Wu wins, becomes first woman of color to get elected mayor of Boston
City Councilor Michelle Wu today won even West Roxbury in a successful race for mayor and will be inaugurated as mayor on Nov. 16.
Challenger and fellow at-large Councilor Annissa Essaibi George conceded around 10:15 p.m
Watch Wu's victory speech (that pendant she's wearing? Actually an old T token).
Unlike in some of the council races, the results for mayor were never really in doubt from just minutes after the polls closed. For weeks, polls had shown Wu with a commanding lead.
It's wasn't looking good for Annissa Essaibi George when she barely won a key Savin Hill precinct. At 9:15 p.m., Carter Wilkie reported Wu won Ward 20 - West Roxbury and about half of Roslindale.
Essaibi George did only slightly better than she did in the preliminary, while Wu, who came in first in September, appeared to not just hold her own but picked up new voters, possibly people who voted for Campbell or Janey.
Wu has won all of the precincts where votes are in so far that Janey, Campbell, or Barros won in the prelim. https://t.co/cycZkwoJzP pic.twitter.com/qqO5hjYCZN
— Steve Koczela (@skoczela) November 3, 2021
In District 7 (Roxbury, South End), newcomer Tania Fernandes Anderson trounced serial loser Roy Owens in the race to replace acting Mayor Kim Janey:
Tania Anderson becomes the 1st Muslim American, 1st African immigrant and 1st formerly undocumented person elected to the Boston City Council. #bospoli history pic.twitter.com/S02eEE6Rap
— Yawu Miller (@YawuMiller) November 3, 2021
![Kendra Hicks](/images/2021/khicks.jpg)
Also making history: Kendra Hicks of Jamaica Plain, who will become the first Black woman and first socialist to represent District 6 (Jamaica Plain, West Roxbury).
Hicks, a community activist, defeated former School Committee member Mary Tamer on West Roxbury, in a campaign that started off more like a roundtable among friends but ended in racially tinged bitterness
Hicks will replace Matt O'Malley, who decided not to run again.
Besides Owens, his fellow serial loser, Althea Garrison, lost in a bid for another at-large seat. Garrison failed to get even near the fifth slot, which was how she got onto the council for a few months after Ayanna Pressley left for Washington in 2019.
Incumbent at-large councilors Michael Flaherty and Julia Mejia easily won re-election. Joining them will be Ruthzee Louijeune. Erin Murphy beat David Halbert for the fourt at-large seat.
In District 3, Frank Baker easily won, putting out a statement even before the vote tallying was finished, saying he's looking to helping to solve the Mass and Cass crisis. Also winning handily: Ricardo Arroyo in District 5 (Hyde Park, Mattapan, Roslindale) and Liz Breadon in District 9 (Allston/Brighton).
In District 4 (Dorchester, Mattapan, Roslindale), Brian Worrell defeated former state Rep. Evandro Carvalho.
Question 1 (to give the City Council more say in budgeting) and Question 3 (bring back an elected School Committee) won.The first is binding, the second is advisory. Question 2, which asks voters whether they support putting an electric substation in a flood zone next to a playground and police station, and which is also advisory, is losing.
Bostonians for an Elected School Committee says:
Now it’s time for the City Council, Mayor-elect Michelle Wu, and the Boston delegation on Beacon Hill to carry out the mandate of the voters and move swiftly to pass a home rule petition that will allow Boston residents to do what residents in every other city and town in Massachusetts already do -- vote for the people who set policy for our public schools.
More to come.
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Comments
How is Kendra Hicks doing?
That’s a critical race.
So far losing, but ...
Without knowing which precincts have reported, that doesn't mean anything yet.
Socialist Hicks going down in flames!
It’s a beautiful sight to watch. :)
#TeamTamer
Reality would like to have a word with you
How you feel about swallowing bitter pills?
gaffin
Better come up with a lot more profitable clickbait because those property taxes are going up up up!
Aw, somebody's fee-fees are really owie tonight
You don't understand how property taxes in Boston work, do you?
silly gaffin
That residential exemption is already towards the chopping block. Also remind me, what happens to your property tax when your valuation gets inflated to San Francisco levels thanks to all of wu’s policies that worked so well in San Francisco?
