Mayor Walsh, city councilors Michael Flaherty and Michelle Wu and state Sen. Linda Dorcena Forry this morning backed residents opposed to a Starbucks at L Street and East Broadway, saying there are already enough coffee options in the area, that a Starbucks would exacerbate morning traffic woes at the intersection and would help to eat away at the family-oriented, mom-and-pop nature of the commercial district east of Perkins Square. Read more.

The host has long been the state senator from South Boston, but now the state senator for South Boston isn't from South Boston and so the gloves are off and City Councilor Bill Linehan, who took over hosting when Jack Hart quit as senator, vows not to let some upstart from, gawd, Dorchester, host the breakfast.

Unofficial city returns show state Rep. Linda Dorcena Forry with roughly 82% of the vote against Republican Joe Ureneck.

So who will host next year's St. Patrick's Day breakfast in South Boston?

Meanwhile, in the Democratic primary in the 8th Suffolk state rep's race, Jay Livingstone beat Josh Dawson roughly 68-32.

This past week was a big week in politics here in Boston.

1. Steve Lynch will not run for Mayor.

Leading up to this past week, many speculated that 8th Congressional District U.S. Representative Stephen Lynch was using the U.S. Senate race to raise his profile so he could run for Boston Mayor. Lynch's chances were ruined by losing his hometown of Boston by a margin of 31,000 plus votes to Lynch's 28,000 plus votes.

Essentially, Markey "Al Gored" Stephen Lynch. To understand this, Al Gore lost his home state of Tennessee to George W. Bush in 2000 and that was the real reason why Gore lost the presidency not because of Florida. For Lynch to have won the U.S. Senate Democratic Primary, he needed to run up the vote against Markey in Boston and this just did not happen.

2. Dewey beats Truman.

The 1st Suffolk Senate race was an unbelievable contest. My parish, St. Ann's, falls right inside this state Senate district. Three great candidates fought tooth and nail to replace Jack Hart who left his seat for a high paying job at a law firm.

AP called the 1st Suffolk race for Collins early on, but as of 10:08 p.m., city results showed Dorcena Forry leading by a slim margin - and the Dorcena Forry camp was declaring victory. The Collins camp, however, was conceding nothing.

The Dorchester Reporter has hired an outside editor to keep tabs of its coverage of the 1st Suffolk Senate race of Linda Dorcena Forry, whose husband, Bill, is publisher of the paper and the Boston Haitian Reporter and Mattapan Reporter.

Michael Jonas, executive editor of CommonWealth magazine, and a long-time Dorchester resident, will review the paper's coverage of her race this spring to replace recently resigned state Sen. Jack Hart.

ConnollyRather than simply expanding the number of school-assignment zones, two city councilors and four state representatives today proposed giving elementary students seat in a school in their neighborhood - but with a network of citywide magnet schools for parents dissatisfied with those schools.

The plan is an alternative to plans now under discussion by Boston school officials to expand the current three assignment zones to six or nine (school officials have also published maps of zones with 11, 23 and no zones, but have said those would fail to allow for school choice in a system that continues to have educational inequalities). City Councilor John Connolly, who chairs the council's education committee, Councilor Matt O'Malley and state representatives Linda Dorcena Forry, Nick Collins, Ed Coppinger and Russell Holmes unveiled their proposal this morning at the State House.