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Janey sworn in
By adamg on Wed, 03/24/2021 - 11:57am
Livestream of the ceremony in City Hall.
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She is the acting mayor
She is the acting mayor whether she wants to be called that or not. Win the November election and then you’re the actual 55th mayor. Salute to her if she does.
Am I the one taking crazy pills?
She's not the mayor; she's the acting mayor. The City Charter even has an entire section just on that role separate from the one about the mayor. It also says you swear in the elected mayor and that makes her "swearing in" completely meaningless.
She's also not the 55th anything. Marty called himself the 54th...but he based it on a Wikipedia page that wasn't even internally consistent with its own counting scheme. If you count each mayor who had non-consecutive terms (which used to be a requirement of the position) as a new number (like we do with the Presidency), but you don't include acting mayors, then Walsh still wasn't the 54th because the Wiki page he based it on miscounted Cutter (who was only acting mayor) as a number, so he was actually 53rd...but even if you do that...then she's still not even 54th because the scheme that makes her 54th wasn't giving numbers to acting mayors and she's acting mayor!
It baffles me that Janey is calling herself the 55th Mayor when she's neither 55th nor the Mayor...and then the City is just going along with that as if everything's normal and with no compunction to correct it...and then the news is just going along too instead of providing sanity and/or fact-checking to the situation leading us even further down this wonderland where she's the 55th Mayor...
TL/DR
Black women mayors need to be be put in/know their place.
Got it.
Uh huh
How did you get race or sex from any of that?
Also, "acting mayor".
EDIT: And thanks for providing me evidence towards what I briefly considered might be the reason the news and others are just going along with calling her the 55th Mayor. They don't want to get called out for racism or sexism that doesn't exist in questioning this mis-declared title and number designation. It instantly forces them to be defensive about something that isn't there. Mayoral candidates don't want to look petty or get the same label either, for fear of it illegitimately sticking.
Why do you have to go there?
The post was thoughtul, sincere, and non-inflammatory, from someone with no history of gratuitous rabble-rousing. I don't see any reason to jump in with an insulting and accusatory response like that.
With all due respect, maybe check your assumptions.
Menino was called acting
No one said it was anti-Italian to do so. And the media did make quite a ruckus about him being the first Italian to serve as mayor, and how Ray Flynn was "the last Irish mayor."
She has limited powers compared to what she will have should she be elected in November.
She is referring to herself as "Mayor" to promote her candidacy, should she run.
Regarding the whole question of should she be counted in the list, I think yes.
There is a pill for this
It is little and blue.
Consider checking your misogyny.
Know What?
Nobody much GAF about your technicalities.
She is the chief executive of a large city. Period.
Deal with it.
I’m okay with this
Just like I’m okay with Jane Swift being called the first female Governor of Massachusetts and Cutter being called Mayor of Boston. Yes, there are limits to what she can do (for instance, she cannot name a new head of the BPD or BPS) but Boston is a city with a strong mayor system of government, so we need a mayor, and right now, until January, Janey is the person doing that job. She’ll be called on to handle COVID and all the issues around it, so it’s a hair more than minding the seat for 9 months.
And no, I don’t see your comment as others seem to be seeing it. You have too much a track record here for that accusation. But then again, I’m still waiting for woke places like Medford to have anyone other than a white man as mayor.
But you have to admit
The "55th" thing is bonkers.
What is bonkers
Is that she is the chief executive of the city and you seem to be obsessed with technicalities that have no bearing on that fact.
No she's not. She is the
No she's not. She is the chief legislative officer of the city. The city today has no chief executive, so she is empowered to do the minimum to keep the city functioning through December.
What exactly do you have against Michelle Wu, Andrea Campbell, Essabi-George, and the other candidates running for Mayor? Janey is pushing lies to try to steal the election from them.
Why is that?
Seems like a pretty minor counting thing that's largely based off of the number the last guy used. As long as she's not doing some kind of immature preteen "lol I'm the 69th/420th mayor of Boston" who cares what number she uses?
Nah
I am the opposite way. I’ll never get why the likes of Jane Swift don’t get counted as Governor. I mean, Swift had a 2 year term, which is longer than some of her predecessors served.
No one says that John Tyler, Andrew Johnson, Millard Fillmore, and Chester Arthur shouldn’t be counted as President, even though none of them were elected.
Yeah, but...
Even if you want to give her a number (and I'm not necessarily saying that she shouldn't)....the number 55 isn't the right number. Menino called himself 47th in 1993 (Marty would be 48th and Kim would be 49th) because he was the 47th person to sit in the office regardless of non-consecutive terms. Walsh only called himself 54th based on the "Mayor of Boston" wikipedia page which is still to this day internally inconsistent (and has at least been modified to reflect that). AND the only way to get to a count of 53 (if you correct the error in the count that Marty didn't) is to NOT count acting mayors, like her. So she's not the 54th either in that case.
