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A co-founder of the state’s biggest housing advocacy group lost his race for state Senate in Tuesday’s primary elections, but other candidates took home wins.
Cambridge Vice Mayor Burhan Azeem finished third in a five-way race for the Democratic nomination to replace retiring state Sen. Pat Jehlen in the 2nd Middlesex district, representing Somerville, Medford, half of Winchester and a northern slice of Cambridge. The winner, Somerville state Rep. Erika Uyterhoeven, is set to cruise to victory in November as she faces no Republican opponent.
Azeem co-founded and sits on the board of Abundant Housing MA, and was one of eight legislative candidates the group endorsed in the primary election.
Of those candidates, incumbent Cambridge state Reps. Mike Connolly and Dave Rogers beat back primary challengers, while Somerville City Councilors Will Mbah and Ben Ewen-Campen won primaries to succeed state Rep. Christine Barber and Uyterhoeven, respectively, who had both run for the 2nd Middlesex Senate seat. In the suburbs, Newton City Councilor Alison Leary lost her bid to unseat incumbent state Rep. John Lawn and Milton lawyer Mike Zullas failed to unseat incumbent state Sen. Bill Driscoll Jr.
As of publication time, it wasn’t clear whether state Sen. Will Brownsberger, the Abundant Housing MA-endorsed candidate, had beaten Daniel Lander, the former aide to Boston Mayor Michelle Wu challenging him in what was widely seen in political circles as a revenge candidacy after Bronwsberger helped sink Wu’s proposed property tax shift that targeted commercial real estate landlords. The Associated Press reported Brownsberger had 11,997 votes to Lander’s 11,936, well within the margin for Lander to petition for a recount in the coming days.
As with Brownsberger’s race, housing issues weren’t central to every primary contest. But Azeem, the co-author of Cambridge’s citywide upzoning, made it a core part of his pitch alongside transit and climate fixes.
Repeated polls and election results show voters want the Legislature to act more boldly to remove local roadblocks keeping housing from being built. And several polls, including last month’s UMass Amherst/WCVB Poll, show a ballot question slashing statewide minimum lot sizes down to 5,000 square feet could cruise to victory by a crushing margin.
Still, Azeem said in a Tuesday night concession speech reported by the Harvard Crimson and a subsequent series of posts on the social network X, he was up against tough fundamentals.
“The district was only 18% Cambridge, and we were on the edge of it,” he said in one post, noting how many of the district’s voters weren’t familiar with him, unlike Uyterhoeven and second-place finisher Barber, who were both familiar faces to Somerville residents.
In another, he noted that his campaign started out with “about $100K less than the opposition” and couldn’t benefit from pre-existing political operations like the Boston-area chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, which endorsed Uyterhoeven in her 2022 race for state representative.
Uyterhoeven also earned endorsements from the Boston and statewide teachers’ unions and labor unions Unite Here Local 26, IBEW Local 2222 and IUOE Local 4.
“The pro-growth left is just more nascent; it doesn’t have much of a broad base yet,” Azeem said in another post. “We were kind of building the plane as we were flying it.”
Abundant Housing MA declined a request for comment. The group’s related independent expenditure PAC reported to state campaign finance officials that it spent a little under $96,000 to help Azeem, largely in the form of advertising, plus a $1,260 payment for text messages to voters in support of Brownsberger.
