Following up on our analysis of preliminary election spending, Fig City News has analyzed campaign finance data for all 14,564 donations to Newton City Council and Mayoral campaigns since 2015 to explore where the money came from and who received it.
Candidates for City Council and Mayor in Massachusetts must report their fundraising and spending to the Office of Campaign and Political Finance (OCPF), which reports details and aggregates data only at the level of individual candidates and donors. The OCPF data has many typographical errors and variations of donor names and street addresses. Looking at 70 candidates and 6,677 donors over nine years, Fig City News‘s analysis incorporates several hundred corrections of this data to standardize names and aggregate donations by the same person or household.
In 2023, Newton City Council candidates received 1,834 donations from 1,259 individuals, with 398 individuals donating to multiple candidates. The median donation was $100, and the average was $172. Of the total of $314,728 raised, at least $35,610 came from the candidates themselves and their local family members, while $186,982 came from city residents, and the remaining $92,136 came from donors outside the city.
2023 Funds from Candidates to their Own Campaigns
The 2023 candidates provided $35,610 in funding to their own campaigns through donations, loans, or contributions from their families in their wards. Fig City News includes donations from family in the ward with candidates own donations, in an effort to not distort the degree of neighborhood support for a Ward Councilor candidate.
Rena Getz loaned $8,000 to her campaign, while Alan Lobovits contributed $1,560 and loaned $5,000 to his campaign. David Micley contributed $1050 and loaned $3000 to his campaign, while his mother added a $1,000 contribution.
2023 Donations from Other Newton Residents
While Newton is a city of 59,654 voters, over 20% of the $186,982 in Newton resident contributions (excluding candidates and their families) came from 15 individuals.
West Newton resident Cheryl Forté contributed the maximum allowed ($1,000) to 11 candidates, 10 of whom Newton voters elected to the City Council. West Newton resident Robert Laughrea contributed $2,500 spread across four candidates, while Thompsonville resident Ed Dailey contributed a total of $2,500 to six candidates.
2023 Contribution Patterns
Newton’s 2023 City Council election was fought largely on the issue of zoning, with candidates in contested elections either supporting or opposing the proposed Village Center Overlay District (VCOD). The network diagram below shows a line from each donor (blue dot) to each candidate (red dot) to whom they donated for the 2023 election cycle. The algorithm behind the drawing generally tries to minimize crossed lines, which naturally clusters candidates as much as possible with their common donors.
Some observations on these patterns emerge:
- The candidates supporting the VCOD are clustered in the upper portion of this network, while those generally opposed are found in the lower portion. Of the 1,259 individual donors, only 10 residents crossed over and contributed to candidates in both groups.
- Many of the Ward Councilor candidates are found at the perimeter of this map, with a large number of donors donating only to them, whereas At-Large Councilor candidates tend to be seen toward the center of the map because they generally drew more contributions from donors who supported multiple candidates. Clockwise from the top, the Ward Councilor candidates Sweet, Gaynor, Bruce, Block, Baker (unopposed), Farrell, Micley, and Humphrey (unopposed) stand out at the perimeter. Candidates in the hotly contested Ward Councilor race for Ward 6 (Bixby and Gordon) fall inside the clusters, drawing contributions from donors to multiple candidates.
Contributions by Donor, 2015-2023
Extending the timeframe to 2015-2023, the OCPF database shows that the top 15 donors to City Council and Mayoral campaigns (excluding the candidates and their local families) contributed over 10% of local funding for those campaigns. Forté contributed $25,250 to City Council and Mayoral campaigns from 2015 to 2023, while former Waban resident and Engine 6 activist Kathleen Hobson ranked second over this time period with $24,500 in contributions, followed by former School Committee chair Claire Sokoloff with $16,300.
Contributions by Donor Household, 2015-2023
When donors are grouped by household, the rankings change. Hobson, her husband Atul Gawande, and daughter Hattie Gawande contributed $28,500 to Newton’s political campaigns, followed by Sokoloff and her husband Rob Gifford at $25,850, and then Forté at $25,250.
From 2015 through 2023, the top three recipients from the top-donating households were as follows: Forté contributed $3,000 to the campaigns of Tarik Lucas, $2,750 to Julia Malakie, and $2,500 to John Oliver. The Hobson/Gawande household contributed to William Humphrey ($6,000), Bryan Barash ($5,000), and Alicia Bowman ($2,500). The Sokoloff/Gifford household contributed Ruthanne Fuller ($5,550), Brenda Noel ($3,750), and Alicia Bowman ($3,000).
Donations to Political Action Committees
The 2023 campaign season also saw three political action committees raising funds, according to OCPF data.
The Voters for a Vibrant Newton PAC, formed in 2019 by Allison Sharma and Brooke Lipsett, which states its mission is “to support candidates for city council, which support smart growth initiatives throughout the city,” raised $2,225 in 2023 and spent $2,676. Cumulatively, this PAC has raised $17,822 for Newton campaigns, including contributions of $2,250 from Gifford/Sokoloff and $1000 from Hobson/Gawande not included in the individual candidate donations above.
The Newton2023 PAC, formed by Simon French on October 30, 2023, states its mission is “to support democracy and representation in Newton, whilst also community building.” The group raised $4,154, including a $500 contribution from Cheryl Forté, which was not included in the individual candidate donations above.
The Newton For Everyone Political Action Committee, formed by Nonantum resident Janine Stewart on October 19, 2023, raised $500 from five individuals. This PAC quickly became controversial as it adopted the same name as one opposing group, Newton for Everyone, and adopted a mission statement almost identical to that of the Voters for a Vibrant Newton PAC, which it also opposes. It appends “and oppose those who don’t” to the mission used by the Vibrant Newton PAC.
NOTE: The original Newton for Everyone group is not a PAC but identifies itself as “a coalition of civic, housing, climate activists, clergy, and local businesses supporting the proposed Village Center Overlay District under consideration by the Newton City Council.” Since it supports legislation and not candidates or ballot questions, it is not registered as a PAC.
How Much Each Candidate Received, 2015-2023
From 2015 to 2023, Newton Mayoral and City Council candidates raised over $2.9 million. Mayoral campaigns dominated fundraising, with Mayor Ruthanne Fuller having raised $803,746 since 2015, followed by Mayoral candidates Scott Lennon at $267,255 and Amy Sangiolo at $143,600.
Four candidates for the Ward 2 City Council Ward and At-Large seats raised the next highest amounts: Former At-Large Councilor Jake Auchincloss raised $112,430 before running for his Congressional seat; Bryan Barash raised $106,681 for his unsuccessful races against outgoing Ward Councilor Emily Norton ($97,468); and Tarik Lucas ($86,574).
Note: This analysis does not include School Committee candidates, all of whom ran unopposed this year. They are required to report their spending not to OCPF but rather in paper filings to the City. Those filings did not indicate any pre-election contributions in 2023, and the School Committee candidates’ year-end reports are not yet due.
Ed. Note: Author Jack Prior contributed $100 to Tarik Lucas in January 2023 before beginning to write for Fig City News. No other Fig City News board members or reporters contributed to City Council campaigns in 2023. Former mayoral candidate Amy Sangiolo is president and board chair of Fig City News, and Martina Jackson is treasurer of the Lucas campaign and a Fig City News board member. Neither Amy Sangiolo nor Martina Jackson participated in any aspect of the development of this article.
