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Pressley tops ballot
By adamg on Tue, 11/08/2011 - 9:27pm
Pressley victory speech by Mike Deehan/Dorchester Reporter.
Ayanna Pressley, the first-term incumbent whom many thought was most vulnerable to defeat this year, topped the field of candidates for one of four at-large City Council seats.
Unofficial city numbers show Pressley with 37,390 votes, leading Felix Arroyo - another candidate some thought vulnerable - and John Connolly, who came in first two years ago. Incumbent Steve Murphy narrowly retained his seat, beating out former incumbent Michael Flaherty, and putting a damper on another Flaherty run for mayor in two years.
Peter Dziedzic wonders: "Between Linehan's squeaker and Flaherty's apparent loss, what does that say about Southie and its role in Boston politics?"
"Thank You!" Pressley tweeted after the results came in. "I am truly humbled. God bless."
"I'm ecstatic that voters have returned Ayanna and me to the Council," Connolly said in a statement that adds he still has $100,000 in his campaign bank account.
Pressley was aided in the final three weeks of the campaign by both Connolly - who agreed to joint campaign appearances and to give her access to his warchest - and by the Menino camp, which poured foot soldiers into the race.
Unofficial results from the city:
AYANNA S PRESSLEY 37506 21.42% FELIX G ARROYO 35465 20.26% JOHN R CONNOLLY 32803 18.74% STEPHEN J MURPHY 26712 15.26% MICHAEL F FLAHERTY 25790 14.73% WILL DORCENA 8736 4.99% SEAN H RYAN 7373 4.21% Write-in Votes 694 0.40%
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Comments
Just call her Blanche, Blanche DuPressley
Peter Gelzinis doesn't seem much enamored of Ms. Pressley.
Who carried her where?
She got 10.8% of the city to vote for her...and that was the TOP vote getter! A greater percentage of the pitchers on the Red Sox staff had fried chicken and beer last night for dinner! You can get more people in this city to agree Obama is a secret, Kenya-born, muslim terrorist!
You can't call that mockery of democracy last night any kind of political capital. The candidates should be ASHAMED of themselves for "still having $100,000 in the bank" and yet evidently not even being able to convince more than 100,000 people that they should vote for you. Congratulations, you did the least work possible to slide back into your comfy chairs. The electorate is no more informed or impressed by whatever you think you do as councillors than Monday...and sadly, that probably suits you best.
You all are least common denominators. In my district, Ciommo won with 2,702 votes. I have to wonder if I couldn't convince 3,000 people to write my name in without even so much as becoming a blip on his or anyone else's radar. This isn't "local 14-year old becomes mayor of sheep town" either...we're talking about city councilor of one of the largest cities in the nation (22nd in population, 7th in density)!
Hey, city council. You want to do something impressive this year? Show some balls and cut the mayor off at the knees. Show him you're not just some puppet group that fights dog owners and students. Make the city council relevant. The public doesn't care about you. The mayor doesn't care about you. You're a bunch of jokes.
Otherwise, take your 7.4-10.8% "victories" and go spend the next two years pretending you do something for a living...again.
Yikes--not all of 'em are
Yikes--not all of 'em are layabouts.
But there's a lot of truth to your assessment, and attendance and effectiveness have to improve esp. for some junior members if they want to make a career out of politics--I don't hold out much hope for the old dogs changing their stripes.
On the bright side District 3 had almost 30% turnout--that's gotta be a record for us here in DOT--now somebody fix that *$&#^Y Glovers Corner intersection already...
http://www.cityofboston.gov/elections/currentelect...
Run
If you think you can get 3000 write-in votes, go ahead and try.
The way to get turnout up is lots of contested elections and lots of media coverage. The lack of a preliminary meant much less campaign activity. The Globe and Herald used to follow this stuff quite closely, but not anymore. How is it that Ayanna Pressly can miss SEVEN council meetings in a row and not have it reported until the the day AFTER the election? If this was during her mother's illness, fine. If not, someone in the press ought to have had the balls to call her on it.
There certainly was a prelim
There certainly was a prelim for district 3 and a spirited campaign-a lot of candidates got out to neighborhood meetings where were you and Kaz?
You realize there are other parts odd the city besides southie JP and west rock?
There certainly was a prelim
There certainly was a prelim for district 3 and a spirited campaign-a lot of candidates got out to neighborhood meetings where were you and Kaz?
You realize there are other parts odd the city besides southie JP and west rock?
No citywide preliminary
There was no preliminary for the citywide seats, and only Districts 2 and 3 were seriously contested. Tito Jackson had no serious opponents in District 7.
Relevance of the City Council
Kaz is right that the City Council is irrelevant, and he's probably right that that's the reason for miserable turnout. But he's wrong about the blame: It's not (just) that the city council members don't do anything, it's that Boston's city charter is pretty much unique among big American cities in the extent to which it concentrates power in the mayor's office.