Candidate slate vows to ‘Repeal’ zoning building the housing that might change neighborhoods

A “Repeal Slate” coalition of four Cambridge City Council candidates in next month’s election – Elizabeth Bisio, John Hanratty, Peter Hsu and Zion Sherin – hopes to replace some of the eight incumbents running with a platform of slowing down housing construction enabled by recent zoning changes. 

“Repeal neighborhood upzoning,” says a page on Hanratty’s website asking voters to use their top four votes for the Repeal Slate candidates. In Cambridge’s ranked form of balloting, candidate votes can transfer; slates are a way to keep a transferred vote within a group of like-minded politicians, increasing the chances of seeing their positions represented after elections.

The slate members “announce that they are running under a unified message to take back neighborhoods that are already being decimated by a tsunami of developer tear-downs fueled by the neighborhood upzoning,” the candidates wrote in a press release. “Homeowners and others will be paying higher taxes in return for losing the neighborhoods they love, sunlight, fresh air, privacy, parking and simply their peace and quiet.”

Housing has become the central issue of this year’s race. All 18 council candidates with published platforms have referred to housing in some way, whether to call for rapid construction to keep up with demand and make rents more affordable or to caution about what such drastic change will do to neighborhoods.

A mobilizing factor for the Repeal Slate was the city’s recent passage “upzoning” to allow developers to build up to four stories high anywhere in the city, with additional height allowed based on lot size and the inclusion of affordable units. An 8-1 majority of councillors voted in favor of the change.

The group of four had been sharing campaign strategies since May but decided to make their bloc official, a member said.

“John was really the one that kind of brought us all together,” Bisio said, though “the appeal slate idea was inspired by some conversations in the neighborhood and wanting to capture that feeling that people were having.” The conversations are about the decrease in setbacks in new zoning and the heights it allows, she said.

While the Repeal Slate may have seen enthusiasm at the street level, support for its policies hasn’t translated into donor dollars yet. Of 19 candidates, Hanratty ranks ninth in total donor dollars received, while Sherin, Hsu, and Bisio rank 14th, 16th and 18th, respectively.

In the last lines of their statement, the group called out candidates who have aligned themselves with the real estate industry.

“The ‘Repeal Slate’ urges voters who care about their neighborhoods to vote for all of them together because they will listen and act for the people who elect them,” the statement said. “Not developers who are coming from around the world to cash in on your City Council incumbents’ neighborhood upzoning Gold Rush.”

Not the whole picture

Many of the top-earning candidates this race, such as incumbent Marc McGovern, are staunchly pro-new housing and buoyed by contributions from real estate developers. Challenger Tim Flaherty said he supports the “development of multifamily housing for all income levels near transit stations,” accessory dwelling units and repurposing vacant office buildings for residential use, as well as advocates for a review of the upzoning ordinance. Pro-development candidates such as Ayah Al-Zubi and incumbent Sumbul Siddiqui also significantly outpace the Repeal Slate in fundraising while eschewing such funds.

Incumbent Burhan Azeem, one of the most pro-housing development incumbents on council, was seemingly unimpressed by the Repeal Slate’s announcement.

“This is grievance politics; united only by the desire to repeal something, not to stand for anything. There’s nothing here about what their replacement plan for the city would look like and how it would address the challenges the city faces,” Azeem said in a text message. He compared the effort to political dynamics at play on the national level: “It’s the same emptiness we saw with the Obamacare repeal effort: There is no alternative provided and no substance, besides concepts of a plan.”

The role of slates

In recent elections, endorsements by civic groups have been more prevalent in election season than declared slates of candidates.

Slates were vital to Cambridge politics for years, though, with the Cambridge Civic Association created in 1945 being the most enduring and powerful.

They gave voters another way to make sense of sometimes overwhelming ballots in Cambridge’s form of voting, called proportional representation. Historian Glen Koocher notes in a political history of the city posted on Robert Winters’ Cambridge Civic Journal website that 83 candidates ran for the council in 1941.

“Under PR, slate balloting was key,” Koocher said. “Voters needed to be reminded of how best to direct their votes to candidates who shared, for example, their political views, racial or ethnic heritage or neighborhood.”

This post was updated Oct. 12, 2025, to clarify Tim Flaherty’s views.

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