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Janey is in
By adamg on Tue, 04/06/2021 - 8:55am
Kim Janey, the two-term Roxbury city councilor and current acting mayor, announced this morning she's laced up her sneakers for the race for a four-year term as mayor this fall.
She joins city councilors Michelle Wu, Andrea Campbell and Anissa Essaibi-George, state Rep. Jon Santiago, former city Executive Development Chief John Barros and Brighton resident Michael Bianchi in the race.
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ZZZzzzzZZ
The only thing she is good for is talking points. D7 has withered on her watch and murders happen right on her street.
What? Take it easy,
What? Take it easy, Councilor.
Great Ad
But it's going to pretty hard to make it to the final round. Hard to call who the top two vote getters will be. I have to think Wu is one of them, which makes it even harder for Janey, but I'm not even sure about Wu.
Great video!
Didn’t you hear? Racism is now dead in Boston because out of sheer luck of the draw, a Black woman is the “acting” Mayor who is acting like she was actually elected.
Love her new white millennial campaign manager Kirby Chandler, who just got off the bus and spent her first week undoubtedly reading Boston Magazine to learn about Black culture in this town. Can’t wait to see if she’s on Team Sully’s or Team Simco’s after that research!
“acting like she was actually elected”
How, pray tell, is she supposed to act?
The rules of succession were created by the state legislature (in 1949, I believe), before Janey was even born, yet some fault her for taking her new job seriously.
Like she was appointed and not elected?
From that Pam Grier font campaign video to the Colette Phillips made racism is over tourism video, honesty hasn’t been the hallmark of this campaign that wasn’t a campaign three weeks ago when she was fundraising on Facebook. Where she was asking for donations to help build a better Boston or some shit like that.
Bottom line for me: she was handed that job by white people and so far all I see is white people guiding her “message” and rejoicing over her ascension.
What?
She was elected to district 7 twice by mostly people of color. Then she was voted as the council president by mostly people of color (or at least 50-50). So white people didn't have a lot to do with her rise to mayor. So I'm just confused by the "handed the job by white people" line.
“Handed that job”
Kim Janey worked hard to become successful and then was duly elected to city council. Then she was chosen to be president by her city council peers who were all aware of succession rules. Which white people, specifically, handed Janey her job?
Trivializing Janey’s previous hard work only serves to deligitimize a woman of color.
I'm not "trivializing" her work.
I'm noting that this is all just wonderful with this campaign heralding it as a new day when the people have not spoken as to her getting the job that was handed to her.
Her tourism program is already getting townie blow back. Read what some of those white people are saying about her because of it.
You keep using that phrase.
“Handed to” is absolutely trivializing and implies she is not the legitimate mayor.
She wasn’t handed her personal success that made her a viable city council candidate. She wasn’t handed her seat, she won her election. And she secured the votes to beat out O’Malley for council president. She worked hard for her success and because the sitting mayor got a new job, Janey got promoted to fill the vacancy—something that routinely happens in every industry—in accordance with rules written 70 years ago. That isn’t being handed a job. You frame it is as if they drew straws at Downtown Crossing or something.
If Mayor Janey isn’t up to the task, then fortunately she faces election 5 months from now and the registered voters of Boston—which, if I recall correctly, neither of us are—will have their say.
Can you tell me
why a lot of the Walsh team left the Hall except most notably Housing Chief and developer pal Sheila Dillon? Let's see how much developer cash she raises in a hurry.
Because Walsh was their meal ticket?
I honestly don’t know. Has there been reporting on this exodus that can shed light on these people’s motivations? Who are you referring to and have they made public statements?
Did they leave in order to leverage a personal connection to a newly-minted cabinet secretary? Where did they land?
What are you implying?
Seems like you're trying to insinuate something about Janey here. Why not come out and say it directly? It would probably be good to source any claims with actual evidence, of course.
Not counting on their support
I haven't read what they're saying, but maybe it's something similar to what they said to her back in the 70s when she was on the school bus?
As for "townie blow back" I don't think she was counting on their votes anyway. Yes voting numbers are high in Dorchester in Southie, but that's just two neighborhoods. You don't need to win those neighborhoods to win the election.
Question
Did you feel the same way about Tom Menino back in 1993?
Yes.
