Challengers lining up to fill Linehan’s open council seat
Bill Linehan stepping down from his City Council seat has opened up a wide field of candidates seeking to take his place, but they’ll be competing for a vastly different district where old political rules may no longer apply.
“It’s a much less predictable race because of the rapid-fire way the district has changed,” said UMass Boston political science professor Erin O’Brien. “The oldschool institutional advantage white Irish Catholics who lived there for a long period of time had isn’t there anymore.”
Two political players with long-time connections have already joined the race for the seat in District 2, which includes parts of Downtown, the South End, Chinatown and all of South Boston, since Linehan announced Wednesday he would not run for re-election. Michael Kelley, a former staffer and campaign director for the late Mayor Thomas M. Menino, announced his candidacy Wednesday and has formed a campaign committee, and Ed Flynn, the son of former Mayor Raymond L. Flynn, announced his candidacy yesterday.
Flynn, a 25-year Navy veteran and former Department of Labor employee in the Clinton administration, told the Herald he’d reach out to the entire district.
“I would be a councilor who will work extremely hard in representing all people of the district,” Flynn said. “I’ve worked my whole life with people of various diverse backgrounds.”
And three other candidates have also joined the race. Frank Ulip, who works at a software company, has already created a campaign committee and Peter LinMarcus, who runs a fitness startup, has also created a campaign committee. Corey Dinopoulos, a designer at and one of the major proponents of the failed Boston2024 Olympic bid, said he will kick off his campaign in March.
The candidates come from all over the district — Dinopoulos and Flynn in South Boston, Kelley in the South End, Lin-Marcus in Chinatown and Ulip in Fort Point — and O’Brien said a candidate would have to appeal to all of those areas, as well as a South Boston that is increasingly full of newer residents, in order to create a winning coalition. Linehan agreed, saying the district is more “cosmopolitan” than it used to be, adding: “You have to be a person of the entire district rather than someone coming out of just one area.”