Boston has only ever elected White men as mayor. With the first mayor, John Phillips, being elected in 1822 and the last mayor, Martin J. Walsh, being elected in 2014, there has been a 192-year succession of White mayors. In just the last 91 years alone, Boston has only seen Irish American and Italian American men being elected. This, of course, does not include Mayor Kim Janey, the first Black woman mayor of Boston, who was sworn in on March 24 after former mayor Martin Walsh left to work as the Secretary of Labor for President Joe Biden.
Kim Janey has since been leading Boston through the COVID-19 pandemic. However, her role as mayor will be cut short as the primary mayoral results from September 15 indicated her to be the fourth place finisher in the primary where only the top two candidates would advance. Janey and Andrea Campbell, a City Councilor and the other Black candidate, finished fourth and third respectively; despite this primary election being dominated by women of color, some are suggesting that Boston is still not ready to elect its first Black woman as mayor and view these election results as a tremendous disappointment, while others are still hopeful that the large turnout for the two Black candidates is a sign of change and progress.
Despite this, in the next mayoral election happening this November, Boston will make history in electing its first woman of color, and the future of Boston may look different depending on which mayor is elected. Michelle Wu won 33.36% of the votes in the primary election, a plurality closely followed by Annissa Essaibi George who won 22.48% of the votes. The daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, Wu moved to Boston to attend Harvard College and later Harvard Law School. She was first elected to the Boston City Council in 2013, where she was the first Asian-American woman to serve on the Council. In 2016, she was the first woman of color to be elected council president. George is a first-generation American, born and raised in Dorchester to a Tunisian father and Polish mother. She was a teacher in East Boston before assuming her position as City Councilor at-large in 2016.
With Election Day inching closer, the candidates’ differing stances on important issues have come into the limelight. One large source of division for the candidates has been their varying ideas on policing. George opposes reallocating portions of the Boston Police Department budget and has proposed to increase the number of police officers across the board. In her platform, she calls for annual performance evaluations for all officers and the implementation of a three-step Early Warning System to pinpoint potential officers with multiple misconduct complaints. George also calls for police training to include racial bias and de-escalation, and she has focused on increasing investment in mental health clinicians to act as co-responder in mental health crises. Wu, on the other hand, calls for a drastic shift in policing through the city’s ongoing contract negotiations with Boston police unions. She demands accountability and transparency, and she has called for reducing costs of overtime for police and investing them back into the community. She also wants to establish guardrails on over-policing by diverting nonviolent 911 calls to alternative response teams and civilianizing traffic enforcement.
Likewise, the candidates have opposing ideas on transportation, particularly due to Wu’s call to make the MBTA free to ride, which she hopes will “close the racial wealth divide, advance climate justice, and empower communities.” While George has supported removing fees for certain bus lines that connect lower-income communities to economic centers, she has questioned the financial backing and practicality of such a progressive agenda item. Yet with a long history of red-lining and inequality, the city of Boston still has a long way to go in making tangible progress towards economic equality. Housing discrimination is still prevalent, and in 2015, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston found that White households had a median wealth of $247,500, while people of color had a median wealth of close to zero ($8).
Likewise, climate change has been an important issue concerning the city and a big topic of conversation during the mayoral election. Wu has a big focus on climate change, going as far as proposing Boston’s own version of a Green New Deal. George admits that climate change would be a lower policy priority. She was the only mayoral candidate during a public forum to give climate change less than a 10 on priority scale; George gave it an eight out of 10. Essaibi George argues that the issue, while “critical,” will take a backseat to everyday concerns, unless residents are “engaged about its impacts.”
With such differing perspectives on important issues, the candidates have received significantly different demographic support. During primaries, most of Boston’s predominantly White precincts rallied behind George. According to the Boston Globe, “She performed particularly well in her traditional base areas, in South Boston, the whiter parts of Dorchester near the water, and in a pocket of West Roxbury that has a long history of conservative voting.” This included the Trump-voting residents and blue-collar workers of West Roxbury. Wu won significant portions of the rest of Boston, which included heavy wins in Jamaica Plain, Roslindale, and parts of East Boston. During the election in November, however, the two candidates will have to focus on rallying the voters that backed other candidates during the primary. Wu may have an upperhand in this regard as she has already received endorsements from both Kim Janey and Andrea Campell.
But what does this all mean for Boston? Despite the historic win that Michelle Wu or Annissa Essaibi George’s election will represent, Boston’s future will look different depending on the candidate elected. Key policy disagreements and distinctive demographic support will be at the forefront of deciding who Boston residents will vote for in November. With moderate and progressive ideas on the table, Boston’s future as a city is on the line. The way to get a voice in that decision is to get out and vote on November 2nd, 2021.
Image by Zixi Zhou is licensed under the Unsplash License.
