city council

The Parkway Transcript gets mayoral, at-large council and District 6 (Jamaica Plain and West Roxbury) council candidates to talk about crime.

You can see the at-large candidates in action on Wednesday, Oct. 19 in a debate at UMass-Boston that starts at 7 p.m. Details.

Dorchester Reporter: Considerable calculations trail council hopefuls into final month.

The Dorchester Reporter reports on an at-large councilor debate in Dorchester on such issues as the price of rent and BU's biolab.

The West Roxbury and Roslindale Transcript asked mayoral, at-large city council and district-6 (JP and West Roxbury) city council candidates how they feel about the BRA, specifically: "Do you feel any reform is needed in how the BRA operates? If so, what changes should be made?"

While the flyer doesn't say so, I think this is only for the at-large candidates.

The RoxVOTE forum is co-sponsored by the Franklin Park Coalition,  Millions More Movement of Boston, and Democracy for America: Boston.

Somebody apparently mistook Matt O'Malley's city-council campaign headquarters on Washington Street for a drive-through early this morning.

Some interesting statistics from the Tuesday preliminary in a Globe article today: Felix Arroyo not only came in second overall in the race for an at-large council seat, he actually won 11 of the city's 22 wards. So forget the city council race for a moment and ponder a possible Mayor Arroyo one day.

Note: The print version of the story has a map showing who won which wards. Naturally, the map is not in the online version.

Whites may now make up a minority of the city's population, but you wouldn't know it from the finalists in Tuesday's vote: Of the eight people advancing to the final election in November, six are white Irish Catholics (citywide results). Granted, one of them, Matt O'Malley, ran Andrea Cabral's successful campaign for sheriff last year, but still, diversity won't be a hallmark of the next crop of at-large councilors - if the current lineup holds, we'll wind up with three Irish Catholics and one Hispanic (in other words, status quo).

The city's posting the results.

Adam reports on his visit to his polling place today:

As I approached the polling location, I was accosted by supporters of about six or seven candidates, making a last minute pitch for their guy (I didn't see anyone lobbying for the female candidates, unfortunately). I have some vague recollection about laws restricting lobbying near the voting booth, but apparently in boston it's okay up to about 3 inches from the entrance to the building. ...

Today's the preliminary election for at-large Boston City Council seats. As always, they take their politicking seriously in West Roxbury (above: Holy Name School at Centre Street and the West Roxbury Parkway).

Links to candidate info.

For you Somerville and Medford readers, today is the special election to fill Charlie Shannon's state Senate seat.

Adam explains why he's voting for Felix Arroyo and Matt O'Malley in tomorrow's at-large preliminary election - and why he's still not sure what to do (if anything) with his other two votes.

Chris, meanwhile, has compiled a list of the positions taken by the at-large candidates on various issues (it's a PDF file) and points to the Dorchester News's profiles of the candidates.

Steve is keeping a tally of how many recordings of at-large candidates he can hang up on today.

I just got a recording from a supporter of Ed Flynn, who says "outside liberal activists" are pouring large amounts of money into the at-large race for abortion on demand. Huh?

Tomorrow's the city-council preliminary election, in which voters get to narrow the number of at-large candidates from 15 to 8 for the November general election.

You can vote for up to four at-large candidates. Larry discusses the pros and cons of bullet voting - in which you try to make a strategic decision to vote for only one or two candidates:

... So, to bullet-vote or not? The choice depends entirely on which scenario you think is more probable. If the race for fourth place is between your two favorite candidates, you should bullet-vote. If the race for fourth place is between your second choice and someone you strongly dislike, you should not bullet-vote. ...

Links to candidate Web site

Info: http://www.cityofboston.gov/elections/

This election is narrow the field of At-Large City Council candidates from 15 to 8. A voter can vote for up to 4 candidates.

Chris has posted a list of city-council candidates with Web sites.

Jason, who lives in JP, explains why he's leaning toward Gibran Rivera over incumbent John Tobin in the West Roxbury/Jamaica Plain district, including:

... (Tobin) is too slick. I have met with him several times and each time felt that he would say whatever was necessary to keep me happy. I haven't been treated this way by any of my other representatives. Sanchez and Wilkerson have been more concerned about JP and more engaged than I have ever found Tobin to be. ...

From Blog for Boston:

The Boston candidates who earned the DFA Boston endorsement by receiving greater than 75% support of the voting members are:

Sam Yoon for City Council At-Large

Gibran Rivera for City Council District 6

Maura Hennigan for Mayor

Sam Yoon's at-large campaign's got blog.

Matt O'Malley, who blogged during his 2003 campaign for an at-large city council seat, is blogging again as he tries for an at-large seat this fall. He discusses three guys he met at Roche Bros.:

... They asked me about the drug problem in Boston. I talked about my plan for hiring pupil adjustment counselors in the public schools (both middle and high), lobbying for more money for dual-diagnosis programs and creating more N.A., A.A., and peer support groups geared toward teens. Treatment and education, I told them, is the best way to curb this epidemic.

One of the guys told me that he was hooked on oxycontin and had been clean for sixteen weeks. We talked at length about how he got started and the difficulties of getting clean. He told me that he had to get out of Boston because he felt he could not escape his addiction, and was looking forward to an upcoming summer job that would take him away ...

That's Michael's judgment of City Councillor John Tobin's Web presence. On the one hand, it's cool that Tobin (who represents Jamaica Plain and West Roxbury) has a well designed, blog-based Web site (run by Steve Garfield). On the other hand, Tobin himself isn't actually blogging on the site - maybe a symptom of the fact that true blogging and discourse means taking a risk, and that's one thing politicians hate to do, Michael says:

... Perhaps, rather than getting politicians to blog, it is time for bloggers to enter politics. ...

Notes from Tobin's meeting with the Berkman bloggers last week
Video of his talk

Ed. note: Two years ago, Matt O'Malley actually blogged and dipped into the Wicked Good Conference to talk about Boston issues when he ran for an at-large council seat. So far, his 2005 Web site looks like any other generic candidate site, but one can hope there's more to come.