Notice that Chuck Turner was left out of that video? Or is it me? And Dianne Wilkerson.
Would You?
Would you put people convicted of crimes in your campaign add? I didn't think so.
Hilarious
Chuck Turner was not only beloved by a community most in this forum aren’t familiar with, he redeemed himself in their eyes. And Janey was one of the ones passionately eulogizing Turner when he passed. Only now?
I saw him six months before he died waiting in Walsh’s office to try and advocate for the people.
Yet she’ll proudly put up Linda Forry, who has made a nice career for herself with John Fish.
Fish is a BIG fan of Annisa! Get the picture?
Exam school voters
It will be interesting to see how the exam school changes impact the race. I assumed Essabi-George would argue for not much changing seeing as she is the candidate of old school white Boston, but even she hasn't come out strongly in defense. Yet that's going to be a main issue for a lot of voters in high turnout neighborhoods like southern Dot and WR.
That's not as big an issue as you think
And the majority of voters probably support the recent decision by BPS and are against the lawsuit. Any candidate who comes out against the decision by BPS will not be our next mayor.
Probably
However the three of the biggest turnout wards are also the ones that are going to have fewer seats under a reform plan. Turnout in a mayoral election is usually poor. As I noted though, absent a strong status quo candidate, it's probably a non-issue surprisingly.
Wouldn't be so sure about
Wouldn't be so sure about that... even if you support educational reforms, the limiting of seats in Westie is going to damage housing values. Very few people are willing to support things they know are right when it's going to hit them in their biggest and most important financial asset.....
Majority of voters don't give
Majority of voters don't give a fuck about talented kids.
After this election...
...we should change the law or rule or charter or whatever it would take to ensure that only at-large councillors are eligible to become Acting Mayor. At the very least, Boston's chief executive should have to have won a citywide election. No slight on Ms. Janey, but she has only faced voters from one single district, and won with the votes of only 3,852 people. And yes, I know she was elected City Council president by her colleagues, but the kind of horse-trading and backroom deals that go into those elections is no way to choose a mayor. Obviously, it wouldn't be fair to Acting Mayor Janey to change the rules midstream, but we should guard against similar anti-democratic situations in the future.
Special elections exist...
...for exactly this reason.
Ok, City-Councilor-at-large,
Ok, City-Councilor-at-large, whatever it means.
So
Tom Menino never should have gotten the job?
Seems like this was already covered in previous elections?
Given that this rule was used somewhat recently with Menino, it seems to me that if the citizens of Boston really cared about this, they'd push for an at-large candidate who in turn put as one of their tenets that they would be named the City Council president. Or they'd demand to change this law or rule or charter or whatever.
But given that people ignored this for a couple decades until it came up again, I'm going to suggest that maybe this isn't that big of a deal to the voting public. At the least, everyone was perfectly willing to vote for at-large councilors or councilors for their district who didn't seem to care about this, despite knowing there was a chance that none of the people they voted for would be acting mayor if that situation would arise.
The election of the City
The election of the City Council President is a game of King of the Hill played at the start of every council term. Interested Councilors pinball between each others' offices, horsetrading committee assignments for votes for Council President. This is the reason Council Presidents frequently turn over, in contrast to positions like Speaker of the House, which a person like Nancy Pelosi can lock up for years, given her strength at fundraising for her party. City Councilors will trade their vote one year in exchange for a vote for President in a future year, keeping the role rotating often.
It's a funny system, and every Councilor understands that being President is a lottery ticket for a chance to sit in the Mayor's office. But it's been the system for a very long time and the Council seems comfortable with it, so it will probably remain unchanged.
Sounds familiar
So you're saying it's like a smaller version of the general election?
I'd argue
That there were 13 people who knew there was a chance that if Joe Biden won, Marty Walsh would get a federal job (I kind of thought a post in Dublin could have been in the offing, so he could have brought Mary home so to speak.) which would have elevated the President of the City Council to the Mayor's Office.
Kind of like how back in January 1993 there were 13 people who knew that there was a chance that Raymond Flynn could get a post in the Clinton administration. One of them played things well and ended up having almost 21 years as mayor.
If Andrea Campbell or Michelle Wu had played their cards right over the years, one of them could have been the candidate elevated. Declaring their candidacies before the November election may have hurt their political careers in the end.