It may feel like the last election just happened, but candidates are already out collecting signatures again for next fall’s ballot.
Those include several political newcomers from western Massachusetts who have launched their first campaigns for office — like Jeromie Whalen, who’s vying for U.S. Rep. Richard Neal’s seat in Congress, and several candidates competing for the position that state Rep. Natalie Blais left in January.
Like every election, though, many more people will run for office than actually win.
In NEPM’s new series, “Stepping into the Ring,” reporter Karen Brown looked up several former candidates from western Massachusetts who lost their races last year. She wanted to find out what they learned from campaigning. What follows are profiles of three electoral hopefuls who gave politics a try.
Some people feel called to serve their community but don’t actually want to be a politician.
Yakov Kronrod is not one of them.
“I decided for myself that politics is a place where eventually I will find myself, being a politician,” he said. “Like, I would love to be governor of Massachusetts in 20 years.”
Right after college, Kronrod ran for Worcester City Council but only got 18% of the vote. He then became an activist for prison reform and drug decriminalization — partly due to his own marijuana arrest in his 20s.
At the same time, his family background made him crave a role in public life. He came from Russia as a young boy and refugee, after he said his parents and grandparents were persecuted as Soviet dissidents.
In 2018, having built a career in artificial intelligence, Kronrod moved to Northampton.
“There was this feeling of like, ‘Am I doing enough in my life, with my life? Am I honoring my family's legacy?’” he said. “And there was kind of like this feeling of, ‘I should and can be doing a lot more.’”
“Target the people that are most likely to vote”
At 44, Kronrod pulled papers to run for an at-large City Council seat in Northampton just before the deadline, and he had to teach himself how to campaign. That meant a lot of door knocking and some very long conversations on a few people’s porches.
“I probably should have talked to more people who are movers and shakers, but I really wanted to focus on everyday people,” he said. “I've had many people say, ‘Oh, you know, there's these connectors who really would have made sense to spend more time with.’”
That’s in line with what many political consultants tell their clients.
“The person who talks to the most voters is the person that is likely to win in the election,” said Vanessa Snow, the executive director of Mass Alliance, a group that recruits progressive candidates to run for office.
She urges candidates to focus less on meeting interesting people and more on who is likely to reach other voters — and to vote themselves.
“Once you’re elected, you're going to represent all of your constituents, whether they vote for you or not,” Snow said. “But when it comes to running a strategic … campaign with limited resources, you really have to target the people that are most likely to vote on Election Day. Make sure that they know your name, that they know your message.”
“If only…. I had knocked on a hundred more doors”
Kronrod didn’t make it past the primary, losing a spot on the November ballot by about 70 votes. But he said he learned a lot about the political process.
For one, he was surprised at some of the criticism against him. He owns property in Philadelphia, and even though he said he supports tenant rights, he was accused of being on the side of landlords. He would wonder: “Do you guys want to ask me about my experience?”
And on election night, he admits to feeling somewhat deflated.
“Had I hoped to win? Yeah,” he recalled a few months later. He said once everyone left that night, he started second-guessing some of his campaign decisions and thought to himself: “I should have done this, or I could have done this, or if only I didn't focus on that and had knocked on a hundred more doors.’”
But he said he was proud to have done as well as he did as a relative newcomer to Northampton. And afterwards, Kronrod didn’t want to waste what he learned about local issues, from education to housing.
“I really went deep on like 30 different things. I researched budgets for the last 15 years,” he said. “What do I do with all of these threads and all of this knowledge?”
He got involved with the Northampton Education Foundation, which makes grants to local educators. He applied to join the city’s housing partnership, and he’s staying in touch with supporters.
Vanessa Snow of Mass Alliance said that’s a good strategy for someone who wants to run again.
“The relationships that you built along the way, there's power in that,” she said. “And so it might take a couple times for you to get there.”
Kronrod does have every intention of staying in the ring, with no plans to change his platform or his image.
“There's a lot about me that is not very politically — I don't know — easy,” he said. “I am a refugee from the Soviet Union. I have a criminal record from when I was in college and I got arrested. I am openly polyamorous … All these things that are just a little off, a little weird, not typical, not normal. But they're who I am.”
And that’s how he’s planning to run for City Council again — in 2027.
