Amy Mah Sangiolo and her family moved to Newton in 1995. Two years later, she’d been elected to the then-called Board of Aldermen, seeking answers to concerns unaddressed by current city officials.
Today, Sangiolo is campaigning as the 11th Middlesex congressional district’s Democratic candidate.
Sangiolo’s career in politics began with a development project. Having worked as an environmental attorney, she was troubled by the project’s potentially hazardous location. As it turned out, so too were many other Newton residents.
“We went to our then-city councilors or aldermen, and they pretty much rebuffed our concerns,” Sangiolo said. “‘Don’t worry about it, not your problem. We’ll take care of you,’ kind of thing. I remember going to one of the city councilors at the time and with the petition, with our concerns, and he crumpled it up, put it in his pocket.”
Sangiolo resolved to take action, and she explained that the reasons for her initial campaign have set the tone for the rest of her career.
“I think I’ve built a reputation about being responsive and accountable to the residents,” Sangiolo said. “I think that’s very important, to have open communication, listen to people’s concerns, not judge people, and help those that feel marginalized.”
After 10 terms and 20 years on the City Council, Sangiolo retired in 2017 to run for mayor. She lost the election and ran again in 2021, again falling short of office.
When the state representative seat opened, Sangiolo decided to run. Now, having won the contested primary against Alexander Jablon, Sangiolo will face Republican Vladislav Yanovsky in the Nov. 5 general election.
“I still have a race,” Sangiolo said. “I won the primary, but I still have a race in November. I’ve gone back to work, but I am still going to be in the community as much as possible. I want to hear people’s concerns and do what I can if elected to address those concerns.”
One of her campaign’s top issues is affordable housing, explained Sangiolo. Having worked several years at the Attorney General’s office as an affordable housing advocate, she views housing security and accessibility to be a major concern many Newton residents share.
“I know, having just served on the city council and running for mayor, that folks are concerned about development, concerned about the character of the neighborhood, concerned about density,” Sangiolo said. “So there’s no question that we do need to increase the supply of housing at all income levels, but there is truly a need for deeply affordable housing, and these folks don’t have choices.”
Housing affordability, however, is only one of the major concerns that Sangiolo hopes to address in office.
She explained that while Massachusetts might be considered a leader in climate action, much more work remains, especially regarding funding.
“I think we’re spending so much, millions of millions of dollars of repair money on replacing these gas lines that we know are going to become obsolete,” Sangiolo said. “I mean, our intent is to get off of fossil fuels, right? What we should be doing is building infrastructure and investing in clean energy and electrification.”
Sangiolo expressed her belief that measures like electrification, which Newton recently adopted, are necessary for getting people motivated and invested in the fight against climate change.
“We’re running out of time,” said Sangiolo. “So, if we’re gonna meet our climate action goals, we’ve got to get moving on this.”
In 2015, as part of Sangiolo’s service as a councilor, she began a weekly email newsletter to keep Newton residents informed about government meetings.
“I started a newsletter with the board and commission and City Council and school committee agendas, and I would also have the reports attached to it, so that people could see how their councilors were voting,” Sangiolo said.
The newsletter continued until 2022, when she co-founded Fig City News as a more intensive news outlet for residents to obtain information about city government proceedings.
“I started it because there’s such a dearth of new sources and information to our residents in Newton about what was happening with the city government,” Sangiolo said. “What we wanted to do was to get the news out as quickly as possible to people so that they can be engaged and … start acting on anything that they care about.”
According to Sangiolo, she stepped away from working on Fig City News once she announced she was running for the State House, but transparency remains an integral part of her campaign.
“If I’m elected, I will definitely continue to provide information about the committees that I’m on and what’s happening at the state house,” Sangiolo said. “To the extent that I can do that for my constituents in the 11th Middlesex district, particularly and especially about those committees that I may serve on, I think that transparency is important.”
Following the rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes and harassment seen in Newton and across all of Massachusetts in recent years, Sangiolo believes transparency is also an important tool for increasing awareness across communities.
“Not enough attention has been brought to the rise in anti-Semitic acts within the community,” Sangiolo said. “You hear about the big stuff, but you don’t hear about the other incidents … I think that is important to recognize and acknowledge and bring the community in on, because that’s the only way to address it.
Sangiolo supports measures that build on the 2023 U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, and she believes communication and collective action are the necessary strategies for addressing the rampant rise in hate.
“We need to show that these crimes do exist within our community, because we don’t live in the bubble that we think we do live in, right?” Sangiolo said. “It’s here. We need to face it, we need to acknowledge it, and we need to do something as a community to stop it. And we can do that.”
