How Boston’s 2021 Mayoral Election Can Bring Fresh, Diverse Leadership
Boston City Hall. Photo via Flickr.
Change is coming to Boston.
As its population continues to grow, Boston is becoming more and more diverse. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 30 percent of Boston’s population is foreign-born and 47.2 percent of Boston’s population identifies as non-white. In the past decade, the city has also begun to see shifts in the racial and gender breakdowns of leadership in its government.
In 2018, Chicago-native Ayanna Pressley upseated 10-term Representative Michael Capuano, becoming the first Black woman to represent Massachusetts in Congress. In an address to supporters on the night of her election to Massachusetts’ 7th Congressional District, Pressley affirmed “change is on the way”. Pressley, the child of a single-mother and a father who struggled with substance abuse and a victim of sexual assault and rape, has an unlikely background for America’s idea of a politician. As an unlikely politician, she is emblematic of the changing city. Her slogan, “change can’t wait”, continues to speak to the progressive movement in Boston and around the country.
Prior to serving in Congress, Pressley made headways in 2010 as the first woman of color elected to the Boston City Council. The Council has 13 members: nine district-based representatives and four at-large members. In the 2019 City Council elections, Boston for the first time elected a council that was majority-women and majority-person-of-color. During Pressley’s first term in office, she was one of only four non-white-identifying council members and one of just two women.
Boston isn’t just seeing change in who is being elected to its city council. There have also been recent shifts in whom the City Council is choosing as their president. In 2016, Michelle Wu became the first woman of color to serve as the President of the Boston City Council. When her term expired, Andrea Campbell became the first African American woman elected to the same position, and most recently with the beginning of the new term in January 2020, Kim Janey, another Black woman, has started serving as President of the Council. With the new year, Boston is in its sixth consecutive year of seeing a woman of color serve in one of its highest leadership roles.
But what about the highest role—the office of mayor?
For all of Boston’s pride in being a city of diversity, Boston has yet to have a non-white person serve as mayor. With the upcoming 2021 mayoral election, Boston has the opportunity to elect its first female and first non-white mayor. In September of 2020, Wu announced her intention to pursue the city’s highest office. Campbell followed a week later. Neither Wu nor Campbell hold traditional backgrounds for Boston mayors, but that could be all the more reason to elect them. Wu, like Pressley, is not from Boston, but Chicago. Boston traditionally exclusively elects mayors who are life-long Bostonians. Campbell attended one of Boston’s best public high schools—Boston Latin—before leaving to attend Princeton University. While Campbell left Boston for college, Wu arrived to attend Harvard.
Like Pressley, Wu and Campbell have both been pained by harsh circumstances in their personal lives. Wu, the daughter of immigrants, has seen how language barriers disconnect people from resources through her parents. During Wu’s senior year at Harvard, her mother struggled with mental illness, resulting in Wu becoming the caregiver of her mother and three younger siblings while finishing undergrad and beginning law school. Since getting involved in politics, Wu has worked tirelessly to create a more accessible city through more language resources, improving public transportation infrastructure, creating affordable housing, and working to fight the intersection of racial and economic disparities through climate justice and a proposed Green New Deal for Boston.
Campbell’s story is plagued by loss. Her mother passed away when she was eight months old. Her father spent the first eight years of her life in prison and died during Campbell’s sophomore year of college. While Campbell was recognized for her intellect and afforded the opportunity to attend Boston Latin School, her twin brother was often unjustly punished at school and died at the age of 29 while awaiting trial in prison. Campbell’s background is painful, but her personal experience as a witness to the harmful effects of the criminal justice system on Black men has shaped her into the change agent she is today. Campbell is a strong advocate of public safety reform, pushing for the reallocation of police funds while working towards demilitarization.
When Wu and Campbell announced their campaigns, current Mayor Marty Walsh had yet to specify whether or not he intended to run for a third term of office. Boston has no term limits, and in the past 25 years has only seen two different men hold the position, so a run for a third term would not be unheard of. In Mayor Thomas Menino’s 21 year tenure as mayor, many tried and failed to unseat him. When Walsh ran for his second term in 2017, then District 7 City Councilor Tito Jackson launched a progressive campaign against him, pushing for education funding and affordable housing. Jackson’s run was also significant in that he was the first African American to compete in the general election for mayor since 1983. Boston almost always elects the incumbent mayor—every incumbent has won their reelection bid since 1949. Jackson’s race against Walsh was no exception.
This time, however, Walsh is not running for reelection and will be vacating the position of mayor before his term expires. On January 7th of this year, President Joe Biden tapped Walsh as his pick for Labor Secretary. Though not yet confirmed as Secretary of Labor, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions voted 18-4 in favor of moving Walsh’s nomination to the floor for a full Senate vote. The bipartisan committee vote points to a strong favorability that Walsh will be confirmed as labor secretary.
