going unrecognized by the state while raising her family with her partner before same-sex marriage was legal.
Yet it’s these years closely observing the city’s changes — from the initial impact of proposition 2 1/2 on schools to what she views as relative financial stability under former mayor David Narkewicz — that she believes sets her apart from her opponents.
“It’s my home, and I’m devoted to it,” she said.
Ace Tayloe
Ace Tayloe entered the realm of city politics through housing. While serving as a member of the Northampton Housing Partnership for four years, they helped write a local ordinance to abolish broker fees for renters, which recently went into effect statewide.
Building affordable housing and establishing tenant protections remain central to their platform. Pointing to the state of the roads as a primary concern for Ward 3 residents, another one of their priorities is ensuring people can get around town more easily. To help address this as a city councilor, they said they would look for ways to fill many vacant positions at the Department of Public Works.
Having worked as an educator, Tayloe thinks that a similar approach involving rehiring for lost positions would help make local schools more robust. While they think increases in the school budget over the last four years have been great, they said the city needs to do more to counteract “chronic” understaffing and underfunding.
“I want the city to have more public-facing goals in the same way that it has climate resiliency goals,” they said. Those goals, they added, should be “measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based.” To develop these, they would revisit reports from city commissions like the Policing Review Commission of 2021 and use these insights as a “to-do list” for City Council.
In the coming years, Tayloe wants to see change while remaining realistic. Within the status quo under capitalism and the realities of a Trump presidency, the budget will need to be used thoughtfully to protect historically disenfranchised residents, they said.
“I’m not waiting for a revolution,” they said. “And if there is a revolution, we have to keep everyone safe in the meantime.”
Tayloe has been endorsed by Run for Something, an organization that recruits and supports young, progressive candidates. But, they’d rather people know about their specific plans for incremental improvements than know that they’re trans and the youngest candidate in the race to represent their ward.
In terms of their politics, they said they identify as progressive and practical. Generally, they want more specificity from politicians.
“Everybody is for affordable housing. That’s not unique,” they said. “How are you for affordable housing? What policies do you want to change for affordable housing?”
Tayloe believes, in spite of having a lot in common with their opponents in the Ward 3 race, their commitment to specificity and strategy sets them apart.
“Quaverly Rothenberg is bombastically progressive. She will fight anyone and anything in order to do what she feels is right and make progress happen,” they said, adding that they share many of her goals but not her tactics.
They also acknowledged Laurie Loisel’s collaborative capabilities, saying she “very much understands the axes of power and how to get things done.” But they said Loisel is “extremely status quo” and doesn’t want to change much in how municipal government currently runs.
“I want to see change, and I want to be effective and strategic about it,” they said.