Using the Presidency isn't a valid model because the Vice Presidents you named didn't become Acting President, they actually succeeded the office of the President. But even if you *did* use that model, she'd be 59th not 55th (because there were 4 numbers skipped on the wikipedia page).
EDIT: As you can see from the table below, it's not even clear to me why Menino called himself 47th as it doesn't fit any normal counting scheme either.
A key point about the Presidency
Before the 23rd Amendment came into force, the status of a Vice President who was in office when something happened to the President was Constitutionally vague. Tyler just set a precedent, though it should be noted that in doing so, he was not really held in high esteem by Congress.
Moreover, if you look at the Veeps who ascended, before Teddy Roosevelt has McKinley knocked off, they basically finished the term of the guy who was on the top of the ticket then left.
But looking at your chart below, I see where you are coming from.
Care to cite some evidence...
... demonstrating that Teddy Roosevelt had McKinley "knocked off"?
I mean, everyone knows
That Teddy paid Leon Czolgosz to take care of business. Why do you think it happened in the state Roosevelt was once governor of? Basically the first coup in the history of the United States, and the one better covered up than LBJ's violent takeover of the United States.
(and by the way, my fantastic conspiracy theory is purely tongue in cheek, but I love putting the JFK spin on the McKinley assassination.)
Current Medford mayor's first name ...
Brianna.
Previous Mayor's first name: Stephanie.
Very masculine first names, don't you think?
Speaking as a Medford Resident
I voted for Burke every time she ran but I've been happy with Lungo-Koehn and will vote for her again.
But when the comes to the City Council, it's mostly a club of Angry White Men. There are a few exceptions (previously Brianna Lungo-Koehnand and now Nicole Morell) but it's pretty embarrassing who the town elects to represent them.
Mostly true
Although Penta still thinks what dribbles out of his addled mouth matters, he isn't in office. Nicole and Zac are sure making them all squirm.
Meh on "Bears"
He doesn't respond to emails and seems to like to hear himself talk more than anything else. I wrote him off when his campaign started spam texting me and lied about where they got the number from.
No complaints about Nicole Morell. Wish there was six more like her.
People like Scarpelli are a stain on the town.
Point taken
But still a very white pedigree, no?
Here, I made a table
Kim is either the 59th Mayor or Acting Mayor or the 51st person to act in the office of Mayor.
My assumption is that the table of names and whether they were acting mayor or mayor in the Wikipedia article is complete and correct (even if its numbering isn't).
I'm happy to update/correct anything someone finds wrong.
Ok but
Why does it matter if she's #55, #51, or #59? Is there some special power only given to Mayors that are multiples of 5 or something?
Why does it matter so much to
Why does it matter so much to Janey that she repeatedly refers to herself as the 55th Mayor of Boston. She easily could drop it, and simply refer to herself as acting mayor and City Council President.
Of course
The number 55 would give her special powers, but she's not Mayor only Acting Mayor. (j/k)
It's just about being formal/proper/correct about something like this. Otherwise, in 45 mayors (or less if we keep letting them just make up numbers, I guess) we're going to be crowing about the 100th Mayor of Boston...and it'll actually be like the 73rd Mayor.
My biggest problem is the total lack of internal consistency. It offends a sensibility of something that is definitive fact and should be easy to get right, but people took short cuts and didn't do the research to get it right. Marty even thinking he was 54th...and then Kim just basing her number off of his. It's a lack of attention to reality purely for the show of it. Sure, it's likely just naivety that led her to call herself the 55th Mayor and she's trusting Marty did the math right. But now it's being pointed out that Marty did it wrong...so, let's get it right then. Let's fix this minor thing because we should be fixing the easy things as well as the hard things and not just going on as if it doesn't matter if we call red blue or pick numbers out of the hat.
You can already see that every news agency...even national TV like the Today Show this morning is going along with this statement that she's the 55th Mayor. It's wrong and easily correctable...but only before it gets out of hand. We shouldn't just call her the 55th Mayor because she wants the number and the title...we should be accurate in our statements (and reporting). Otherwise, what's the point of any of this? We've been through 4 years of national gaslighting...can we please just get one number right from our city's official declaration and not be gaslighted, even unintentionally, over this too?
What about if you count by
What about if you count by term? Which term is she serving in?
Good question
That will take some original research from me.
Either way, though, she'd be serving the same term as Marty's most recent (she's finishing his, not starting her own).