But look on the bright side, at least you’ll get to brag you live in a million dollar house!
You might want to look up how Prop 2 1/2 works
Also tax classification.
Facts are hard, I know.
Silly gaffin
No one is raising your tax rate. Your assessed value, on the other hand, is a whole different story - how many extra clicks will you need if that gets up to San Francisco levels?
Please grow up
And try again.
If you need help fabricating a new OMG SCARY SOCIALIST MONSTER, dial 111 and Dr. Frankenstein will assist you.
For racism assistance, please consult your linen closet.
This has been a service of sickandfuckingtiredofthisstupidityeverywhere.
Every time you comment here
I'm going to open this thread up and click on every ad on the page.
Sorry you don't get how taxes work here
if everybody's valuation goes up by the same amount, nobody's taxes go up, well, not more than 2.5% . Prop. 2 1/2 sets a total yearly limit of 2.5% on the amount the city can increase its total property tax revenue by each year (ooh, see how it got its name, clever, huh?).
The problem is when certain neighborhood's values go up faster than others, because it's ultimately a zero-sum game, since Prop. 2 1/2 is only concerned with total revenue, not the taxes on any one property.
The value of our house is more than it was a few years ago, so yay for us, but our property taxes have not gone up at all because our house is small and in a fairly obscure, distant place that doesn't attract the attention that property elsewhere in the city has gotten. In fact, for awhile, our yearly tax bills were going down slightly (they've since stabilized).
But property values have skyrocketed far more in, say, South Boston - or even other parts of Roslindale - so people there see increases in their real-estate tax bills every year. You're now even seeing that in parts of Roxbury around Dudley Square.
This absolutely sucks for people who live in such areas and want to stay there, especially people on fixed incomes.
But if Boston becomes so wonderful that everybody's property valuations increase, by itself, no, that doesn't mean everybody's taxes will go up.
S/he may have a point
If Wu makes everything free - especially child care/early education - that could drive up the cost of single family homes in Boston as parents with children flock to the city to take advantage of the service. If housing prices go up faster in the suburban neighborhoods of Rozzie and West Rox etc. - taxes could skyrocket.
Years off - but if she is successful at free childcare, free T, affordable housing initiatives (which simply reduce supply and drive up prices of the market rate homes), watch out - people will pay a premium for the homes to get all the free stuff and that could cause sticker shock in those areas. Granted, you'll be able to sell your houses for a fortune. Will probably help home prices in JP too - so maybe sneaky like a fox.
Granted, not likely any of this is happening and certainly not happening before she sets her sights on Beacon Hill or DC so we're probably safe.
Nothing is free
There's a cost to "free" programs - like the $500,000 the city is paying for the no-fare trial on the 28 bus.
But there are also savings - the amount of overhead that went into making some kids pay for school lunches went away when BPS made school lunches free for kids. And there's a societal value for making sure kids get enough nutrition - so the cost of the food is worth it.
The same with the T: If the T did become free, would we still need that $1-billion new fare system the state is installing? What else could the T do with $1 billion in capital funds?
Wu may be many things, but she is not a moron - she realizes things cost money and that that's going to take budgeting. Boston is lucky that its long-running building boom continues and that all those new buildings are putting money into city coffers. There's an opportunity to dream there that many other cities don't have.
And yes, some things would take action by the state - like free or reduced fares on the T. Yes, the mayor can't just snap her fingers and make it happen. But why not aim big? It might be hard to get the state to move, but not impossible, but we'll never know if we don't try.
*STANDING OVATION*
*STANDING OVATION*
hold on
to be clear, your argument is that Wu is going to make living in Boston so good that it would actually be bad?
it’s monstrous
when a mayor drives up property values by making the city a better place to live.
Is there a single damn thing that will NOT drive
...property costs up Boston other than the Fed raising interest rates? Or outside of Boston? Or anywhere else in the country?
You know
Whoever you are, you don't actually have to visit this website.
Sick burn
Now do one that makes any sense
David Halbert and Carla Monteiro!
Did they win?
Monteiro no
Halbert is looking like no as well - he's about 1,100 votes behind Murphy for the fourth seat.
Unofficial results.
