Council votes to skip special election
Home-rule petition needs OK from mayor, Legislature and gov
The Boston City Council has unanimously approved a petition to cancel a prospective special election for mayor this year.
The council in its Wednesday meeting voted 12-0, with one abstention, to OK the move. The measure will now head to Mayor Martin Walsh’s desk.
The city’s charter requires that any mayoral vacancy before March 5 be filled in three months by a special election. It appears likely that Walsh, President Biden’s nominee for Labor secretary, will be out by then, as the U.S. Senate is due to hold a hearing about him nomination today, and no Biden nominees have been voted down yet.
City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo, who introduced the legislation after Biden’s announcement about Walsh shocked the Boston political world in early January, on Wednesday reiterated his argument that holding the special election in the middle of a pandemic would cause a “serious threat to the health of our residents.”
The proposal would clear the way for the next regular elections — the September preliminary and the November general — to decide who the next elected mayor of Boston will be.
City Councilor Annissa Essaibi-George, one of the three current mayoral candidates on the council, voted “present.” The other two — Michelle Wu and Andrea Campbell — voted in favor of the legislation, as did City Council President Kim Janey, who will become acting mayor when Walsh leaves. Councilors squabbled last month over rules regarding conflicts of interest. Wu, Campbell and Janey decided to vote after the state ethics commission gave them the OK.
Several councilors initially raised concerns around whether extending the tenure of an acting mayor — who would have more limited powers than an elected one — was wise, and whether the council would look like it was putting its thumb on the scale of the electoral process.
All of the councilors who raised those concerns eventually supported the petition, particularly after last week’s working session in which the council worked in amendments from City Councilor Kenzie Bok to clarify the language and move up the swearing-in of the mayor elected in November’s election, aligning it with the way the charter normally treats the end of acting mayorships.
“I’m just very grateful that people were able to come to a consensus,” Bok said Wednesday.
The legislation is a homerule petition, meaning in order to go into effect, it would need the signature of the mayor — and councilors can’t override a veto — and then the passage of both houses of the Legislature and the signature of the governor.
Walsh hasn’t said what he will do with the legislation. Several members of Boston’s legislative delegation have spoken strongly in favor of it, and Gov. Charlie Baker has suggested he’d be willing to sign any home-rule petition about this that made it to his desk.