Boston City Council election features 7 contested races
Voters heading to the polls Tuesday will decide the outcome of seven contested races for Boston City Council, an election that will change the makeup of a body defined by its ethical and legal lapses, infighting and lack of productivity.
At least four new members will be elected to the City Council next week, in the closely-watched races for District 5 and 6, where embattled incumbents Ricardo Arroyo and Kendra Lara were knocked off in the preliminary; and for the District 3 and at-large seats that opened up when longtime Councilors Frank Baker and Michael Flaherty chose not to seek re-election.
New Councilor Sharon Durkan will face the same opponent she defeated in a July special election, as she vies to hold onto her seat in District 8.
Other contested races include District 7, where Tania Fernandes Anderson will try to fend off a perennial candidate, and District 9, where two progressives will face off, with the incumbent Liz Breadon seeking to retain her seat in Allston/Brighton.
Councilors in District 1, 2 and 4, Gabriela Coletta, Ed Flynn and Brian Worrell, are running unopposed.
Polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 8 p.m.
At-Large
The at-large field features eight candidates running for four seats, but with the three incumbents expected to win, the race is viewed as a contest for a final open seat.
The top two contenders for that seat are Henry Santana, a progressive backed by Mayor Michelle Wu and a host of other elected officials, and Bridget Nee-Walsh, a blue-collar, more conservative candidate with endorsements from a sizable number of labor unions, including Boston police and fire.
Santana lives in Dorchester and previously worked for Wu as director of civic organizing for the city. The Dominican Republic native cited housing, climate and public safety as his top priorities in a prior interview with the Herald.
Nee-Walsh is a union ironworker who lives in South Boston. She describes her political leanings as “right-of-center” and is running to represent “blue-collar working class people” and be a “voice of reason” on a chaotic Council.
She is in favor of more vocational options in the Boston Public Schools, and a better school system across the board.
Santana was criticized for his blank voting record in this election cycle, while Nee-Walsh, according to Commonwealth Beacon, received some blowback for describing the Black Lives Matter movement as divisive at a candidates forum.
The three incumbents running are Ruthzee Louijeune, an attorney who worked as senior legal counsel for U.S. Sen. Elizabeth’s Warren’s presidential campaign; the progressive Julia Mejia, a native of the Dominican Republic; and the more conservative Erin Murphy, a former Boston schoolteacher.
Catherine Vitale and Shawn Nelson, two Wu critics who protested against the mayor’s prior vaccine mandate for city workers, and Clifton Braithwaite, a community activist, are also running.
District 3
In District 3, John FitzGerald, deputy director of real estate operations for the Boston Planning and Development Agency, faces Joel Richards, a school teacher and pastor he outpaced by a roughly 2-1 margin in the September preliminary.
FitzGerald, the son of the late state Rep. Kevin Fitzgerald, was endorsed by former Mayor Marty Walsh and the outgoing conservative-leaning Councilor Frank Baker.
He lists affordable housing, public safety, education and access to basic city services as top priorities.
The progressive Richards was born to Jamaican immigrant parents and founded the Dorchester Juneteenth Celebration, for which he is still the head planner.
His priorities include affordable housing, transportation, green infrastructure, and small businesses.
District 5
The District 5 race features a pair of dueling mayoral endorsements.
Mayor Michelle Wu is backing a fellow progressive, Enrique Pepén, while Marty Walsh has endorsed the more conservative candidate Jose Ruiz.
Pepén, Wu’s former head of the Boston Office of Neighborhood Services, was born to Dominican immigrant parents and lives in Roslindale.
He lists affordable housing, public education and environmental justice among the priorities laid out on his campaign website.
Ruiz is a retired 29-year Boston police officer whose public safety experience has been touted by the city’s largest police union.
He lists affordable housing, education, public safety and basic city services as top priorities on his campaign website.
District 6
The race for District 6 is a battle between West Roxbury, where William King lives, and Jamaica Plain, where Benjamin Weber resides.
The progressive-leaning candidate Weber is a workers’ rights attorney who snagged an endorsement from Mayor Michelle Wu.
Weber was the top-vote getter in the preliminary contest, narrowly outpacing the more moderate King.
He has told the Herald that his focus would be on education, affordable housing and providing “individual constituent services” to people in the district.
King, an information technology specialist, describes himself as a Democrat with both progressive and moderate views.
He listed constituent services, alternative options in public education, and different career pathways for those who don’t want to be saddled with college debt among his top priorities, in a prior interview with the Herald.
District 7
The incumbent Tania Fernandes Anderson is trying to fend off a challenge from the perennial candidate Althea Garrison in her bid for a second term.
Fernandes Anderson has worked to advance progressive policies on the City Council, such as spearheading a resolution to change the name of Faneuil Hall, a tourist attraction named after a slaveholder, but has faced her share of controversy.
She was found to have violated the state’s conflict of interest law, for hiring her sister and son to paid positions on her staff, and was slapped with a $5,000 fine.
She was criticized for putting forward a resolution that referred to the Hamas terrorist organization as a “militant group,” and characterized the Oct. 7 attack that killed 1,400 Israelis as a “military operation.”
Fernandes Anderson also oversaw a City Council budget process that cut nearly $31 million from the Boston Police Department and $900,000 from veterans’ services, both of which were vetoed by the mayor.
Garrison is a former city councilor-at-large and was the first transgender person to be elected to a state legislature in the United States, ultimately serving one term, from 1993-95.
District 8
Sharon Durkan, a progressive backed by Mayor Michelle Wu, faces Montez Haywood, a longtime prosecutor with the Suffolk District Attorney’s office, in her bid to hold onto her four-month-old Beacon Hill seat.
Durkan was a political organizer who worked for Wu and former District 8 Councilor Kenzie Bok before winning last July’s special election.
As chair of the Ward 5 Democrats, Durkan racked up a host of endorsements from elected officials heading into the September preliminary, prompting Haywood to criticize the “inside baseball” happening in the race, in terms of the city’s Democratic establishment siding with his opponent.
District 9
In District 9, Liz Breadon is trying to fend off fellow progressive Jacob deBlecourt in her bid for a third term.
Breadon immigrated to the United States from Northern Ireland in 1995, according to her City Hall biography, which touts her 20 years of experience as a community activist in Allston and Brighton.
deBlecourt previously worked as director of public policy and communications for at-Large Councilor Julia Mejia, work that he stated led to “one of the most progressive language access laws in the country.”
On his website, deBlecourt discusses the high cost of living in Boston. Like his opponent, he favors affordable housing improvements.
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/prFlVKZ
Post a Comment