Meet Alex Rodriguez, a City Council Candidate in Melrose, MA

Alex Rodriguez is a non-partisan, GoodParty.org Certified candidate running for a city council seat to represent Ward 7 in Melrose, Massachusetts. Rodriguez’s name will appear on the ballot during Melrose’s local elections in November 2025.

GoodParty.org spoke with Rodriguez about his candidacy and what running an independent, people-powered, and anti-corruption campaign means to him.

Alex Rodriguez: A Non-Partisan Candidate for Melrose

A native of Houston, Texas, Rodriguez has lived in Massachusetts for the past 16 years. He has experience as a business professor, marketer, and economic development strategist. As a representative for Ward 7, he hopes to bring practical, non-partisan solutions to Melrose.

Rodriguez said Melrose’s 2023 municipal election inspired him to take the leap and run for city council in 2025.

“The last municipal election we had was in 2023, and they're supposed to be non-partisan elections,” Rodriguez said. “We started getting mailers and things that said, ‘So-and-So Democrat for Mayor,’ ‘So-and-So Republican for Mayor.’ I started saying to myself, this is ridiculous. I live in a hyper-partisan state relative to most states, and it became very clear that it was a very cynical political ploy.”

Rodriguez has had experience working on political campaigns, including for U.S. Senator John Cornyn, so he is no stranger to the politics of elections. However, he emphasized that hyperpartisanship and big money have no place in non-partisan local elections.

“This is a city of 30,000 people, right? We had PACs, political parties, and various special interest groups spending a lot of money here. That's insanity, if you ask me,” Rodriguez said. “ I think that there's a real space for a candidate who's driving a solutions-oriented campaign that is willing to actually look at our incumbents and call them on their record of unaccomplishment.”

Rodriguez hopes to provide voters with an alternative to the city’s incumbent candidates.

“You scream and holler for the loudest audiences in the room, but what have you actually accomplished over the course of your term? The answer, quite frankly, is very little to nothing,” Rodriguez said. “But when you play to the loudest voices in the room, they're more likely to go vote for you, and they've been able to sustain political success that way. I am someone willing to challenge that record, offer viable solutions to what it is they're offering, and actually execute on that.”

Rodriguez hopes to infuse local government with the spirit of neighborliness that drew him to Melrose.

“Even though I'm not from here, we chose this place, and it was one of the best decisions we've ever made together,” he said. “It's a community that is very close-knit, and I've had the opportunity to meet amazing people of every background you can imagine. I consider it one of my greatest blessings to have really fallen into Melrose. It's not like I had a family member or anything like that that was pulling me here. It's a great community.”

“I truly believe our politics should be a reflection of that kind of neighborliness, and they're not. But that doesn't mean they can't be,” Rodriguez went on. “This is the kind of place that really takes care of its own, and I'm hoping I can inject that kind of spirit into our local politics.”

Addressing Local Issues in Melrose, Massachusetts

Rodriguez hopes to address some of the most pressing issues facing Melrose, Massachusetts. As a parent, school funding is an issue that especially stands out to him.

“If you were to actually walk around the schools, you can tell very quickly that we are in dire need of major plan improvements, including plan expansion,” Rodriguez said. “On top of that, we have some of the lowest pay in all of Massachusetts for our teachers. We have teacher turnover, the likes of which a community with our kind of wealth should not be experiencing, but we do. Why is that? The reality is that we've underfunded schools for a very long time.”

Rodriguez explained that the city’s revenue based on property taxes has not been keeping pace with inflation, and school budgets have suffered as a consequence. He said that while the issue of raising taxes has been divisive in Melrose, it is important to ensure that the city’s schools have the resources they need to help students succeed.

“I'm a parent running for office. A lot of the people I hope to attract with my candidacy, they're parents too, or they've been parents and their kids have long gone. We cannot starve our schools anymore of the resources that we have in the past. Honestly, I think if we continue to do so, we're looking at broader damage to our property values and things like that that I don't think anybody wants,” Rodriguez said.

Poor management of the school district’s budget has also contributed to these issues. 

In 2022, then-Superintendent Julie Kukenberger was questioned by the city council about a $2.2 million shortfall in the budget. According to local reporting, the school district delayed notifying the public about this shortfall for more than two months. After facing criticism from both the city council and community, Kukenberger announced in October that she planned to leave her position at the end of the 2022-2023 school year.

Rodriguez said the city council could have gone further in holding the superintendent accountable for her actions.

“I believe every child is entitled to not just a good education, but a world-class education, because the reality is that they're competing in a global economy,” Rodriguez said. “If we're not investing in our schools, we are — as we would say where I grew up —- showing up to a gunfight with a knife. It really won't end well. My hope is that we can continue to fund our schools, and increase transparency and accountability along the way to make sure that we're doing right by our kids.”

Affordable housing is another local issue that Rodriguez hopes to address once in office.

“We have an affordable housing issue here. It's really, really serious, and it's something that I’m pretty passionate about, because it's really sad when our teachers and our first responders can't afford to live here. They come here in the morning, they work, and they leave, and by-and-large, we have nothing to encourage them to stay here. Nothing,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez plans to offer practical solutions to these issues — a characteristic that he said the incumbent city council members have not always possessed. He describes himself as a realistic candidate for city council, and said he has felt frustrated by the city council’s recent focus on issues that fall outside the scope of the council’s responsibilities, such as foreign policy.