Sour Winners & Losers = Bad Politics
My 1st thought is to Adam....how can you run a media website like U-Hub and be such a big part of opinions on the news you are reporting? I guess it runs right in-line with CNN.
My 2nd thought is how sad local politics have become. All I see is folks picking sides based on race and where you live, regardless of the issues and the records of those campaigning to be elected to public office.
Sad state of where we are in 2021. I truly see the city digressing back to the hate race days of the 1970's just in reverse....I guess that makes it OK when you control the narrative of what is popular at the time. I thought we grew above that, or would have learned from the mistakes of the past.
Clearly not.
Whatever, I no longer care
Freedom of choice rules in local news: If you hate UHub, there are other options for you, Boston is really blessed with a lot of news sources, unless you get off on masochism, in which case, you do you. I'm not doing anything differently than I did five years ago, so either you're new here, and then I extend my apologies for wasting your time, or you're being disingenuous for the sake of an argument.
As for race, please. There was one district election in which race was an issue. It wasn't an issue in the mayor's race, it wasn't an issue in the at-large council races, it wasn't an issue in any of the district races save that one specific race (unless you want to consider the election involving Roy Owens, but, honestly, nobody wants to consider him) - and there were some specific reasons why race became an issue, which I could explain, but then you'd just accuse me of being CNN Jr. again, so not worth my time and probably not yours (and don't get me started on how maybe we should be talking more about race, because it's late and you've already tuned me out, I suspect).
Victimhood Complex - We Need To Help In Other Ways
Race was not an issue for one district. People only see what they want to see. People only read into words the way they want to read into words.
We should be talking about race, but we also should be talking about real solutions - not how we should victimize all Black people. We need to talk about solutions to getting fair education for all, cleaning up crime in predominantly black neighborhoods, getting Black people trained for trades so they can work and be self-sufficient from government services, incentivizing school attendance and achievement. The victimhood complex has to stop and will only deepen the race divide further. We need to help in other and better ways.
And I'll be moving my local news sources elsewhere.
Medium rare
That there is some grade-A whitesplaining.
i’d wager that the person who wrote this
is probably Black.
lol
Even if we generously put aside the dog whistles from the Tamer/Hicks race, this is demonstrably false.
There is no world in which Roy Owens exists as a candidate where it can be said to not be about race, even if he's up against other black candidates. His platform is like 50% Black Genocide Conspiracies and 50% Assorted Nuttery. There's no misinterpreting his words on the matter.
While I do think we make a big deal about race, sometimes to the detriment of the facts of the matter at hand, it's disingenuous to say that it's not a factor in many issues in greater Boston.
Whatever you say,
you're basically William Randolph Hearst at this point. /s
Rosebud
n/t
Whatever you are doing . . . . .
Thank you.
We need more of it.
The 70s
The legacy of the ‘70s is alive and well. I talk with middle-aged and older white Bostonians (contractors, nurses at hospitals, etc.) about how long they’ve lived here, where they or their kids went to school, and they give me a knowing, caucasian-to-caucasian look and say “well, until busing…” Which is shorthand for “separate and unequal was better.”
So is it all about race? Sure, it is. Because for a long, long time, from redlining to unions to city hiring to schools (and even in 2021 with exam schools), white people in Boston have kept their fingers on the scales to maintain their advantages. Of course they don’t want to talk about it — “why’s it always about race?” — because who wants to admit that they’re benefiting from a rigged system. Why would any of those people want to “learn from their mistakes” or “grow above it” when that would mean giving up their race- and class-based privilege?
Ah yes…
…Boston, the home of Louise Day Hicks, Dapper O’Neil, grown-ass adults hurling rocks and racial slurs at Black children trying to attend school, 100-year run of picking almost exclusively white Irish-Catholic* mayors, an all-white city council until 1967, and an all-white school committee until 1979 is now “all of a sudden” picking sides because of race.
It seems like a certain demographic doesn’t have a problem with picking sides because of race as long as voters choose the
whiteright side.(*exceptions being a noted white Italian Catholic and, for diversity’s sake, a white Swedenborgian)
Wait
there was a Swedenborgian mayor? Don't get me wrong, the rest of your post was great, but you have sent my mind careening off in a different direction. Who was this Swedenborgian?
