Candidates in Short Supply for November 4th Town-wide Election
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With the deadline to turn in nomination papers less than two weeks away, there are few competitive races for elected town offices this fall. Although a few races appear to have a healthy number of candidates, many of those running have taken out papers for several contests, and will need to withdraw from all but one by 5 p.m. on Thursday, October 2
All town-wide elected offices will be on the ballot in the November 4, 2025 election. These include:
10 District Town Councilors (two from each of five districts)
3 Councilors-at-large
5 School Committee members
6 Jones Library Trustees
3 Amherst Housing Authority Commissioners
1 Oliver Smith Will Elector
Nomination papers are available from the Town Clerk’s office and are due by 5 p.m. on Tuesday, September 16. Any registered voter in the Town of Amherst can sign nomination papers. Voters may sign for as many different candidates as they wish, even for the same office. If voters sign multiple times for the same candidate, only one signature will be certified. The number of signatures required are 25 residents of the district for District Town Councilors and 50 Amherst residents for all other offices. As of Thursday, September 4, the following residents have taken out nomination papers. The Indy will continue to update this information weekly.
List of Candidates as of September 4, 2025
Councilor-At-Large (3 seats)
Andrew Churchill
Charlotte Allegra Rice Clark
Mandi Jo Hanneke (incumbent): signatures submitted
Dillon Maxfield
Amber Lee Cano Martin
Lynn Griesemer and Jillian Brevik took out papers, but withdrew from contention.
District 1 Councilor
Jillian Brevik: signatures submitted
Louis Conover: signatures submitted
Ndefreke Ette (incumbent): signatures submitted
Vincent O’Connor
District 2 Councilor
Charlotte Allegra Rice Clark
Jason Dorney
Lynn Griesemer (incumbent): signatures submitted
Amber Lee Cano Martin
District 3 Councilor
Patrick Drumm
Heather Hala Lord (incumbent): signatures submitted
George Ryan (incumbent): signatures submitted
District 4 Councilor
Dillon Maxfield
Pamela Susan Rooney (incumbent): signatures submitted
Jennifer Lynn Taub (incumbent): signatures submitted
District 5 Councilor
Ana Mary Devlin Gauthier (incumbent)
Samuel A. MacLeod : signatures submitted
School Committee (5 seats)
Charlotte Allegra Rice Clark
Meghan Fitzgerald
Laura Jane Hunter
Bridget Hynes (incumbent)
Deborah Leonard (incumbent)
Sarah Marshall (incumbent): signatures submitted
Amber Lee Cano-Martin
Jillian Brevik withdrew.
Library Board of Trustees (6 seats)
Farah Ameen (incumbent): signatures submitted
Lee R. Edwards (incumbent)
Tamson Ely (incumbent): signatures submitted
Eugene Anthony Goffredo (incumbent)
Nathaniel Carl Larson (incumbent)
Austin D. Sarat (incumbent): signatures submitted
Housing Authority (3 seats)
Michael Burkart (incumbent)
Patricia L. DeAngelis: signatures submitted
Oliver Smith Will Elector (1 seat)
Judith Souweine (incumbent): signatures submitted.
Candidate statements will be published on the Town Bulletin Board on the town’s website no later than September 19. They are due by the nomination paper deadline. Those received after September 16 will be posted on the bulletin board within five days of receipt. As was the case with past elections, The Indy will pose a series of questions to candidates in contested races and post their answers in early October.
The last day to register to vote is Friday, October 24 by 5 p.m. in person or by midnight online.
Mail-in ballots will be available, but must be requested by 5 p.m. on Tuesday, October 28. In-person absentee ballots must be filled out at the Town Clerk’s office by 5 p.m. on Monday, November 3. Check your voter registration and precinct.
In-person early voting will be available in the first-floor meeting room at Town Hall, 4 Boltwood Walk, on the following dates. Note the extended hours on October 30.
| DATE | TIME |
| Monday, October 27, 2025 | 8:00a – 4:30p |
| Tuesday, October 28, 2025 | 8:00a – 4:30p |
| Wednesday, October 29, 2025 | 8:00a – 4:30p |
| Thursday, October 30, 2025 | 8:00a – 7:00p |
| Friday, October 31, 2025 | 8:00a – 4:30p |
The warrant for the election was approved at the August 18 Town Council meeting. It lists the voting sites for each precinct and is posted at various sites around town.
There are 32 individuals running for 28 seats–hardly the increased participation we were promised when this form of government was sold to us. Even if many representatives in representative Town Meeting ran unopposed, there were still 240 different voices at the table. And the same people keep getting appointed to multiple committees, while others are overlooked time and again–sometimes in favor of college students from out of town. No wonder people are discouraged about town government–we are being run by a small group of insiders. Kudos to those with the courage to run and stand up for another point of view.
Well said, Maura. Under our woeful new form of government, Downtown is looking more and more like a campus food court and the Jones Library has become the number one spending priority.
I have long thought that “Amherst for All,” the pro-charter-change PAC that morphed into Amherst Forward, should have called themselves “Amherst for Oligarchs.”
Perhaps I am wrong but it seems that serving on the Amherst Town Council is a big time commitment with late night meetings. And that may be reducing interested candidates. Alternatively I know another town where town board service is very easy but finding candidates is also minimal with uncontested elections.
I’m convinced that we all would still have Town Meeting, if several dozen of the regular readers of this website, who were members of the ruling minority in the fall of 2016 and during the cynically choreographed proceedings of the evening of January 30, 2017, had thought just a little bit harder about the long-term political consequences of their short-term fiscal shenanigans regarding capital spending. As I recall, at that point the charter petition process had already begun, so there was no profound foresight involved about what might be coming. Now the political reality is that a majority of Amherst voters do not want your annual beloved parliamentary parlor game BACK. No system is perfect, and this one has its problems. But the persistent folly of Town Meeting, with the particular cast of characters repeatedly elected to it in that last decade, is stamped indelibly on the memories of many of us. And for those who may have forgotten all of that, I think the videotapes are still available.