Mayor Michelle Wu had a great night.
No, she wasn't running — but every council candidate endorsed by Boston's mayor won. That includes newcomers Enrique Pepén in District 5, Ben Weber in District 6, and Henry Santana in the at-large race, as well as District 8 incumbent Sharon Durkan, per unofficial city results.
Pepén, who's an alum of Wu's administration, and Weber will replace two current councilors, Ricardo Arroyo and Kendra Lara, who tried to pull Wu to the left during their tenure, and with whom her relations were sometime fraught. Santana, another former Wu staffer, will replace outgoing at-large fixture Michael Flaherty — whose relationship with Wu is generally cordial, but who is clearly to Wu's right when it came to political ideology. (Durkan, who ran as an incumbent after winning a recent special election, previously worked for Wu, as well.)
Every councilor Wu backed could, in theory, take vigorous issue with decisions made by the mayor once they're in their new role. But in all likelihood, her support will be repaid with gratitude on the part of the candidates she boosted, and make her relationship with the council as a whole a bit smoother than it used to be.
Former Mayor Marty Walsh had an OK night.
In the race to replace District 3 Councilor Frank Baker, the council's most reliably conservative and cantankerous voice, Walsh saw his preferred candidate — Boston Planning and Development Agency staffer John FitzGerald — coast to an easy win, according to Boston’s city tallies.
But Walsh's support wasn't enough to push José Ruiz, a former Boston police officer who served on the department’s dignitary protection unit during Walsh's mayoralty, to victory in District 5. Instead, it was Pepén, Wu's preferred candidate, who prevailed. In the grand scheme of things, the fact that Walsh lost that particular proxy fight to his successor probably doesn't matter much. But it's a safe bet he would have preferred to win it.
Boston didn't repudiate progressivism.
When current District 5 and District 6 councilors Ricardo Arroyo and Kendra Lara failed to advance past September's preliminary election, it was tempting to wonder if some type of ideological shift might be brewing. But on Tuesday, voters chose two more progressives with strong bona fides in those districts — Pepén and Weber.
In hindsight, it seems clear that Arroyo and Lara were unseated because of scandals that had dogged each of them, not because voters had soured on their ideological leanings. That reading is reinforced by the fact that Santana finished fourth in the at-large race, beating out Bridget Nee-Walsh, who ran as a right-of-center candidate.
The Mass. GOP is alive!
After reaching what may have been an all-time low point in last fall's elections, the Massachusetts Republican Party got a much-needed morale boost when state Rep. Peter Durant defeated state Rep. Jon Zlotnik in a special state Senate election in central Mass. Durant will now replace former state Senator Anne Gobi, who left to become director of rural affairs in the Healey administration.
Numerically, Republicans are still less a minority than an afterthought at the State House, where they'll now hold four of 40 Senate seats. Still, Durant's win is a reminder that there are parts of the state that lean conservative, and that if the right Republican candidate runs on the right issues they can actually win. (Among other things, Durant critiqued Gov. Maura Healey's handling of the migrant crisis and the strained state shelter system.) It's also a nice boost for new-ish Mass. GOP chair Amy Carnevale, who's been trying to heal a party that split into warring conservative and moderate factions under former chair Jim Lyons.
Aggressive housing construction doesn't have to be an electoral loser.
In the Revere mayoral race, acting mayor Patrick Keefe fended off former mayor Dan Rizzo by just a few hundred votes to win that job on a non-provisional basis. Rizzo's campaign was driven, in large part, by animosity toward the massive amount of new housing that's been built in Revere in recent years, particularly along Revere Beach. If elected, Rizzo vowed, he'd push for an immediate moratorium on new apartments, which he said have put an intolerable strain on the city.
If you're someone who believes the best way to solve Massachusetts' housing crisis is to build as aggressively as possible, the fact that Revere voters rejected that pitch should be encouraging — even if it doesn't necessarily mean voters in other communities will do the same.
