It Costs $444,868.31 To Repeal A Cambridge Ordinance
Money in politics has been an issue in Cambridge’s City Council election. But all the public financing in the world won’t prevent what happened in 2010, when one wealthy Cantabrigian spent over $444,000 to repeal a Cambridge ordinance.
On September 27, 2010 the Cambridge City Council ordained a law, by a 6 to 3 vote, intended to control building signage. Depending on who you listened to, it was either going usher in an era of Blade Runner-esque advertising or it wasn’t. Fortunately for our story, the impact on Cambridge as a whole doesn’t matter. What does matter is its impact on a single building.
One Memorial Drive has been the home of the delightfully named Microsoft NERD, its New England Research and Development Center, for a decade. Generous with its space, Microsoft helped the creation of a Kendall Square community by allowing groups of all kinds to meet there. Microsoft, a company clearly interested in its brand, very much wanted to have its name on the building it occupied.
One Memorial Drive has another tenant, Intersystems. A company privately held by Cambridge resident Phillip T. (Terry) Ragon, Intersystems was, from its founding in 1978, an early pioneer of the computerization of medical information. Ragon and Intersystems may not be the household word that Microsoft is, but he and his company are quite successful. Forbes reports that, in 2017, Ragon’s net worth is $2.2 billion and Intersystems recorded $574 million in sales. In 2008, Ragon and Intersystems sued Microsoft and the owner of One Memorial Drive to prevent Microsoft from expanding its space in the building. When it became clear that the proposed sign ordinance would allow Microsoft branding of the building, Ragon became a vocal opponent. When the Council approved the ordinance, that wasn’t the end of the fight. It was the beginning.
Ragon had formed a group called “Save Our Skyline” as an umbrella for his campaign against the ordinance. It wasn’t until September 30th, a few days after the passing of the sign ordinance, that it received its first donation. All told, Save Our Skyline would receive approximately $440,000 in donations, all but $500 from Ragon. As quickly as Ragon donated the money, Save Our Skyline spent it, buying legal services, public relations services, and advertising services.
Its major expense, though, was on signature gathering. Massachusetts law states that, after a municipal ordinance is passed, petitioners have 20 days to gather signatures from 12% of the registered voters. If they do, the law is immediately suspended and sent back to the City Council for immediate reconsideration. The Council can either immediate rescind the law or have it voted on in a referendum.
It was difficult to go food shopping on those weekends after the vote without encountering someone seeking your signature. These were professionals, itinerant signature gathers for hire, paid for results. To assure those results, they invented stories about what the ordinance would do. Rescind the ordinance, I was told by one, or there’ll be billboards in school playgrounds and the parks. Then there was the phony image of the possible Cambridge skyline. It featured fast food brand advertising, something that would have been impossible under the ordinance, unless they became major tenants of the buildings.
The petitioners were successful, gathering 11,461 certified signatures, sending the ordinance back to the Council. On November 1, 2010, the Council voted 8–1 to rescind the ordinance it had overwhelmingly passed just a month previously. Councilors denounced the misinformation campaign that fueled the signature drive, but were unwilling to confront this campaign in a referendum. It wouldn’t be a good use of Cambridge’s money, they said.
Despite the expenditure of almost half a million dollars, no campaign contributions were made.
