Annissa Essaibi-George announces mayoral run

Annissa Essaibi-George formally announced her run for mayor, with the city councilor invoking her past as a teacher as she tried to make her case.

“It also gave me a front row seat to the challenges our families face day in and day out: housing and homelessness, food insecurity and access to transportation, the need to juggle multiple jobs, language barriers, child care, health care,” Essaibi-George said outside of East Boston High School, where she taught for a decade. “The roadblocks in this city are real inequities. We have to face them head on and fast.”

Essaibi-George, brushing away increasingly heavy snowfall and pausing periodically as planes roared overhead to and from the nearby Logan International Airport, became the third person to announce a run for mayor.

“I believe in a Boston that has growth and inclusion, justice and safety, wealth and equity,” she said. “These things are not mutually exclusive. Boston can do this. I want to be mayor of this great city — this great city — a place that has lifted me up and made it possible for me, a first generation American, a daughter of immigrants, a Dorchester kid with an Arab name, to run for mayor.

Essaibi-George is the daughter of a father from Tunisia and a mother who was born in Germany in a settlement for people displaced from Poland. The councilor is from Boston’s Polish Triangle neighborhood, a small area in Dorchester south of Andrew Square.

The 47-year-old has been an at-large councilor since 2015, winning re-election citywide by comfortable margins in the two cycles since. On the council, she’s served as the education chair and has also focused on the opioid epidemic, mental health and homelessness.

The at-large city councilor is now the third person — all women — to announce a run, joining fellow City Councilors Andrea Campbell and Michelle Wu, who both started their operations up in September. Essaibi-George is the first person to formally announce a run in the weeks since President Biden picked Mayor Martin Walsh for Labor secretary, setting up his departure.

Essaibi-George praised her old friend and neighbor Walsh, and framed her approach as building off his work — a contrast to the approach taken by her opponents who called for sharp changes as they initially were running against him.

“Mayor Walsh has tirelessly dedicated himself to bettering Boston in these past seven years, and there is still so much work to do,” she said. “And while Boston is an incredible place to call home, COVID has shone a bright light on our shortcomings and disparities. But this is a city of scrappy, hardworking people. I know there’s nothing we can’t accomplish together.”

Speculation continues to swirl around other possible entrants, including state Sen. Nick Collins, state Rep. Jon Santiago, Boston economic development chief John Barros and City Council President Kim Janey, who will become acting mayor once Walsh leaves. One person who won’t be running is Police Commissioner William Gross, whose retirement effective Friday to spend more time with family broke just as Essaibi-George was wrapping up her announcement.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2MzQupq