On a crisp October afternoon, Framingham Mayor Yvonne Spicer — the first popularly elected Black female mayor in Massachusetts history — gave a pep talk to a handful of supporters before they headed off to campaign.
“I was on the doors yesterday — it was a wonderful experience,” Spicer said. “People had questions, but they also said, ‘We see what you’re doing, Spicer! We see the work, and you’re putting in the work!’ … These next 15 days, pedal to the metal, dispelling the rumors, the myths, the lies.”
If Spicer is going to keep her job, she’ll need to muster up all the enthusiasm she can. In September’s preliminary election, the former vice president of advocacy and educational partnerships at Boston’s Museum of Science was routed by former city councilor Charlie Sisitsky, who more than doubled her vote total.
According to Spicer, that result was less about how she’s governed than it was about who she is.
“When someone prefaced their comments, ’I’ve been here for forty years! I’ve been here for thirty years! I was born and raised here!’ — in other words, if you are not from here, born here, then you are not relevant to what needs to go on here,” Spicer said.
That interpretation is, among other things, a reference to Sisitsky, who likes to note that he’s been involved in Framingham politics for four decades.
Spicer grew up in Brooklyn, but moved to Framinghan in her early twenties. She claims that ever since her election in 2017, there’s been a concerted push to undermine her by people who’d hoped her opponent in that contest, John Stefanini, would be victorious. And she contends that race has played a role.
According to the 2020 U.S. Census, Framingham’s population is now 54 percent white, down from 65 percent a decade ago. Meanwhile, the percentage of Latino, Asian, and Black residents is growing: they currently comprise 17, 7, and 6 percent, respectively, of Framingham’s population.
And yet, Spicer said, “When I took over office, 91 percent of the people that worked in Framingham municipal government were white."
“Ironically, you will hear, if you ask someone, ‘What’s the one thing you love about Framingham?’ — a number of people will say, ‘Its diversity,’” she added. “And we will love that diversity as long as it does not bump up against privilege. And that is the reality.”
Sisitsky has a radically different take on Spicer’s tenure and the forces propelling his own campaign. He was elected to Framingham’s new city council the same year Spicer won the mayoral race — and at the outset, Sisitsky said, he was eager to work with her.
“I had high hopes, going in there and talking to her and telling — giving some advice that I had, and sharing my knowledge of the community with her,” Sisitsky recalled. “[But] it turned out that after a number of meetings, she wasn’t responsive. She’d walk into the meeting with a blank pad of paper and leave with a blank pad of paper. I discussed that with my colleagues on the board, and they kind of experienced the same reception.”
Sisitsky, who used to be the head of public works in neighboring Natick, also contends that Framingham’s COVID response has been subpar, and that Spicer has shortchanged the city’s schools.
At Sisitsky’s campaign kickoff earlier this year, he was introduced by Framingham’s school-committee chairman, Adam Freudberg, and two state representatives, Maria Duaime Robinson and Jack Patrick Lewis. In his remarks, Lewis stressed that he had voted for Spicer twice in 2017, in the preliminary election and again in the general.
“But after four years of gross mismanagement, four years of absent leadership, four years of a go-it-alone attitude,” Lewis said, “the only way for Framingham to move forward is to come together as a diverse community and vote for a proven leader. And that person’s Charlie [Sisitsky].”
Spicer, though, has the two highest-profile endorsers in the contest. She’s been backed by Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, who said in a statement that Spicer “smashed a concrete ceiling” four years ago and has “delivered for the residents of Framingham” ever since. On November 2, the residents of Framingham get to say whether they agree.
Correction: A previous version of this article misstated Jack Patrick Lewis' last name.