When Walsh vacates the office of mayor, Boston will have its first female and first non-white mayor. But she will not be Michelle Wu or Andrea Campbell. Boston’s next mayor will be current City Council President Kim Janey. According to the Boston City Charter, in the event that there is a vacancy for the office of mayor, the city council president will fill the vacancy until a special or regular municipal election is held. In most circumstances, a special election would be held 90 to 180 days after the vacancy is created, but given that there will be a regular municipal election in Boston this year, there will be no special election. Janey will serve as mayor from the position’s vacancy through early January of 2022 when the elected mayor takes her place.
Kim Janey is the District 7 City Councilor, serving the neighborhood of Roxbury and parts of Dorchester, Fenway, and the South End. Janey, first elected to the city council in 2017, is fairly new to Boston politics, but she certainly isn’t new to activism. Born in 1965, Janey grew up during Boston’s bussing era. Her personal experiences with Boston’s inequitable school system have led her to champion education policy reform. Janey is also a strong advocate for early education and childcare. At 16, she became a teenage mom, an event that would cause her to understand the difficulties of obtaining affordable childcare while finishing school. Prior to joining the city council, Janey was involved with many advocacy groups focused on children and voting rights. When she takes office, Janey will bring with her the perspectives of many identities that better represent the average Bostonian.
Though Janey will serve as mayor, unless she runs for the office she will not be the first woman or person of color elected to the position. Janey has not stated whether or not she intends to seek a full term in office, but given there is just over a month from when candidates may begin collecting nomination signatures, she will likely announce a decision soon. If Janey does decide to run for mayor, she will run as an incumbent. Whether or not she enjoys the incumbency advantage remains to be determined, as in the most recent city council election in 2019, Janey won her election with 75 percent of the total vote, but only received 3,856 votes. Whether or not Janey’s brief tenure as mayor will create enough name recognition to give her an advantage over someone like Wu, who represents the entire city as an at-large councilor, remains to be seen.
Photo by the City of Boston.
Regardless of if Janey decides to run, any of these women would bring fresh perspectives to the office of mayor in Boston, while also offering historic representation that reflects Boston’s changing demographics. Since the announcement of Walsh’s nomination, four more candidates have joined the race. Among them are three individuals who could also bring new values to the office of mayor: Boston’s recently resigned Chief of Economic Development John Barros, State Representative Jon Santiago, and At-Large City Councilor Annissa Essaibi George. Essaibi George, the daughter of Polish and Tunisian immigrants, is a first generation American, Santiago was born in Puerto Rico and grew up watching his uncle battle AIDS, and Barros is the son of Cape Verdean immigrants. Though Barros, Santiago, and Essaibi Geroge have yet to release detailed campaign platforms, they would all also be among historic firsts for Boston.
The 2021 mayoral election is shaping up to be one of the city’s most exciting races in some time. After Menino announced he would not run for a sixth term in 2013, 12 candidates ran in the 2013 mayoral primary. Six of the candidates identified as people of color, but only one of the 12 candidates was a woman. The general election was ultimately between two white men. Looking toward the upcoming election, Boston has a very strong likelihood of electing a woman of color to serve as mayor. What would this mean for the city’s next four years and beyond?
In the case of Janey, while she is set to take over for Walsh, Boston’s charter greatly limits the authority of the acting mayor. She is expected to only carry out actions that are “not admitting of delay”. Janey likely will not have the time or authority to enact sweeping progressive change in Boston, but she can set an agenda. The future acting mayor has stated her top priority will be addressing the coronavirus in Boston and ensuring equitable vaccine rollout. But Janey’s vision is different from Walsh—Janey acknowledges that the pandemic exacerbates inequities in lower income communities, disproportionately impacting people of color. She envisions a vaccine rollout that not only increases access in those communities, but also builds trust. Janey’s main focus may be addressing the pandemic, but in doing so, she can also begin to change how Boston interacts with minorities, shaping a path for more progressive change, such as in the platforms spearheaded by Wu and Campbell.
Both Wu and Campbell are strong advocates of public safety reform, improved public health infrastructure, and better public education. Both women understand that these issues are at the intersection of racial and socioeconomic disparities and that in working to improve these spheres, opportunities for climate justice, affordable and stable housing, and economic mobility are made available as well.
In enacting progressive change, Boston can lessen its racial wealth gap, reimagining the city and becoming a place where communities of color are supported, low incomes residents are housing and food secure, and the government is accessible to the everyday Bostonian. Although Ayanna Pressley proclaimed that “change is on the way” as a congresswoman, the change she alluded to is perhaps most important on a local level. Progressive change and fresh leadership have arrived in Boston, and it is only the beginning.
Carina Layfield is a senior editor at CPR and a sophomore at Barnard majoring in Urban Studies and minoring in Italian. In high school, Carina was a member of the Boston Mayor’s Youth Council and led the Youth Lead the Change Committee.