Malcolm Nichols
Also the last Republican Mayor of Boston. 1926-1930.
http://churchonthehillboston.org/history/
Just went down some of those lists....
Found out today that Mike Dukakis was governor twice, once from 1975-1979 and then 1983-1991. Never knew he was governor in the 1970s
kinda sad...
kinda sad the comment titled "Sour Winners & Losers = Bad Politics" got upvotes... there's a whole world out here on the interwebs and you can choose any news site you want.
Also, Adam is a human and has opinions. He doesn't delete comments with opposing views. Running since at least 2005, this is the best local site for Boston neighborhood (and state) news you can visit. You should be happy smaller sites like this still exist where the universe of news choice is getting smaller by the day.
One true thing you said "how sad local politics have become"... just not for the reasons you stated though
oooh
Oooh, he said CNN.
My dude, you are truly ridiculous. You don't even seem to understand just how silly this statement makes you look.
And what does "we grew above that" even mean? That now we have a MLK holiday when white parents tell their children that MLK was all about peace and everybody getting along? That white people can now say "Why do you make it all about race?" any time a Black person points at problems, and just dismiss it and go about their comfortable lives?
To me, the essence of white privilege has always been the power to ignore problems that affect people who aren't white. White people can engage with these problems and work to see that things actually get better...but they're never forced to. And should anyone have the temerity to bring these problems up, white people have an endless source of platitudes, including but not limited to "I thought we grew above that", uttered with no sense of irony in the face of clear evidence that "we" have obviously not even come close to addressing the issues encompassed in this dismissive "that".
Here’s a source
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qaH6zTO7sOfViPFNXfeU3w-E2Vi-eK7P...
As of 9:15P wards 10-11 (a lot of JP) haven’t reported. 19 is 2:1 Hicks with more to come. Meanwhile ward 20 heard Mary Tamer’s dog whistle and turned up en masse at Holy Name.
Wiping the floors clean
Ward 11, where Hicks is leading 5:1, is almost done, 10 and 19 went hard for Hicks who’s up by 1000 at 10P.
Huge congratulations to Kendra Hicks.
And huge congratulations to Mary Tamer for lighting her reputation on fire only to get trounced in the election. What an embarrassment.
And ...
I just watched Hicks declare victory (she starts in Spanish, then switches to English).
Hell yeah!
Hell yeah!
Good Luck
Hope she does well.
Any early results for the
Any early results for the Somerville election? They could potentially become the first city in the US with a majority socialist city council depending on how this election shakes out.
Somerville's official unofficial counts
https://www.somervillema.gov/departments/programs/votesomerville
Mixed results for DSA (Democratic Socialist) candidates
They put up 3 candidates for the 4 At-Large Council seats, and elected 2 of them, Willie Burnley and Charlotte Kelly.
Their incumbent candidate for Ward 2 City Council, JT Scott, won.
They also re-elected an unopposed candidate for Ward 3, Ben Ewen-Campen.
Their candidates for the open seats in Wards 5 and 7 lost.
Total 4 of 11, not a majority.
Wasn't that already done by Burlington VT?
They've had a majority Progressive Party city council for years.
Oh maybe? I was under the
Oh maybe? I was under the impression that it's never happened in this country before. If it has, it would make sense that it was in Burlington though. I love Burlington.
I'm not super familiar with the VT Progressive Party. Are they explicitly socialist or do they have a bigger tent? Looks like the current Burlington city council is 50% Progressive Party, but not sure what the percentage has been in the past.
I was wrong so I can't delete
I was wrong so I can't delete it.
And progressive mayors
Then they had a problem with one and his financial misdeeds, so they went centrist, and now the city is in the crapper, because they elected Democrat trash.
Whenever you feel that way
Grab a bike, head up to the Heroes and catch the ferry to Rep. Stupidfuk's favorite shithole that she never grew up in. It will make you happy to loop through and catch the other ferry back to the heart of Burlington.
2020 World Series
I spent much of it in BVT and couldn't escape her campaign ads. I did, however, appreciate the ones with Jonathan Goldsmith telling Vermonters to vote.
Huh?
Hicks declared victory? Where are the returns? The city election site doesn’t have them. The Globe doesn’t. How does she know?
