GOP’s Green Seeks Council Seat

As a young black Republican, Andre Green is not your typical Cambridge politician.

In a town where GOP might as well stand for “Greatly Out of Place,” the 24-year-old Cambridge City Council candidate says he takes pride in being different.

“If I was like everyone else,” he says, “I wouldn’t have to run.”

Friendly and formally dressed, Green sits at a table outside Au Bon Pain in Harvard Square, explaining his seemingly unlikely bid for office. He stresses that he is not trying to make this a partisan race.

“I’m not running as a Republican,” he says. “I am a Republican, and I am running. There is no reason to deny that.”

But Green’s party affiliation is not the only hurdle standing between him and a seat on the nine-member council. He is one of 18 candidates running in next Tuesday’s election, and, as a political newcomer, he faces stiff odds—the race includes all nine incumbents.

Green acknowledges the challenge ahead but says he still expects to win.

“The fact of the matter is we’re not trying to get everybody in Cambridge to vote for us,” he says. “That’s not the way these elections work.”

Under Cambridge’s electoral system, Green needs only one-tenth of the total votes cast in order to win a seat.

Still, he says he’s more concerned with helping the city than playing politics.

“I’ve always been more interested in fixing problems and making things better than I have been in running for office and getting my name on flyers,” Green says. His decision to run, he adds, was “just something that felt like a logical outgrowth of the things I was frustrated in.”

One of those frustrations was what Green calls a “certain lack of responsiveness” among city officials to urgent civic needs.

“We have streets with potholes you can lose small children in, schools that brag when they are on probation from the state, and there is no reason why we can’t and shouldn’t be doing better,” Green says.

BOY FROM THE BAYOU

A Louisiana native, Green grew up in a single-parent home, which he says helps him better empathize with many of Cambridge’s residents.

“It forces you to grow up faster,” he says. “I know firsthand what it’s like to wonder if you’re going to be able to pay the bills. I know what it’s like to be the working poor.”

Currently an IT consultant for non-profits, Green moved to Cambridge at 19 after becoming the first member of his family to graduate from college. He took his first job as a fifth-grade teacher at a Somerville private school, an experience he says will serve him well if elected to the council.

“Cambridge is blessed, and I do mean blessed, to be home of two of the world’s premier educational institutions. In doing so, I’ve never understood why the public schools we run are so terrible,” Green says. “Where I come from, a million dollars is a lot of money. Losing sight of what happens in the individual classroom, what happens at the individual level, is something that happens to politicians. It’s just the nature of the beast. I think my background should help me keep that perspective.”

David Slavitt, who waged his own long-shot campaign as a Republican candidate for state representative last year, says he supports Green in the race.

“I think he’ll do very well shaking up the city council meetings, which are monumentally mind-numbing and boring,” says Slavitt, a member of the Leverett House senior common room.

ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

Like Slavitt, Green is a socially liberal Republican: he is pro-choice and supports gay marriage. Those traits will play well with Cambridge voters, but some may take issue with his more sympathetic views toward Harvard.

“My feeling is that Cambridge has wasted a lot of political will and capital fighting Harvard,” Green says. “It should be a partnership, not a fight.”

His more conservative roots emerge in his fiscal policy proposals, although his call for lowered property taxes has been echoed by many of this year’s Democratic candidates.

“You can’t make it cheaper to live in Cambridge without making it cheaper to own property in Cambridge,” he says. “Cambridge historically has not asked the hard questions—where is this money going to?”

Green points to the city’s school budget as an example of its inefficient spending practices.

“We’re paying Wellesley prices for Chelsea schools,” he says.

To promote his platform, Green has spent most of his campaign canvassing voters door-to-door, assisted by a staff of about a dozen volunteers.

“Unless you sit there and talk to the voters one-on-one, you can’t tell what they want,” he says.

Green calls his campaign operation a “labor of love.”

“It’s somewhat humbling—people are out there, selling me,” Green says with a slight sense of wonderment. “What we lack in quantity, we certainly make up in passion.”

A self-effacing politician, Green says he dreads fundraising.

“I hate asking for money. It’s something I’ve gotten much better at, unfortunately, but I’ve hated it,” he says. “I will never, ever, ever trust a politician who doesn’t seem to be absolutely miserable when they’re asking for money. If they enjoy it, I can’t trust them.”

FRESH FACE, LONG ODDS

But Green’s image as a political outsider could also be a liability. Cambridge political pundit Robert Winters says Green’s chances of election are “slim-to none.”

“The difficulty for Andre is not that he’s Republican,” says Winters, editor of the online Cambridge Civic Journal. “It’s that he’s a first-time candidate and relatively unknown.”

Newcomers to Cambridge politics face an uphill battle, especially against incumbents. Nine council incumbents ran for re-election in 2003; all nine won.

Winter predicts a similar result this year.

“The probable outcome is that all the incumbents will be returned,” he says.

And, although Cambridge holds nonpartisan elections, Republicans are at a stark disadvantage in Cambridge. Winters says that a Republican has not claimed a seat on the council in more than three decades.

Even the head of Cambridge’s Republican City Committee says he doesn’t hold out much hope for Green.

“Given his age and type of campaign he’s running, I don’t think he’ll win a seat,” Fred Baker says. “I would be shocked if he did, but would be very happy.”

If Green does fall short this time, he knows that he’s young enough to run again.

“I’m 24,” he says. “If I don’t win and do it again in two years, I’ll be 26. I’m still years away from being signed up for a cane.”

And if a political career isn’t in the cards, Green still hopes he will have the opportunity to make a positive social impact.

“Twenty years from now,” he says, “I’d like to know I’m making a difference, no matter what I’m doing.”