Newton residents will cast their ballots on Tuesday to choose their representatives in the State House, U.S. Capitol, and Oval Office. With a left-leaning voting population, Newton’s results are often predictable. But that’s not the whole story. One Republican candidate for state representative offers a challenge to the status quo that’s worth recognizing.
The Newton Basics
Newton is a politically active and firmly liberal community.
“Newton is an enlightened community that appears to be fair-minded, and it’s also an activist community, so I expect people to vote,” said Jerry Zolit, a Chestnut Hill resident.
Data shows Newton is overwhelmingly Democratic. 88 percent of party-registered voters in 2024 were Democrats, not counting independents.
In the 2020 presidential election, more than 80 percent of voters in the city voted for Joe Biden, who won 40,906 votes, while Donald Trump earned 8,347, according to Newton’s official results.
Zolit said the presidential election will be his main priority on Election Day, though he will also be voting on a state and federal representative, senator, and five ballot questions.
“I think that in this election cycle, the race for president has been so significant that everything else is secondary,” Zolit said.
Exception to the Rule
Although Newton is predominantly liberal, some pockets of conservative sentiment still endure.
Steve Yanovsky, the Republican candidate in the 11th Middlesex District state representative race, is the most recent example of this conservative opposition to the liberal majority.
He won 450 votes in his unopposed primary election. In comparison, his Democratic opponent, Amy Sangiolo, earned 5,181, according to the official primary results.
State representative races are small-scale partisan contests. In Newton, incumbents have historically dominated them.
For instance, Kay Khan, a Democrat, has occupied the same 11th Middlesex district seat for 29 years. The last time she ran against a Republican challenger was 12 years ago, in a 2012 race against Greer Tan Swiston.
Marj Montgomery, a lifelong Newton resident, says she can’t recall many occasions when Republicans entered partisan races in the city.
“Mostly we never even had Republican candidates for office other than the fact, we often had a Republican mayor, in a non-party race,” Montgomery said.
Housing in a Contested Representative Race
Housing is a central point of contention in Newton politics.
In last year’s city council race, anti-zoning-reform candidates swept the election. Newton residents elected five candidates backed by Save Newton Villages, a non-profit pushing against a then-proposed zoning overhaul that aimed to permit more housing to be built. Proponents of this reform said it would make housing cheaper in the city.
Three of these anti-zoning candidates unseated incumbents, one of them being then-chair of the Zoning and Planning Committee, Deborah Crossley, who had spearheaded the rezoning initiative.
Montgomery said she’s noticed anxiety among residents about Newton becoming overbuilt, one concern behind some opposition to rezoning.
“There certainly is a lot of concern about housing, but I think a lot of that is genuine concern about density,” Montgomery said.
Yanovsky has said he doesn’t support state-level zoning regulation, stating on his campaign website that he thinks local government should choose its own housing laws.
“Local control for city zoning in Newton, MA, empowers our community to shape its own future,” Yanovsky wrote on his campaign website.
Yanovsky has also stated that Newton doesn’t need to build more affordable housing—the issue rezoning efforts seek to address.
“Housing projects—we have tried that before,” Yanovsky said in a debate with Sangiolo on Oct. 2. “It doesn’t work under any circumstances. We’ve tried many things, [like] Section Eight housing, I mean, there’s no investment of the person into the community or into the home that they’re living in.”
Throughout her campaign, Sangiolo has emphasized the need to add diverse housing stock, which was the intended purpose of Newton’s zoning reform. She’s argued, however, that state laws mandating rezoning aren’t the best way to do so and endorsed options like a real-estate transfer fee and small-scale zoning changes.
“We need to increase the supply of housing for all income levels, but in particular, my focus has always been on being more intentional about affordable housing needs out there as well as middle-income and workforce housing,” Sangiolo said in the Oct. 2 debate.
Sangiolo also discusses zoning reform as one small element of a larger effort to make housing more affordable in the state.
“The law was designed to increase housing supply but not designed to specifically address the affordable housing crisis,” Sangiolo wrote on her campaign website. “More intentional action is needed to create truly affordable housing.”
What It Means
The way Montgomery sees it, Yanovsky represents a challenge to the progressive political energy of the city.
“[Newton has] deep, deep roots in progressivism, and they’re getting a little shallower now,” Montgomery said.
Onlookers might write off Newton’s Republican minority. But the bloc’s presence reflects a reconciliation of the city’s local civics with the national sphere that umbrellas it.
Nicole Murphy and Sofia Levorchick contributed to reporting.
