Profiles in Belmont: Angus Abercrombie

By Elissa Ely

Angus Abercrombie—21-year old Emerson College senior, Belmont Town Meeting Member, door-knocker on 850 Precinct 8 homes before his 2023 election victory–is so articulate, so quotable, that he should write his profile himself. Here are a scant few phrases to include in some future Abercrombie archive. The lucky person who assembles it will find themselves drawn in:

“I was the right kind of nerd, a lover of spreadsheets.”

“I love a good meeting! I’m never the guy who complains. A couple of times, I’ve voted NO to adjourn student government meetings.”

“You can’t be an idealist in local politics. It’s a place of pragmatics.”

“One of the good things about being a communications major is, I can create a message to convince myself.”

And finally, eight words that condense all the patience an unusual name requires:

“I have to spell out ‘Angus’ at Starbucks.”

Chai latte would take longer if he spelled his entire name: Angus James Benedict Abercrombie. The first and last are from his Scottish father’s family. James was his grandfather, and as for Benedict, “maybe it came to them in a dream.”  The length is no impediment, though. “In my line of business,” Angus says, “it’s useful.”

The Belmont Abercrombies are immigrants (though not current administration targets), and Angus has dual British-American citizenship. Within the Abercrombie household, everyone in the family speaks to one another in their native British or Scottish accents. When his parents call the cell phone while he’s socializing, his end of the conversation can be nonplussing for friends to overhear.

His mother, a seismologist, grew up in the English Midlands, graduating with a PhD in geophysics. Angus remembers a class photograph: 20-30 aspiring young men, one woman. Afterwards, there was research in New Zealand, California, Hawaii: “If it shakes, she’s probably done some work there,” he says. “I don’t really understand what she does, but it’s incredible. She’s the kind of mother you don’t want to get in the way of.”

His father, a mathematician, “got in on the ground floor of software” and now works at Google. Across the ocean, his sister recently graduated with an advanced degree in linguistics and psychology. They’re all highly accomplished but, interestingly, none of them are highly political “though they do vote religiously.”

We go through life on a search for ourselves and, if we’re lucky, find who we are before it’s too late. Growing up in Belmont, Angus happened to find himself early. He briefly held the traditional childhood ambition of becoming an astronaut and, also briefly, the other traditional ambition of becoming President (“I don’t want to be President anymore,” he says firmly). There were years of ballet, and volunteering at Habitat, where he was eventually hired for his first job. Meanwhile, it was public school straight down the ticket—Winn Brook, Chenery, BHS. Though he was not as academically exceptional as other family members, his mother once caught him reading the dictionary in the living room.

Angus was in the third grade when the 2012 Presidential election was held, and by coincidence one of his classmates was a Romney.  A year or two later, he learned about an upcoming budget override vote in Belmont and decided to lobby on its behalf. He did the house leafleting, his mother drove the car. “Quite early on,” he says, “I saw that the world was built on systems and institutions.”

He became adept at understanding both; the middle schooler who had read the handbook on bullying and was able to help victimized friends file reports; the pragmatist who created outcomes for others. “I had the luxury of being able to say yes to things that take time. Now I’m just saying yes to things as much as I can.”

Political understanding grew more nuanced with age. “Interacting with local government is as easy as driving down your street and hitting a pothole,” he explains. (This sentence must go into the archives.) As his understanding enlarged, so did his involvement. Angus skipped the Belmont high school graduation in order to attend a Massachusetts State Convention and cast his vote for Sonia Chang-Diaz for senate.

Emerson College was near home (“if I was in England, it would have been a 6-hour flight back to Town Meeting!”). His political work continued in Belmont but also began in a new locale. Angus served a semester as class president at Emerson, is about to become vice president, chaired the audit committee, worked on a series of million-dollar student organization budgets, and somehow managed a political communications major with minors in economics and environmental studies while heading to Belmont most weekends and some weeknights for town meetings and canvassing. It’s committed pragmatics in action, working within systems and institutions.

So many feet in so many communities require good balance, and a simple value keeps him upright: “I got involved in politics because it’s meaningful.” In 2023, Angus became the youngest member of Town Meeting. As a pragmatist, he believes in opportunities–“they’re going to come, and we’re going to get some of them right,” he says. Winning a No Turn On Red Sign is as much a victory as unlocking funds.

A few of the many, many causes dear to the Abercrombie heart—with a woeful understating of their details–are expanding the housing supply, increasing the tax base, securing support for conservation land, and improving schools (of course). Affordability is his biggest priority. And he is not unaware of a financial irony: as a young professional, he couldn’t afford to live in Belmont himself. “I’d love a nice little apartment close to our business center. But I don’t expect to be able to solve problems for me. I expect to solve them for the next person.”

As this piece is being written, Angus is on his way to Philadelphia for a Young Democrats of America convention. He is chief of staff for the Massachusetts chapter—“a very generalist role.” In meetings there, he will be passionate, articulate, and quotable. It’s hard to imagine they could start without him.

Elissa Ely is a community psychiatrist.