It’s the same old Hub politics despite new faces

The faces are all new but what’s supposed to be a historic election is looking a lot like the same old Boston — dominated by racial and neighborhood divisions, uninspired voters and a botched vote count.

A mayoral contest that featured five candidates of color, four of them women, for the first time in the city’s annals ended up being plagued by the same low voter turnout and old-style Boston politics. City Councilor Michelle Wu was expected to top the balloting, giving her a spot in the

November election.

City Councilor Annissa Essaibi-George will join her in the Nov. 2 final.

But because of what Boston election officials described as a delayed vote count due to late drop-in ballots, we still didn’t have any real results three hours after the polls closed. This is bizarre even for Boston.

Thousands of ballots were dropped off in boxes on Tuesday, but the city could not count them because they had to be cross-checked with voter lists.

Even with early voting and mail-in ballots, voters appeared to be staying away from the polls in droves — despite the fact that Boston will elect its first-ever nonwhite, nonmale mayor. With just a few hours left before polls closed, only about two in 10 registered voters were showing up to vote — and that number was even lower in some neighborhoods.

Voters did not seem impressed by the field and the city’s preliminary election looked a lot like past preliminary elections — marked by apathy and attacks.

City Councilor Andrea Campbell, one of the five looking to make the final election, spent much of the campaign sniping at Acting Mayor Kim Janey. She conceded late Tuesday night.

And special interest groups, including super PACs and unions, pulled their weight in the race by funding TV spots and other advertising on behalf of a few of the candidates.

A super PAC backed by former Police Commissioner William Gross ran TV ads for Essaibi-George while another super PAC funded by a small group of charter school proponents stepped in for Campbell.

Janey surprisingly had little help from traditional incumbency perks like city workers and big business executives, and that may have contributed to her struggling stand in the polls.

Janey had a successful blueprint — the 1993 campaign by then-acting Mayor Thomas M. Menino — but she didn’t follow it.

The most aggressive campaigners were Campbell and Essaibi-George. The most upbeat candidate was ever-smiling Wu, who surprisingly endured no attacks or even mild criticism from the media or the rest of the field.

That should change now that the general election is on. Expect Wu to have to defend herself and her positions as the presumptive front-runner.