Stefanini Taps Real Estate Investors in Framingham District 8 Race

It is the first week of October and a good time to look at candidates' campaign finances to get an idea of their fundraising and spending ahead of the November election.

Three City Council seats are in play: District 2, District 8, and District 9.

The place to look for campaign financial data is the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance (OCPF) website at: https://ocpf.us/. There you can select 'Filer Listing' in 'Browse Candidates', input a candidate name, and then see their monthly reports. The candidates are:

District 2: Brandon Ward, Sean Silk

District 8: John Stefanini, Leslie White Harvey

District 9: Tracey Bryant, Jose Ferreira

The District 9 race is unusual as voter interest is almost zero, with only 62 voters out of 3000 registered voters turning out to vote in the September 19 preliminary election, which eliminated Albert Chimeno from the race. Ferreira got 16 votes and Bryant got 40. Further, Ferreira has certified to OCPF that he is not raising or expending campaign funds in the District 9 race, so he has no donation or expense data.

Tracey Bryant's fundraising looks pretty standard. She raised $2,200 and spent $1783.87 in the months of August and September. Unions donated $1,000. Phil & Val Ottiavani each donated $250, and apart from 3 donations of $100, $100 and $50, the remaining $570 in donations were each less than $50 and so not reported in detail. Her expenses were standard ones for mailing, printing and signs.

All within expectation.

The District 2 races are also within expectation for fundraising and expenses.

Sean Silk opted for $5,000 in self-funding, which is a standard approach to optimize time spent on campaigning. I took that approach when I ran for School Committee in 2017, and in this election cycle George King and Mike Cannon took that approach as well, self-funding their campaigns with $10,000 and $5,000 respectively, prior to finding out they each had no opponent. Expenses for Sean Silk amounted to $3,076.06.

Brandon Ward opted for the donations approach, raising $5,233.29 and spending $2,243.07. Donations were $500, $250, $300 and a tranche of lower donations, most coming from Framingham residents.

Expenses for Sean Silk and Brandon Ward were both standard: events, printing, websites, ...

So far all quite normal.

Then we have District 8 where consistent with the picture so far, Leslie White Harvey raised $1,574.60 in small local donations and spent $368.63 on printing. Again, quite normal.

Then we get to the John Stefanini campaign financial data.

First, expenses.

There is just one expenditure, back in July, for $1,113.51, covering a website, email and list maintenance, handled by Dockside Media LLC, a company owned and run by Mary Kate Feeney. There is zero expense activity in August and September, which suggests a remarkably inactive campaign. But maybe October is the month when the Stefanini campaign will spring into action.

Next, fundraising.

This totals $14,863.62, which dwarfs fundraising by other candidates, and is also unusual in that it comes mostly from large donations of $500 or $1,000. $11,400 of that total came from donors with real estate businesses or interests, much of it from outside Framingham. John's donors have connections to the controversial Nobscot development, currently roiling that community, as well as connections to the The Buckley, Millwood, and other large Framingham development projects.

From 2008-2022, John Stefanini was an attorney at the firm DLA Piper, but a year ago left to start his own practice, according to https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnstefanini/. He is engaged in the business of representing real estate developers as they try to get their projects approved in Massachusetts municipalities.

As an example, he is involved in a project to build a horse race course at Gardner, representing Baystate Racing LLC, which would involve rezoning properties from residential to commercial, much as is the case with Framingham's current Nobscot situation. His client already failed to make progress on this race course project in Hardwick a year ago, where the community roundly rejected the idea.

See:

https://gardnermagazine.com/2023/08/23/gardner-park/

https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/gardner-horse-racing-track-zoning-sports-betting/

Given the nature of the campaign fundraising sources, District 8 voters might pursue some clarifications from John Stefanini before they cast their votes in November.

I shall refrain from further commentary and simply show the Stefanini campaign contributions as listed in detail on the OCPF website.