Janey, Campbell clash in final race days
It’s never too late for some last-second mud-slinging.
The Boston mayoral race largely had been a staid and civil affair, with candidates generally refraining from out-and-out bashing of their opponents — until this week, when the three candidates who appear to be taking a crack at the second of the two available slots for the general election began lighting each other up.
Most notable was the escalating feud between Acting Mayor Kim Janey and City Councilor Andrea Campbell, which reached a boiling point on Tuesday over an exchange regarding a new ad from a pro-Janey political action committee.
The service workers’ PAC’s short radio spot alluded to the pro-charter-school support of Campbell and took it a step further, saying, “Special interests versus kids with special needs? Andrea Campbell is on the wrong side.”
A frustrated Campbell held a press conference Tuesday morning in which she called on Janey to “disavow” the PAC’s ad, which she said was spreading “misinformation and lies.”
Campbell has been the most critical of Janey’s policies in the past few weeks but insisted this was a different level of personal criticism, as it “goes as far as to suggest that I don’t care about special needs students, which I think is quite laughable because I’m the only candidate that actually has represented students with special needs in education cases — sometimes against Boston Public Schools.”
Janey’s campaign manager turned up the heat even further in a statement in response.
“Andrea Campbell’s entire campaign is based on negative political attacks on Mayor Janey, so it’s the height of hypocrisy for her to complain about an outside group providing voters with information about her,” campaign manager Kirby Chandler said. “Instead of attacking hotel workers for expressing their political views, Campbell should condemn the dark-money, right-wing millionaires who want to privatize our public schools and have poured millions of dollars into TV ads supporting Campbell’s campaign.”
This comes after City Council Annissa Essaibi George and Janey mixed it up over the weekend, when the councilor criticized Janey’s eviction moratorium as putting a “Band-Aid over a bullet hole.” Janey responded in a TV interview referring to Essaibi George’s developer husband that Essaibi George “has a track record of evicting tenants.”
The preliminary election is this coming Tuesday, Sept. 14. The top two overall votegetters advance, and recent polls have shown City Councilor Michelle Wu appears to be in the driver’s seat for the first one. Janey, Essaibi George and Campbell look to be in contention for the second, with former economic development director John Barros back in the single digits.
Recent polls from MassINC and Suffolk University/ The Boston Globe have had Wu up over 30% with the next three within four points of each other either in the mid-to-low teens or high teens and low 20s.