01.24.2025

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Not so big spenders: Healey administration’s campaign to win over local voters and build support for new housing is off to a stumbling start

Go big or go home.

That’s a bit of unsolicited advice for the Healey administration, which is waging what amounts to a stealth campaign in towns across Greater Boston in favor of the new MBTA Communities zoning regs.

Gov. Maura Healey and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll launched One Commonwealth Inc. to help get out a pro-housing message on the local level in the wake of the debacle in Milton last year.

Voters in the inner suburb of Boston had roundly rejected the new state regs, which require cities and towns in the MBTA’s service area to open their doors to new apartment and condo buildings.

Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash

So far, though, the results have been decidedly mixed, with the political team assembled by Healey and Driscoll having suffered a number of embarrassing defeats.

Voters in Needham, Duxbury, Halifax, Marblehead, and Dracut have rejected the new multifamily zoning, despite efforts by One Commonwealth to get supporters of the new housing regs to attend town meetings or go to the polls, Contrarian Boston has found.

Yet even as its get-out-the-vote efforts angers some locals, the nonprofit political organization also appears to be delivering only modest financial support for pro-housing groups pushing for approval of the new regs.

The Yes for Needham campaign raised $19,616, with the Healey/Driscoll nonprofit putting in $10,000 and the Charles River Regional Chamber chipping in $1,000, campaign finance records reviewed by Contrarian Boston show.

That’s a far cry from the estimated $60,000 typically needed to run a successful campaign for state representative, one veteran political consultant noted.

And it wasn’t that much higher than the more than $15,000 raised by housing opponents in Needham, all of it through dozens of individual contributions.

It’s not clear how much One Commonwealth shelled out in Duxbury last fall, but the results at the town meeting were hardly stellar, with voters there rejecting the new multifamily zoning by a lopsided vote of 793 to 81.

To the applause and cheers of residents, speakers criticized “[Gov.] Maura Healey and her board of bureaucrats,” according to Banker & Tradesman, with just one lone, brave soul speaking up for the new law.

Efforts by One Commonwealth to mobilize supporters in the days before the vote also boomeranged, triggering a skeptical piece in “Duxbury,” a Substack newsletter that covers the South Shore town.

“Over the past couple of days, residents have expressed alarm at how a mysterious outside group called One Commonwealth, Inc. appears to be trying to interfere with the Special Town Meeting scheduled for tomorrow,” wrote Christine Hill, the newsletter’s editor.

Hill, whose bio notes she spent 10 years writing about business, finance and economic issues in Asia, did some nice digging as well.

Taking a look at One Commonwealth’s incorporation paperwork, Hill turned up the names of some top state Democratic consultants like Gemma Martin, principal in the Chick Montana Group, and Jack Corrigan, who worked on the Dukakis and Kerry presidential campaigns.

Ironically, while Healey has pledged to make state government more transparent, that openness does not extend to One Commonwealth.

As a 501(c)(4), it does not have to disclose its donors.

Contrarian Boston reached out to Healey’s usually reliable press person with questions on One Commonwealth, but did not hear back by our deadline.

Ditto for the email sent directly to One Commonwealth.

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Guess we’re stuck with it: Boston City Hall, one of the world’s ugliest buildings, granted landmark status

Yeah, we know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that, but still.