<aside>
</aside>
Publication Date: November 2d, 2025
Image Remixed from The Economist
<aside> đź“Ą
Vote for Joe Ferris if you care about Hudson, especially its most vulnerable residents and day to day municipal functioning.
</aside>
Hudson elected a mayor who campaigned on youth and fashionable ideals of inclusion, promising everything to everyone. Given every opportunity to succeed, the administration instead descended into favoritism, petty behavior, and ethical lapses. The city now needs adults in charge, leaders capable of discipline, fiscal balance, and the sober management of Hudson’s growth.
Hudson now faces three structural tests: City Charter reform, a long-delayed tax reassessment, and the self-inflicted budget crisis. It needs professional leadership. The new Common Council President, Margaret Morris, is competent and pragmatic. She needs a partner with the same traits. Ferris fits that description. Johnson would obstruct her.
Hudson must decide whether it wants a government that works or one that performs.
Mayor Kamal Johnson governs with grievance and a smartphone. His Facebook tirades and habit of blocking citizens have turned City Hall into a theater of resentment. At meetings he interrupts and blusters. In debates he dodges questions or refuses to attend, claiming bias when others simply show up.
His behavior fits the small-town bully: thin-skinned, performative, unable to separate personal from public duty. His romantic relationship with a subordinate involved in city finances is one conflict. His tenancy under a developer benefiting from city tax breaks is another. Hudson needs transparency, not private entanglements over public money.
<aside>
Still unconvinced? Read more here:
Lookback: Fibber on the (City Hall)Roof
The FOIL Files: How Does the Mayor Spend His Time?
</aside>
Johnson campaigned on transparency, housing, and unity. He governed with secrecy, inaction, and discord. His tight circle of City Hall aides Justin Weaver and Michelle Tullo, along with local loyalists Vern Cross, Claire Cousin, Quintin Cross, Kristen Zanotelli, Caitie Hilverman, and Tom DePietro, thrives on moral performance. The public has lost patience.
Kamal Johnson had a real opportunity to lead. Voters gave him a mandate and time. He squandered both. Those who live entirely within Hudson, who depend on its services and its solvency, will bear the cost of another term. Those who treat Hudson as a part-time stage set will not. It is time to try something new.
Lloyd Koedding is Hudson’s amiable eccentric, a philosopher of the street who knows every alley and temperament. His campaign is entertaining and occasionally wise, a reminder that democracy includes every voice. But Hudson’s mayor is an executive, not a mascot.
If the city used a council-manager system, Koedding’s energy might find a role. In a strong-mayor system, he is out of his depth.
Joe Ferris is the opposite temperament: calm, procedural, allergic to spectacle. He reads the minutes before speaking. In debate, he stays steady when provoked. Where others perform, he listens.
Ferris represents quiet competence. He must learn Hudson’s machinery quickly, but skill can be acquired. Integrity cannot. He owes nothing to the city’s entrenched power brokers. Johnson does. His career has been a sequence of favors from the same political patrons who once dominated Hudson, notably former mayor Rick Scalera. A mayor dependent on donors cannot reform the system that sustains them.
We would have been more enthusiastic if Ferris had attended any of the open finance and budget meetings, and if he were more willing to involve his many capable allies in his campaign. But in a small town, with a tight schedule and limited resources, that omission is forgivable.
<aside> đź—Ł
How They Communicate
Ferris uses professional channels and open forums. Johnson uses social media to attack critics and control the narrative. The contrast is stark: one managerial and open, the other impulsive and personal.
Read also:
FB Comment or IG Reel, Email or Letter? Hudson’s Mayoral Mediums Tell All
</aside>
Local government exists to function, not to moralize. Its duties are simple: maintain streets, support public safety, balance the budget, and communicate clearly. Hudson has no school district to manage, which makes its mission even plainer.
Only after those core tasks are met should City Hall experiment with extras like youth centers or rental-assistance schemes, especially those run in secrecy and outside legal bounds.
Ferris understands sequence and scale. His plan is to repair City Hall, cut waste, and restore discipline. Johnson prefers photo opportunities to plumbing. His record on tax payments and his refusal to release his lease with a favored developer show poor judgment. Under him, housing policy collapsed into confusion. Developers withdrew, projects stalled, and progress arrived despite City Hall, not because of it.
