They’ve popped up all over town – blue and green campaign signs with “Ayah Al-Zubi” emblazoned over the outline of the John Weeks Bridge. While the signs depict only one name, when Al-Zubi talks about her campaign, the word she uses the most is “we.”
“We feel like we’re building a new era of politics through our campaign, where we lead with education and empowerment first, and not necessarily the same old politics.”
A self-described “organizer by heart,” Al-Zubi has a community-centered mindset that made her stand out when she first ran for office in 2023. Then a newly minted Harvard College grad, she captured the attention of many Cantabrigians, particularly progressives looking to bet on a young, idealistic candidate. Despite the energy around her campaign, she came just shy of victory. Out of the 24 competitors in the 2023 race, she placed 10th in No. 1 votes in the city’s ranked-choice system electing a nine-person City Council.
To Al-Zubi, the decision to run again was not a difficult one.
“We feel especially inclined to go for it again,” she said. “We are trying to move to protect our residents from the Trump administration, while also ensuring that our city is delivering on issues that we feel like right now they’re not urgently moving on as much as we would like to.”
Al-Zubi was born in Jordan and grew up in the United States, mainly in the Midwest. Her family comes from a Bedouin tribe, part of a traditionally nomadic group found across the Middle East and North Africa.
“My family taught me growing up that community is everything. When things get hard, you lean on each other, you protect each other, you choose community, you choose solidarity over everything,” she said. “We’re trying to channel a lot of that into our campaign.”
Inspired at Harvard
She became interested in quality-of-life issues affecting Cambridge during her time at Harvard. While there, she got involved with the Phillips Brooks House Association, running after-school programs for kids that focused on using sports as opportunities for conflict resolution. “I got plugged in with that, and it kept cascading. You get connected to one person, you keep going,” she said.
Initiatives she’s been involved in since include advocating for Cambridge’s unhoused population after the closing of the Transition Wellness Shelter and charter reform to amend current city policy that makes the mayor the automatic chair of the School Committee.
Her top priority as a candidate, though, is increasing Cambridge’s housing capacity. She’s in favor of current policies such as inclusionary zoning and continuing to support Cambridge’s community land trust, but offers new ideas as well. In her platform, she advocates for the construction of publicly owned social housing to rapidly increase the number of units available, especially affordable ones.
“We’re trying to create mixed and integrated neighborhoods where people can get to know their community members more and feel like they’re a part of something bigger [and] build community,” she said.
Getting to build
This plan, of course, costs money. To finance new buildings, Al-Zubi recommends the city issues a bond order of $50 million over 10 years. While some voters might be anxious about the price tag, she said, it’s important for the city to leverage its AAA bond rating (one of only 22 cities in the United States with that distinction) to serve the common good. Other sources for funds she mentioned included dipping into the city’s cash reserves, which totaled $112.7 million at the end of fiscal year 2024, and negotiating with Harvard to pay an increased amount in its payment-in-lieu-of-taxes arrangement with the city. In March, Harvard agreed to a one-year Pilot agreement to contribute $6 million to the city.
“We did research work to figure out, ideally, how much Harvard would be paying per year, and I believe it was anywhere between $100 million to $150 million a year if they were taxed,” Al-Zubi said. “What would it look like for Harvard to pay a quarter of that?”
To gain some traction on these issues, Al-Zubi recognizes a need to go beyond typical Cambridge politics, which is right now being dominated by two political action committees attached to the pro-development A Better Cambridge and development-hesitant Cambridge Citizens Coalition.
“Our campaign didn’t accept or seek endorsement from either of the two, because we’re trying to bridge a third lane on the housing crisis,” Al-Zubi said. “We centrally believe that we can’t expect the same forces that got us into the crisis to get us out.” Her campaign does not accept donations from the real estate industry.
Environment and the Ice age
Another top issue for Al-Zubi is the environment, and she calls for equal access across the city to resources, more tree cover in East Cambridge and Cambridgeport and a solution to combined sewer overflow causing contaminated waters in Alewife Brook.
In addition to these long-term problems, Al-Zubi wants to use her campaign to call attention to the more immediate threats posed by the Trump administration.
“We’ve had, in Central Square, Ice kidnap people,” she said. Four restaurant workers were seized by Ice over the summer, though not while they were in Cambridge.
Nonprofits affected
She’s also concerned about the effects Trump tariffs and cuts have had on nonprofits.
“Trump administration made cuts to funding that is affecting nonprofits … the Daily Table, for example, didn’t see much longevity for its sustainability,” she said, referencing the affordable grocery store that closed its doors suddenly in May.
As a result, food security has become one of her top priorities as a candidate. Al-Zubi thinks the city can help fill the gap left by The Daily Table.
“The city-run grocery store is a very cool idea that we really are excited to explore,” she said, calling for government to provide for people rather than leave them vulnerable to models focused on profit. “We are sandwiched between a few Whole Foods. I don’t know about you, but Whole Foods is not sustainable for me.”
Winning day by day
This mindset has helped her rack up sizable list of endorsements, including those from the local UAW, Harvard Democrats, Boston Democratic Socialists of America and Run for Something, a national organization that supports young progressives seeking office.
With the election less than a month away, it is crunch time for the 19 candidates on the ballot. Al-Zubi is trying to keep the bigger picture in mind.
When asked if she thinks she’ll win, “I genuinely believe we’re already winning,” she said. “Because we’re not thinking about this campaign [with] Nov. 4 as the finish line. We believe that the work is ongoing, and we’re taking our wins day by day.”
A stronger
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Does the pledge not to accept donations from the real estate community include landlords? Homeowners?
Ayah Al-Zubi was also endorsed by Our Revolution Cambridge and the Cambridge Residents Alliance, which both share Ayah’s desire for a different approach on housing affordability, including social housing. To be clear, Cambridge does not yet have a community land trust, but the Cambridge Housing Justice Coalition is working to create one.