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BOSTON – Sometimes the guard changes slowly. Sometimes it changes overnight.
This is what is happening in the city of Boston, which has been led by white men since its incorporation in 1822. With the appointment of Mayor Martin J. Walsh as Secretary of Labor for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., 2021 The race for the mayor is suddenly open and the candidates at the front are all women of color.
If Walsh is confirmed and resigns as mayor, his replacement as acting mayor will be Kim Janey, chairman of the City Council, a 56-year-old community activist with deep roots in Roxbury, one of Boston’s historically black neighborhoods. Janey did not say whether she plans to run.
The two challengers declared in the race are also, for Boston, nontraditional. Michelle Wu, 35, a Taiwanese-American, has a councilor on political proposals on climate, transport and housing that have won the support of progressives.
And Andrea Campbell, 38, a city councilwoman who grew up in public residences in Roxbury, used her painful personal history – her twin brother died of an untreated illness in pre-trial custody – to push for reforms in policing and equality for residents black people.
Others are expected to enter the race, but this has already deviated from the pattern established long ago in this democratic city, in which a figure of the white left, of the working class and pro-union would hand over power to a similar man of the next generation .
Paul Parara, a radio announcer who, like Notorious VOG, questions local politicians on his morning show, said Walsh’s departure paved the way for a long-awaited change.
“I’m ecstatic that Marty is going to Washington,” said Parara, who works at 87FM, a hip-hop and reggae station. “This represents an opportunity for Boston to turn the page and elect someone who looks like what Boston is now.”
The percentage of Boston residents who identify themselves as non-Hispanic whites has steadily dropped, from 80% in 1970 to 44.5% in 2019.
“Oh, we’re about to go to Georgia Boston,” he added, referring to the voter mobilization that reshaped that state’s policy.
He said he hoped the next mayor would put more pressure on police unions, that he said they had negotiated beneficial contracts with the city and that, as the Boston Globe reported, they remain whiter than the city’s population as a whole.
“I think that will change,” he said. Mr Walsh, he added, “is a labor worker, and that is what benefited the police – they were negotiating a contract with a labor worker”.
A new mayor could also rethink development in Boston, where a technological boom and housing shortage squeezed poor and middle-income families, or grapple with the city’s glaring wealth inequality: in 2015, the average net worth for white families was almost $ 250,000, while that figure was $ 8 for black families, according to a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
Mr. Walsh, who has been mayor since 2014, responded to progressive activists, but he also called himself a consensus builder, trying to satisfy a range of stakeholders, including the police and developers.
His successor may, for the first time in the city’s history, emerge from “a left that stems from the civil rights movement, or residents of color in the city or left-wing intellectuals in the city,” said David Hopkins, an associate professor of science. politics at Boston College.
“We don’t have a model of what a different type of mayor would look like because we really don’t have one,” said Hopkins. “What is so interesting about this situation that we are in now is that there is no obvious figure of Marty Walsh in line to pick up the baton.”
Despite weeks of hints that Walsh would be chosen as Labor Secretary, news of his choice seemed to catch many off guard. The power of the assignment is extraordinary in Boston; the last time an incumbent mayor was defeated was in 1949.
So many people were now suggesting possible runs that Segun Idowu, the executive director of the Massachusetts Black Economic Council, renamed his Twitter account Not a candidate for mayor of Boston.
On Saturday, Ms. Wu received a heavyweight endorsement from Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, her former professor at Harvard Law School and the person she credits for driving her into politics.
“Bostonians can count on Michelle’s bold and progressive leadership to face our biggest challenges, such as recovering from the pandemic, dismantling systemic racism, prioritizing housing justice, revitalizing our transportation infrastructure and solving the climate crisis,” he said. Warren.
But after a year of national reflection on race, voters may be drawn to a candidate from the heart of Boston’s black community, like Campbell or Janey.
When she started her campaign in September. Ms. Campbell focused directly on the city’s history of inequality, noting that “Boston has a reputation for being a racist city”.
“I love this city,” she said. “I was born and raised here, like my father was before me. But it is important to realize that this is not just a national reputation. It is a reality locally. Plain and simple, Boston doesn’t work for everyone equally. “
Progressives should not assume that young voters will attend municipal elections, warned David Paleologos, director of the Center for Political Research at Suffolk University.
Historically, participation has become older and whiter than the city as a whole, with a disproportionate number of votes in white middle-class enclaves like West Roxbury and Hyde Park. Participation in the last mayoral elections has consistently remained below 40%.
The city has changed so much and so quickly, however, that past experiences may not be an accurate guide.
Mary Anne Marsh, a Democratic strategist, noted that MP Ayanna Pressley caused the biggest political upheaval in the state’s recent history, expelling a current Democratic candidate for 10 terms and Democratic companion in 2018, despite spending more than two for one.
“Southie is not old Southie,” said Marsh, referring to South Boston. “Southie is a lot of young professionals, no longer South Boston, Irish, families of Catholic workers. They are mainly young people of Generation Y. It is a very different place, and this happens in many neighborhoods in the city. People will be very interested in the race. “