Longtime Civic Blogger Robert Winters Is Running for Cambridge Council. Now, He’s Facing Political Scrutiny of His Own.

At a Sunday event celebrating the Cambridge Citizens Coalition’s endorsements for Cambridge City Council, Robert Winters spoke to attendees about his more than three decades of civic leadership in Cambridge: from leading the formation of Cambridge’s recycling program in the 1980s to running a local blog, the Cambridge Civic Journal, since 1997.

“So why on earth would I wreck it all and be a candidate, and subject myself to the crap that people are going to subject you to?” he asked the crowd.

Across the street, more than 20 demonstrators had spent the past two hours yelling chants calling on the CCC to drop their endorsement of Winters and candidate Carrie E. Pasquarello over transphobic and racist social media posts.

Since the posts were brought to light at a candidate forum two weeks ago, Winters has come under fire, with seven other candidates condemning his tweets as of Monday evening.

But the longtime Cantabrigian denied allegations that he is racist, transphobic, or Islamophobic, which he wrote in an Oct. 2 blog post are part of a “full-fledged campaign of harassment and intimidation.”

Still, Winters stood by his social media posts, including a post alerting the popular far-right TikTok account Libs of TikTok to a drag story hour at the Cambridge Public Library — which prompted the Cambridge Police to send an officer to the event — and a post where he wrote that “Islam and government don’t mix.”

“I’m sorry if anyone failed to appreciate my sense of humor (actually, I’m not really sorry) or failed to see either the irony or the absurdity of something I said over the last quarter-century,” he wrote in the Oct. 2 blog post, accusing his critics of using “the tactics of Joseph McCarthy.”

At the CCC event, Winters said the main reason he decided to run was the city’s ongoing charter review process, which has considered a series of changes to Cambridge’s plan of government — including a potential shift in city leadership from an appointed city manager to an elected mayor.

“I have very strong concerns that if the wrong people are elected, they might try and change the city charter into something radically different than what it is now, which in my view, is a system that’s actually worked pretty well,” Winters said in a September interview.

Winters first became involved in civic affairs as a member of the Water and Sewer Advisory Committee in 1988. He was part of a group of residents that organized a drop-off recycling program at the time. After the program became a permanent part of the Public Works Department in 1991, Winters took on composting as his next project — eventually becoming known to residents as the “Compost Man.”

In the 1990s, Winters worked on the computerization of Cambridge’s ranked-choice voting system, which had previously taken nearly a week to count. In 1993, Winters ran for Council himself, coming in 15th place in a field of 29 candidates.

Until this election, Winters had not made another Council bid since then, though he has stayed involved in civic affairs.

In 1997, he created the Cambridge Civic Journal, originally a printed newsletter and currently an online blog with hundreds of thousands of views where Winters shares updates on municipal government and local events. Winters has served on the Central Square Advisory Committee since 2001 and was a member of the 2019 Envision Cambridge Advisory Committee, which developed a city plan for the following decade.

Winters has been an instructor of mathematics at the Harvard Extension School since 2001, and also currently teaches at the Summer School.

When it comes to the controversial amendments to the Affordable Housing Overlay — which would relax building height restrictions and increase floor space — Winters said he does not support them.

“I’ve had some issues with the way the Affordable Housing Overlay was structured in the first place, and I have even more issues with the way it’s being revised now,” he said.

Winters said housing is a problem affected by several factors such as transportation, economics, and the development of squares that can only “be addressed regionally and more” — adding that housing is “not a Cambridge problem,” but “an everybody problem.”

Former “Compost Man” Winters said he agrees with “most or all of the goals” that are encompassed in the Building Energy Use Disclosure Ordinance, which was amended over the summer to require large buildings to accomplish net-zero emissions by 2035 or pay a compliance fee.

“I am still optimistically more of a proponent for educating people about best practices, and it’s creating incentives — financial and otherwise — for carrying out those changing building codes for new construction,” he said.

To Winters, a problem with BEUDO is the “obsession” with “requiring retrofits of buildings via mandate without any regard to practicality and expense.”

Winters said he does not support city funding for HEART, a local police response alternative, and that the criticism towards the Cambridge Police Department “is not fair.”

“I think we actually have a pretty good police force in Cambridge, when you compare it to almost anyplace else in Massachusetts, if not the whole country,” he said. “Does that preclude the possibility that maybe somebody could make an error? Of course not.”

With election season underway, Robert Winters has continued a two-decade-long tradition of hosting individual web pages for candidates on his blog — allowing Council and School Committee hopefuls to share information about themselves in a centralized place for voters to see.

Reviving local journalism is part of Winters’ platform today. “Civic journalism has to be more than just blogs and mailing lists,” he wrote on his campaign website, adding, “we need a common ‘water cooler’ around which we can all gather to discuss matters of importance outside of our own personal silos.”

“The job of a city councilor is to listen to residents and to represent them - first and foremost,” he wrote on his campaign website.

—Staff writer Jina H. Choe can be reached at jina.choe@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Julian J. Giordano can be reached at julian.giordano@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @jjgiordano1 or on Threads @julianjgiordano.