“We think we're going to solve all the world's problems here in Melrose, Mass, but that's not how it works. That's just not the real world. I know that sounds disappointing to some people, but I want my candidacy to be as big of a departure from fantasyland as it can be, because that's just not realistic,” Rodriguez said.

He said he would encourage voters to focus on local issues within the city council’s purview, and to hold their local leaders accountable on those issues.

Running for City Council as a Non-Partisan Candidate

Rodriguez said he broke with the two-party system in 2016, after watching the Republican Party shift during Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Rodriguez said he has always identified as a conservative, but could no longer be a part of the Republican Party after that year.

“I think the movement of the modern Republican Party towards Donald Trump has been dangerous, flat-out dangerous. I think that has come to fruition on January 6. If that didn't spell it out for you, I don't know what does,” Rodriguez said. “You know, it's funny. The man lies about everything, but there are certain things you should believe entirely that he says about what he wants to do if he actually assumes office. I saw that as he was running for his first term, and I did everything I could to oppose it within the Republican Party. When they nominated him, I left, because those aren't my values.”

After leaving the Republican Party, Rodriguez decided that he would never join another political party. Now, as a candidate for Melrose City Council, he is passionate about running a truly non-partisan campaign.

“I made a vow that I would never join a political party because they take your vote for granted. I truly believe that,” Rodriguez said. “When this came about, I said I'm not going to affiliate with any political party. I don't want anything to do with them. That way I can run the campaign that I want to run. I don't have to pander to the cheap seats. What I've seen that do in our communities is that we're at each other's throats. This is, again, a city of 30,000 people, and we're at each other's throats over partisan politics.”

Rodriguez noted that Melrose’s local polarization is a reflection of national politics.

“It really is to the detriment of some solutions that actually need to go into place here,” he said. “As a result, I found myself saying to myself, ‘All right, I'm going to run the campaign. I don't have to answer to a special interest group, and I don't have to answer to a political party.’”

While some people tune out when politics gets ugly, Rodriguez has only felt more inspired to make a difference.

“Watching our national politics degrade itself to the extent that it has, for a lot of people, it turns them off and they don't want anything to do with it anymore,” he said. “For me, it actually made me an even more engaged citizen, because I think that, in particular, Donald Trump is that dangerous. I also think that the two-party system as it's currently constituted is totally unsustainable.”

Rodriguez said that as a former business and economics professor, he wishes that local and national politics would incorporate more of the principles of the marketplace. For example, he wishes voters were offered more than two choices at the ballot box.

“I believe in the marketplace like you wouldn't believe. It's like a second religion for me. But we shut off the marketplace when it comes to ideas, and it makes no sense,” he said. “As politics have evolved, my disgust for what's currently going on has actually been more of a call-to-action for me than it was a turn-off — because if you don't like something, do something about it.”

Navigating the Challenges of a Non-Partisan Campaign

Rodriguez said that since he launched his campaign for Melrose City Council, he has become more aware of the challenges that independent and non-partisan political candidates face. Compared to Republican and Democratic candidates, non-partisan candidates often have much fewer resources to run effective campaigns.

“The reality is that if you really want to win, you need to be able to have comparable resources,” Rodriguez said. “When I saw the outside spending occurring [in local elections] and every interest group showing up at our door, I was like, ‘This is insane.’ 30,000 people live here. There were 20,000 voters and 10,000 households. A candidate ought to be able to show up to my door and tell me why I ought to vote for him, not have some outside group basically doing it on their behalf.”

Rodriguez has pledged not to accept campaign contributions from Political Action Committees (PACs). Instead, he is running a grassroots campaign powered by individuals who believe in his candidacy.

GoodParty.org is working to support non-partisan candidates like Rodriguez with access to free and low-cost campaign tools. GoodParty.org’s Pro tools are helping Rodriguez run a more cost-effective campaign.

“Just the cost of [peer-to-peer text banking], if you were to use CallHub, is insane. It is insane and my campaign couldn't afford it, in all honesty. As a non-partisan candidate, I'm going to have to spend a lot on stuff like that, like on text campaigns and call banking. If you do that through CallHub, you're going to pay a lot of money. GoodParty.org makes it possible for me to be able to afford,” Rodriguez said.

“Not just do I need to go toe-to-toe, I need to go beyond that because [other candidates] have outside spending. Where they may be spending ten grand, they may have an outside group throw in another three grand on their behalf. Also, as a challenger, I'm realizing it's a lot more expensive, because you don't have a website up and you don't have any existing infrastructure at all that they have. That does cost money. They cost serious money. So having those kinds of things makes it easier to really compete if you're interested in winning.”

How You Can Support Non-Partisan Candidates

Want to learn more and get involved? 

If you’re local to Melrose, Massachusetts, you can learn more by connecting with Alex Rodriguez and attending his upcoming campaign kickoff. You can also make sure you are registered to vote ahead of the 2024 and 2025 elections.

No matter where you’re located, you can make a difference and support non-partisan candidates across the country by joining GoodParty.org’s volunteer network. Get started by joining our Discord server and becoming part of one of our volunteer teams. Or schedule an info session with a member of our team to talk about how you can make your unique mark on the movement to support non-partisan candidates.