Incumbent Mayor Marty Walsh of Dorchester scored a commanding victory in Boston’s preliminary election Tuesday, garnering 63.01 percent of the 56,000 votes cast.
Walsh’s most persistent critic for the last four years, District 7 City Councilor Tito Jackson of Roxbury, as expected, came in second with 29.28 percent of the tally.
Robert Cappucci, a retired Boston police officer who years ago served on the Boston School Committee, earned himself political footnote by finishing third with 6.75 percent of the vote scraped together in precincts where Donald Trump ran well last year.
Shadows gathered over the electoral career of the fourth candidate, MassHealth customer service representative Joseph Wiley, who managed a mere 0.96 percent.
1. Despite the anticlimactic nature of the preliminary contest, Tuesday’s result was historic. For only the second time on record, the name of an African American, 42-year-old Jackson, will appear on November’s final ballot.
2. The first time was 34 years ago when community activist Mel King of the South End faced off against then City Councilor Ray Flynn of South Boston. Flynn went on to serve 9 years as Boston’s chief executive.
3. The Flynn-King contest became a national story. That’s because the 1983 mayoral election occurred in the slip stream of Boston’s violent confrontations over school integration. Flynn won the contest handily.
4. Whether Jackson can orchestrate the racial, ethnic, and class enthusiasm needed to close the 30 plus point gap with Walsh, remains to be seen. The odds are long. It's been almost 70 years since an incumbent Boston mayor has failed to be reelected.
5. And then there is the issue of money. Throughout the campaign, Walsh has maintained the largest political war chest in local history. At the moment, it runs around $4 million. In the months leading up to yesterday's preliminary election, Walsh has maintained a financial edge of at least 40 to 1 over Jackson.
6. Jackson's emergence as a finalist for mayor, will undoubtedly lead to increased contributions from around the nation. That's the good news. The bad news for Jackson is that Walsh has yet to receive sizable infusions of money from organized labor.
7. Four-years ago Walsh, the son of Irish immigrants, was the working-class hero. The fact that Walsh’s dad was a well-paid union official who sent his son to a Catholic prep school was on one side of the ledger. The facts of Walsh’s youthful brushes with cancer, alcoholism, and academic misfortune were on the other. Years of laudatory (and anonymous) service to the addiction community have made Walsh’s claims to be a reformed and wholesome son of Dorchester as bullet-proof as they are real.
8. Jackson, the adopted son of a hardscrabble and loving Grove Hall household, who as a METCO student graduated from Brookline High, went on to graduate from the University of New Hampshire, then on to become a protégé of former Governor Deval Patrick has himself a sterling story to tell.
9. In the age of Oprah, politics – at least Democratic politics – easily accommodates elements of the transformative and the therapeutic. Not to diminish the authenticity of Jackson’s experience, Walsh appears to have out Oprahed him. To upset Walsh, Jackson will have to catch up.
10. Catching up is hard to do. Especially if your rival out performs you on your home turf. And that's just what Walsh did, beating Jackson in District 7, the Roxbury, Dorchester, South End council district that -- one way or another -- will be Jackson's bailiwick until year's end.
