The Race to Lead Boston Is Suddenly Wide Open
BOSTON — Sometimes the guard changes slowly. Sometimes it changes overnight.
That is what is happening in the city of Boston, which has been led by white men since its incorporation in 1822. With the nomination of Mayor Martin J. Walsh as President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s labor secretary, the 2021 mayoral race is suddenly wide open, and the front-runners are all women of color.
If Mr. Walsh is confirmed and resigns from his mayoral post, his replacement as acting mayor will be Kim Janey, president of the City Council, a 56-year-old community activist with deep roots in Roxbury, one of Boston’s historically Black neighborhoods. Ms. Janey has not said whether she plans to run.
The two declared challengers in the race are also, for Boston, nontraditional. Michelle Wu, 35, a Taiwanese-American woman, has as a city councilor proposed policies on climate, transportation and housing that have won her the support of progressives.
And Andrea Campbell, 38, a city councilor who grew up in public housing in Roxbury, has drawn on her own painful personal history — her twin brother died of an untreated illness in pretrial custody — to press for policing reforms and equity for Black residents.
Others are expected to jump into the race, but it has already deviated from the long-established pattern in this Democratic city, in which one figure from the white, working-class, pro-union left would hand off power to a similar man of the next generation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/us/boston-mayor-election.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytnational
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