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The last super PAC in Cambridge to announce its endorsements released its slate of supported candidates for the Cambridge City Council election Saturday afternoon, giving a major boost to eight candidates who were overwhelmingly incumbents.

A Better Cambridge, a housing advocacy group that supports increasing development in the city, endorsed six incumbents and two challengers based on their policy platforms, experiences, and answers in a recent candidates forum.

The incumbent endorsees include: Mayor E. Denise Simmons, Vice Mayor Marc C. McGovern, and Councilors Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler, Burhan Azeem, Ayesha M. Wilson, and Sumbul Siddiqui. The group also endorsed challengers Ned S. Melanson and Dana R. Bullister.

While nearly all candidates in the City Council race have housing affordability as a major platform issue, ABC’s endorsements are meant to show to their following — who see increasing supply as a primary solution to the housing crisis — which candidates “stand above the others,” per ABC’s announcement.

ABC’s endorsements have been predictors of candidates’ success in the past. Six of the nine candidates ABC endorsed in the 2023 race won a seat on the Council.

Notably, the weekend announcement appeared to leave Patricia M. “Patty” Nolan ’80 more vulnerable in the race, as it made her the only incumbent not to receive endorsements from Cambridge’s two housing super PACs: ABC and the Cambridge Citizens Coalition, which is more hostile to easing development in the city.

Still, the other super PAC in Cambridge, Cambridge Bike Safety, offered Nolan an endorsement last week.

Together, those three super PACs spent more than $60,000 in the 2023 election cycle to support candidates’ campaigns, making them a significant source of campaign money in the City’s elections. So far, the majority of candidates in the City Council election have raised somewhere between several thousand to 25,000 dollars for their campaign.

ABC co-chair Justin N. Saif ’99 said the group endorsed candidates who understand the affordable housing crisis in Cambridge — which polls consistently show is the number one issue on voters’ minds.

“The number one issue in Cambridge is housing affordability, and it has been for some time. The rent is still too damn high,” Saif said. “We have a slate of candidates here who understand that, they have lived experience with it, or they’ve been working on it on the Council.”

In February, the city passed a landmark policy order to end single-family zoning city-wide, making thousands of properties eligible for height increases by several stories and marking a win for housing affordability.

Still, Saif said that much progress is still left on the issue.

“If we don’t have a council that supports more affordable housing and maintaining housing affordability in general, then we’ll take a step backwards,” Saif said.

Though endorsees differ on their specific housing policies, ABC’s endorsement will serve as bona fides for the candidates’ pitches of housing abundance and stability.

In a statement announcing its endorsements, ABC wrote that it trusted its eight picks “to prioritize ABC’s values of housing abundance, affordability, stability, and sustainability.”

“Everybody says they care about housing affordability,” Sobrinho-Wheeler said. “I think endorsements from groups like this are helpful in saying ‘these are the group of folks who have proven via their votes, via their advocacy, that they actually care about ending exclusionary zoning.’”

“It’s helpful to have groups like that doing the work and being validators,” he added.

— Staff writer Shawn A. Boehmer can be reached at shawn.boehmer@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @ShawnBoehmer.

— Staff writer Jack B. Reardon can be reached at jack.reardon@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @JackBReardon.