He says he blinks too much to be photogenic, and his $45,000 campaign budget is half that of some of his competitors.
“It’s not necessary,” he said of an $80,000-plus campaign chest. “We run an efficient campaign on $45,000.”
To save money, he reuses his signs from the last election.
There is definitely an understated quality to Maher, who sports a blue denim shirt tucked into black dress pants but no coat or tie.
“It’s a Saturday. I think people understand,” he says. “Was Anthony wearing a suit?”
Maher was mildly relieved to hear that Anthony Galluccio Jr., the Council’s top vote-getter and Maher’s friendly competitor, was waving to voters just a few blocks away in a white shirt and tie, but no suit jacket.
Still, while Maher portrays himself as a man more interested in legislation than elections, he is no stranger to politics.
His late father was a city councillor as well as a Cambridge police officer.
Maher says he enjoyed being the son of a politician.
“I assumed I would try it,” Maher says. “I think I’ll do it for as long as I can be effective.”
Maher says he started off thinking that he would give politics one chance, and if he lost an election he wouldn’t run again.
When the 29-year-old Maher lost his bid for school committee in 1987, he put off quitting. In 1989 he lost in a second bid for a school committee seat, this time by just 11 votes.
But the razor-thin margin made him more committed to running again. Immediately upon losing, he went to look at the voting rolls to see who hadn’t voted, and just started off with the street where he grew up as a child.
“I saw my old neighbor and said ‘Oh my God,’ why didn’t she vote for me? What did we do wrong? By the third person I would have grown angry if went any further so I stopped.”
This impressed on him the importance of every vote, especially in an election like this—where 1,600 to 1,750 first-place votes is typically enough to win election.
With that in mind, he spent his Saturday stranded on a circular island of grass in a rushing stream of traffic.
“There’s no greater rallying cry than losing an election,” he says, adding quickly, “but I’m not looking to do that again.”
—Staff writer Jonathan P. Abel can be reached at abel@fas.harvard.edu.