Boston yesterday was on the cusp of narrowing its field of mayoral hopefuls for the first time to two people of color, possibly both women — a stark change from the unbroken string of white men elected mayor in the city’s first 200 years.
Voters yesterday cast ballots in a preliminary mayoral election that is to select two top contenders from a field of five main candidates, with Taiwanese-American Michelle Wu considered the favorite.
The two winners are to face off against each other on Nov. 2, ushering in a new era for a city that has wrestled with ethnic strife.
Photo: AFP
Boston Acting Mayor Kim Janey, city councilors Wu, Annissa Essaibi George and Andrea Campbell, and John Barros, the city’s former economic development chief, are all vying to be one of the top contenders.
Janey has already made history, becoming the first black Bostonian and first woman to occupy the city’s top office in an acting capacity after former Boston mayor Marty Walsh stepped down earlier this year to become US President Joe Biden’s labor secretary.
All of the candidates are Democrats. Mayoral races in Boston do not include party primaries.
The candidates hail from a range of backgrounds.
Wu’s parents immigrated to the US from Taiwan. Janey and Campbell are black. Essaibi George describes herself as a first generation Arab-Polish American. Barros is of Cape Verdean descent.
Wu has held a lead over the other top four candidates in a number of recent polls, setting up a scramble among the other contenders for the second spot if Wu’s lead holds.
Boston has changed radically since its down-at-the-heels days of the 1970s, when the city found itself in the national spotlight over the turmoil brought on by school desegregation, and of the late 1980s, when the case of Charles Stuart again inflamed simmering ethnic tensions.
The latest US census showed that residents who identified as white make up 44.6 percent of the population compared to black residents (19.1 percent), Latino residents (18.7 percent) and residents of Asian descent (11.2 percent).
The city has also changed politically.
In 2018, former Boston city councilor Ayanna Pressley defeated longtime US representative Michael Capuano to become the first black woman elected to the US Congress from Massachusetts.
The same year, Rachael Rollins, a former federal prosecutor, won an election to become Boston’s first female district attorney and the first woman of color to hold such a job anywhere in Massachusetts.
In July, she was nominated by Biden to become the state’s top federal prosecutor.
Among the challenges facing the city are those brought on by gentrification, which has forced out many long-term residents, including those in historically black neighborhoods.
Added to that are a host of other challenges that face the new mayor, from transportation woes, racial injustice and policing to schools and the ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the most pressing issues is the cost of housing, which is outpacing the financial means of many tenants and prospective homeowners.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
Two former Chilean ministers are among four candidates competing this weekend for the presidential nomination of the left ahead of November elections dominated by rising levels of violent crime. More than 15 million voters are eligible to choose today between former minister of labor Jeannette Jara, former minister of the interior Carolina Toha and two members of parliament, Gonzalo Winter and Jaime Mulet, to represent the left against a resurgent right. The primary is open to members of the parties within Chilean President Gabriel Boric’s ruling left-wing coalition and other voters who are not affiliated with specific parties. A recent poll by the
TENSIONS HIGH: For more than half a year, students have organized protests around the country, while the Serbian presaident said they are part of a foreign plot About 140,000 protesters rallied in Belgrade, the largest turnout over the past few months, as student-led demonstrations mount pressure on the populist government to call early elections. The rally was one of the largest in more than half a year student-led actions, which began in November last year after the roof of a train station collapsed in the northern city of Novi Sad, killing 16 people — a tragedy widely blamed on entrenched corruption. On Saturday, a sea of protesters filled Belgrade’s largest square and poured into several surrounding streets. The independent protest monitor Archive of Public Gatherings estimated the
Irish-language rap group Kneecap on Saturday gave an impassioned performance for tens of thousands of fans at the Glastonbury Festival despite criticism by British politicians and a terror charge for one of the trio. Liam Og O hAnnaidh, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, has been charged under the UK’s Terrorism Act with supporting a proscribed organization for allegedly waving a Hezbollah flag at a concert in London in November last year. The rapper, who was charged under the anglicized version of his name, Liam O’Hanna, is on unconditional bail before a further court hearing in August. “Glastonbury,
RSS