The candidates say they are expecting an exciting race come September.
"Alvin Thompson hasn't had a viable opponent since he's been elected, and that's how our campaign is going to be different," Barrios says.
"It should be a vigorous race," says Hoicka.
But despite the brewing tensions, Wallace W. Sherwood, president of the Alliance for Change, predicts that the race will not be particularly noteworthy.
The Alliance for Change is one of Cambridge's two main political parties.
"I suspect that this election may not be as hot as some elections have been in Cambridge," Sherwood says.
"I don't think that the election landscape has really settled in any particular area," Sherwood says, adding that there are no "hot issues," such as rent control, this time around.