Pitch to drop the acting
Janey enters mayoral race, focuses on racial issues, life experience
Acting Mayor Kim Janey began her long-expected run for a full four-year term in the big office, pitching herself with a focus on racial issues — and saying she has the lived experience to be in a position to create change.
“I have unique experience as someone who grew up here and faced many of these challenges firsthand,” Janey told reporters Tuesday morning after making her announcement. “I understand these challenges because I have lived them.”
Janey, the city council president, has been acting mayor since now- Labor Secretary Martin Walsh resigned March 22 — and is the first Black person and first woman to serve as the city’s chief executive.
She’s been the city councilor representing Roxbury since 2018 and the council president since January 2020.
Janey — surprising few with her long-expected announcement — presented herself in a campaign video as the latest in a line of Black female leaders in Boston and beyond, from “First Lady of
Roxbury” Melnea Cass through U.S. Rep Ayanna Pressley and Vice President Kamala Harris. She also leaned hard into her her position, with her logo blaring “Mayor Janey” and “Our mayor.”
“We’ve got work to do,” Janey, 55, continued. “You’ve heard the problems; it’s a broken record: Affordable housing isn’t actually affordable. Deep racial inequities. The median net worth for white Bostonians is $247,000 — for Black folks it’s $8. Eight dollars.”
Already running for mayor are City Councilors Andrea Campbell, Annissa Essaibi-George and Michelle Wu, plus state Rep. Jon Santiago and former city economic development chief John Barros.
Janey’s interest in a run has been no secret. She told the Herald in January that she was giving a run “serious consideration” after she brought on political heavy hitter Doug Rubin’s Northwind Strategies to handle her political communications, and she’s done nothing over the past couple of months to suggest otherwise.
Janey has been crosscrossing the city, showing her face all over town in the two weeks since she became acting mayor — volunteering at a vaccine clinic in Roxbury, attending a ceremony for Medal of Honor recipients alongside the governor in South Boston and, on Tuesday after her announcement, chatting with small business owners in English and Spanish and grabbing some tacos in East Boston’s Day Square.
“We also have to make sure that we are supporting small business owners and residents,” Janey told the Herald on Wednesday in Eastie. “They are the things that make Boston so special, that make our neighborhoods so vibrant, and it’s been really difficult for them.”
She’s also had a handful of high-profile announcements already, including putting $50 million of federal aid into rental relief funds to help people hurt by the coronavirus pandemic.
Janey has played a bit loose with her title. Per the city’s governing charter, she’s the acting mayor, a title conferred to the city council president when the mayor leaves that brings broad power — but more limited than that of an elected mayor. She’s eschewed the use of the word “acting” and insisted the limitations won’t hamper her while also declaring herself the 55th mayor — even though the math doesn’t quite follow.
Janey continued to play hard into that vein in her launch video, wrapping it up with, “Let’s keep on going together, Boston — your mayor is asking.”