Campaign workers
She had volunteers at each precinct in the district where, before the police bring the ballots downtown, they post a copy of each machine's results on a wall. It's not rocket science.
Embarrassing
It is, however, embarrassing that campaigns and ambitious tweeters can go to the precinct to grab this data while the flagship paper can’t figure it out.
Huh
How many polling locations are there in Boston? Do you expect them to pay a journalist to sit at each one to get the results simultaneously? Volunteers get it done because they are working for free.
In theory, I kinda agree with
In theory, I kinda agree with you, but there are at least five polling locations in my neighborhood within a ten minute walk (Symphony Towers East and West, Saint Cecilia, Moorville House [sp?], the Northeastern site … never mind the relative proximity of voting locales north of Boylston. How would it be a strain for Boston’s only broadsheet to assign folks to report in real time, using common sense to gather results in real time? Maybe this is why the Boston Glob limos along while online media, including this site, excel in delivering news as it happens via contemporary methods and digital tools.
Doesn't work that way
As someone who has been a volunteer collecting vote counts in the past, I need to correct your assumption of how things work. You say that there are at least five polling locations within a 10-minute walk. From that, I am assuming that you are implying that just one person from a media outlet could get results from those 5 polling locations(some of which contain multiple precincts).
However, in order to gain entrance to a polling location to get those counts you must be in line at that location by 8:00 PM poll closing. You will be let inside where you will wait for the results to be posted (15-30 minute wait typically) and then you and all the others doing the same thing will be able to go up to a posted strip of paper and take a cell phone photo of it. And if there are multiple precincts at that location, you will need to get photos of the strips for each precinct.
Since you can only be in line at one location at closing time and it will take a while to get the results, you will need 5 people to cover 5 polling locations. No media outlet, the Globe included, has enough bodies to devote to the task of getting results from all of the city's polling locations at the same time.
That's why a volunteer crew has the advantage.
Also because no one at the Globe
knows anyone who lives in Boston, so they couldn't possibly organize a fairly simple collection of information, using the people who are already doing the work piecemeal for their respective campaigns.
Yes exactly
The city could also get with the times though, realize what ends up happening, and require that a poll worker from each polling place take a photo and upload it to a specific public server.
Embarrassing?
There are more than 20 wards in Boston, each with numerous precincts. The Globe is a regional paper that doesn’t only cover Boston elections. Several other races going on in the cities and towns as well. How can any paper in this day and age have a reporter at each location to get verified numbers?
Of what benefit?
Of what benefit to anybody, or to society, or to the electoral process, is it to report election results a couple of hours earlier? It's purely entertainment, and it plays into the whole breathless treatment of the vote counting as some kind of horse race in which candidates can "come from behind," "pull ahead," "falter" etc.
Conceded
Wu has won.
I’m excited
both for Mayor Wu, and to not get 17 calls and texts a day from every candidate in the city anymore.
WU-HOO!!!!!!!!!!
WU-HOO!!!!!!!!!!
F*** Lying-ass Willie Gross…
…and his scumbag expenditure PAC backed by J Derenzo, cop unions, Jim Davis, and NEI Contractors. I hope they realize that they spent all that money on those ubiquitous ads to either not move the needle at all or move it in the wrong direction.
I know Gross probably doesn’t care about this election because he gets a paycheck simply for his public endorsement, but given that when he introduced Charlie Baker at a recent fundraiser saying he should be president, it wouldn’t be surprising if he was also auditioning for a job in a third Baker term.
But I am hoping a decisive Wu victory will derail both that PAC and Gross’s GOP ambitions.
Wu takes WR... Hope for West Roxbury yet
It may seem like Trump-ville but it's not entirely...
The Trump/blue-liners just whine the loudest and embarrass the rest of us
Edit: I just saw Ward 20 results for Hicks v. Tamer and almost regret my comment above lol
I voted yes on Question 2
Because fuck whomever wrote that slimy question.
"vote no OR YOU HATE CHILDREN"
I still voted no, because putting a substation in a flood-prone area is a poor idea. But yes, I was flabbergasted that that was really the language of the question. Easily the worst written ballot question I have voted on in twenty years of voting.