Hudson’s looming budget crisis is the direct result of Mayor Kamal Johnson and Common Council President Tom DePietro’s financial mismanagement. They overestimated revenues, underestimated costs, and ignored warnings from staff and residents. The result is a one million dollar shortfall that will force the next mayor to impose austerity measures.
Basic city services, from snow removal to public safety, now face cuts. Grant-dependent programs will wither. The damage was avoidable. Fiscal discipline is not a partisan virtue; it is the foundation of municipal survival. Ferris has already signaled his intent to audit city spending and restore transparency. Johnson and DePietro continue to deny responsibility.
A functional city treats all residents equally. Johnson governs by loyalty. Critics are frozen out, allies rewarded. Official communications resemble private newsletters.
Ferris will reverse that. With no faction to protect, he can govern by principle. Even opponents will be heard. That is how public trust returns.
<aside> 🇬🇧
Beyond the controversial issues like Galvan, Colarusso and online theatrics, it became apparent very quickly that Kamal does not view the mayors role as a municipal manager. When Kamal was on Tom DePietro’s radio show last week, he made fun of what Joe said on a previous interview with Tom that he wanted to look into crosswalks and pinpoint the 10 most dangerous intersections in Hudson. This precisely shows the difference in their mayoral philosophies.
Joe Ferris treats city government like what it is: a management job. Kamal Johnson treats it like a political campaign. When Ferris talks about fixing crosswalks or listing the city’s ten worst intersections, he’s speaking the language of operations, budgets, maintenance, and accountability. Kamal dismisses that as trivial, preferring slogans about “community” and “youth” while the city’s basic systems crumble. His desk tells the story: no papers, no files, just a laptop for social media. Hudson doesn’t need another aspirational figurehead. It needs a competent municipal manager. The city is small enough that its government should function like a condo or HOA Board: collect taxes, Provide services, maintain infrastructure, plan long-term projects. Kamal runs it like a charity, redistributing funds by ideology and assuming the departments will manage themselves. That is why the budget spirals and residents complain. People want a city manager, not a motivational speaker. Ferris, boring as he may sound, is the one talking about the real work: sidewalks, traffic, resilience, and taxes, the things that make a city liveable.
</aside>
Joe Ferris is not perfect. He has more to learn about the machinery of government, but that is teachable. Independence is not. He has it. Johnson does not.
Hudson Common Sense therefore gives Ferris the highest mark, not for perfection but for competence, fairness, and restraint. He knows what a mayor is for: to keep citizens safe, maintain infrastructure, treat everyone equally, and govern without drama.
Vote for Joe Ferris. Choose competence over chaos. Common sense over spectacle.
<aside> đź’°
Follow the Money
Filings show Ferris funded mainly by small, local donors, most giving under $250. Johnson’s largest contributions came from developers, corporations, and outside political committees. The difference mirrors their governing styles: one civic and transparent, the other dependent and transactional.
Read more:
Show Us The Money: Independence (Joe) versus Dependence (Kamal)
</aside>
At Harvard, Harvey C. Mansfield once handed out two grades: one for the record, another for reality. The first followed convention. The second told the truth. During Harvard’s grade inflation and non-standard admissions era he became known as Harvey C MINUS Mansfield, because he handed out so many C-’s, the lowest grade before failing, at the time. Hudson Common Sense adopts this practice for our mayoral candidates.
An “A-grade” mayor, in our book, would freeze taxes without freezing services, balance a budget without a bailout, and treat public money as if it were his own. Someone who reads the budget, not just the press release.
Joe Ferris:Â Real B-, Ironic B+
Lloyd Koedding:Â Real D+, Ironic B-
Kamal Johnson:Â Real D-, Ironic C-
Hudson’s curve has no room for participation trophies. A mayor must earn top marks in competence, thrift, and fairness. Judged by results, not rhetoric, Joe Ferris is the only one who passes without extra credit.
<aside> ✍🏻
Last edited/updated:
November 2d, 2025
</aside>
<aside> 📢
</aside>