Don't forget the jet fuel
"Should this be built near jet fuel storage, or some safe place where there isn't any jet fuel stored like at the airport?"
Not only non-binding, but
Not only non-binding, but somewhat detached from reality. Or at least "uninformed"
Locally regulating it to shove it off onto airport land? Any usable land the airport has - it's using (or has plans to use).
Empty land at the airport? If there is any, it's probably in a flood area, or too close to a runway (that involves FAA regulatory authority). Might even be wetlands.
Hey, y'all!
We're about to have our first female mayor!
Have you forgotten Kim Janey
Have you forgotten Kim Janey already?
Maybe you mean first elected female mayor.
Acting Mayor.
Acting Mayor.
The first mayor
that’s not even from Boston originally.
Sorry, but wrong
The first mayor who was not from Boston originally was Hugh O'Brien.
It's sorta right.
It's sorta right. Wikipedia says High O'Brien emigrated when he was between 2 and 7 years old. That's "from Boston" for all practical purposes. Arriving at that young an age, he'd even pick up a local accent.
Three others, actually
Josiah Quincy (the last one, the third Josiah Quincy to serve as mayor) was from, well, Quincy. Patrick Collins was born in Ireland and Malcolm Nichols was from Portland, ME.
But those are all
...different from Wu....somehow....hmmmm
Yes, they all came to the
Yes, they all came to the area as little kids.
lol
This “being from Boston” thing and all its attendant excuses and lies are so pathetic.
Somehow when people point out
Somehow when people point out firsts like being first woman, first person having "color", etc. it's not pathetic, but pointing out the first of having a different hometown, it is pathetic?
I agree it's trivia but all these firsts are also trivia. They're meaningless in real life, but perfectly fine for lessfilling/tastesgreat debates.
I feel like we explain this to you a lot...
...but context matters in terms of whether something is punching up or punching down.
Are we pointing out that she's one of the first who has the perspective of having lived sizable chunks of her life in other cities? Or are we doing the AEG "only people who grew up here should have a say in anything" thing? (Despite this being a city in which about 25% of people were born in another country and another 25% grew up in a different area.)
(And of course race isn't meaningless. People are treated vastly differently on a daily basis because of it. It's well established. There are also cultural patterns and connections that intersect considerably with race. FOH with your colorblind racism.)
Centuries of disqualification
People want to lament that when someone like Wu is elected that her gender is trivial and her race “doesn’t confer any special qualifications for the job, so why talk about it?”
But the reason why neither Wu’s gender mor race isn’t trivial is because she has been elected after centuries of Boston culture where both factors would have automatically disqualified her for office, first by law and then in the eyes of biased voters.
Ask yourself “what year would be the first year a Michelle Wu would be a viable candidate for elected office in Boston?”
Well, we know she wouldn’t be viable in the founding of the town in 1630 or at the incorporation of the city in 1822. That covers roughly the first two centuries.
Women did not gain suffrage until 1920, so add another century.
Do you think she would have gotten elected during WWII era or the Korean and Vietnam War eras? There is definitely no way she is breaking through the streak of white Irish Catholic mayors.
After the civil and voting rights fights of the 60s we had the Boston of the 70s and 80s which, if you have a cursory notion of recent Boston history, you know that despite the lack of legal obstacles preventing her from running, the Boston electorate would not give her any chance in hell.
How about the 90s? Now we’re into Menino time; dude was so popular he ran unapposed in one of his elections. And it is very hard to imagine Menino’s more conservative opponents funding an Asian woman over a white male.
Now we’re into the 2000s. Maybe Sam Yoon being elected to city council in 2005 and then running in the mayoral preliminaries in 2009 opened the minds of the Boston electorate for an Asian-American mayor. This was also the decade that Peggy Davis-Mullen was the second-ever finalist for Boston Mayor.
So, despite the myth of a progressive, open-minded Boston generously speaking it has only been the last 20 years that an Asian American woman could qualify as a viable mayoral candidate in the city. Out of 391 years of history, that 20 years amounts to about 5% of the total time.
So sure, people can argue that her race and her gender has nothing to do with her qualifications, but if you really want to do so then have the honesty and courage to acknowledge that throughout 95% and the better part of 4 centuries of Boston’s history those immutable traits were immediate disqualifiers. The barriers that had to fall for Wu to become mayor were by no means trivial.
But she's not the first to have a different hometown
That's the point. As Adam has pointed out, there's at least 3 other previous mayors who were not born in Boston. So you'd have to go with "first not born in Boston or moved here before age X" (at which point you're veering into wild baseball statistics of "best batting average on rainy Mondays in June against left-handed Libra pitchers").
(and for what it's worth, I imagine if you asked Michelle Wu, she'd say that Boston is her hometown.)
And...
...when did YOU come to Boston, "Refugee"?
I'm a local
I'm a lifetime local and 'from here'... but guess what? I'm getting sick of you people who are 'from here' complaining about a promising new mayor who didn't grow up from birth in one of the Boston neighborhoods.
The voters spoke - just deal with it. This BS tribe mentality needs to go...
It doesn't even make logical sense
Sure, I can understand the argument about people who plunk down somewhere just to immediately run for office there. But Michelle Wu has lived in the Boston area nearly all of her adult life. Pretty much her entire academic and professional career post-high-school has been here. She's raising her children here. Should she only be allowed to run for office in Chicago, where she has barely lived as an adult? I'm not sure most voters there or anywhere would place a lot of faith in someone whose only experience with a community is having attended public school there 20 years ago, and why should they?
And then does this argument also extend to candidates who have no "home" due to connections to the military, academia, migrant labor, foster care, or life in shelters just aren't people who can run for office? Are we saying we only want people who grew up in one house and who were culturally expected to go to college in town, get a job from a relative's connections, and eventually raise their family in another floor of their parents' three-decker?
(And before anyone gets their panties in a wad, of course there's nothing wrong with that. But since people who live here all their lives are less than half of Boston, why should we say the whole city should be represented by such folks? A quarter of "real" Bostonians are immigrants, and another quarter grew up elsewhere in the US.)
I'm getting sick of you
Who's complaining?
Totally agree, jennifer!
Another local here tired of this old parochial crap. I'm as Bostonian as anyone and believe that our fair city has greatly benefited from the addition of people from elsewhere.
Guess what?
A whole bunch of people obviously don't give an airborne copulation about your provincial whinging needs.
Make that four
Augustus Pearl Martin, born in Abbot, ME.
Good...maybe we can get our
Good...maybe we can get our heads out of our asses and move forward.
To be successful, Wu needs to
To be successful, Wu needs to get rid of the current Suffolk DA. Is Rollins getting promoted by the feds, or not?
And the Joke is...
Violent crime is down in Boston. https://www.wgbh.org/news/local-news/2021/10/01/violent-crime-drops-in-b...
Perhaps there is something else about Rollins that makes you think she is the problem and not say, housing, or the opioid crisis, or public transportation, or...
Greetings from Massachusetts!
If you ever make it to this fine state for a visit from wherever you actually live, you should probably take a few minutes to learn that here, the District Attorney is actually an elected position for the County, which means that the Mayor of Boston has absolutely no control over it.
if
your heart is not with these people you don't know where you live, who you are, or what really matters.
Welcome to a new era in Boston.
Many of my ward 20 neighbors just found out that they live in a City, and that Jamaica Plain people actually vote too. The backdrop of young and multi-racial supporters standing behind Wu as she spoke was inspirational.
Wu is not only the first
Wu is not only the first woman of color to get elected Mayor of Boston, but she's the first woman....period, to be elected mayor of Boston!
And the turnout that produced
And the turnout that produced this result?
I'm very very glad
...that we have a new Mayor, not a muthah/teachah/mayah. I hate that that's what it came down to for me, but I found Annisser's ("Annisser" is how she says her own first name) insistence on promoting her Bahstin-isms to the point of caricature really disturbing. Yes, there were other issues in Wu's favor, but Annisser's ads turned me off so much...and then her concession comment about teaching Wu how to speak Bostonian was really pretty offensive.
Welcome, Mayor Wu.
About that accent
All I've heard from Anissa is the muthah/teachah/mayah bit, but that accent struck me as what you'd get from an extra in a low budget film, not in the least authentic.
Yup
That's exactly it. Thanks - I'm glad it wasn't just me.