Hub mayor’s race needs some GOP juice

What a difference 102 years makes.

In the early part of last century, women couldn’t cast a ballot, much less be on one for mayor. And speaking out for the cause could land a lady behind bars.

Back in February 1919, Boston threw President Woodrow Wilson a welcome home parade on his way back from the Paris Peace conference. Members of the National Woman’s Party picketed for women’s right to vote in front of the State House viewing stand. They were arrested and taken to jail.

Women got the right to vote in the U.S. in 1920, and this year on Nov. 2, voters will cast their ballots for either Michelle Wu or Annissa Essaibi-George as mayor of Boston.

Change is never fast enough. Change has been top of mind in this mayoral campaign — how the status quo is no longer working, how voters need a voice, how Boston’s communities are desperate for positive changes.

Yet what was stark in its constancy was the preliminary election’s low voter turnout.

As the Herald reported, with just a few hours left before polls closed, only about two in 10 registered voters had shown up to vote — and that number was even lower in some neighborhoods.

In the end, about 108,000 votes were tallied, a little less than a quarter of Boston’s registered voters.

Yikes.

This is not a new trend — the seeming apathy during local elections is one cities across the nation have bemoaned.

It’s not as if people don’t care about what’s going on with our neighbors, our neighborhoods and our community in general. Over the past few years we’ve seen marchers take to the streets — some peacefully, some not — for a variety of causes.

There have been calls for police reform, social reform, affordable housing and an end to gun violence, to name a few. Families will stand in the cold to protest online-only learning in the face of a pandemic, or protest mandatory mask-wearing.

We’ll work long and hard to help each other — as volunteers packed boxes with food and supplies for low-income families in the early days of the pandemic and kept the goodwill going as COVID dragged on. Donations poured in, and folks drove strangers without transportation to vaccination sites.

Bostonians aren’t apathetic when it comes to stepping up to the plate, why are we when it comes to stepping up to the voting booth?

One possible cause that’s been bandied about is lack of competition.

The last time Boston had a Republican mayor was in the late 1920s, one Malcolm Nichols. Fun facts: He was the State House reporter for the Boston Traveler, and was preceded and succeeded by James M. Curley. Since then, it’s been Democrats all the way.

With a field of five hailing from the same party, as it did this year, differences on the issues are subtle more than earth-shattering. No one is against affordable housing. No one thinks the situation at Mass and Cass is great and doesn’t require intervention. Everyone’s caught up on the gunfire on Boston’s streets.

When the differences between candidates come down to what kind of Democrat is on the menu — progressive or moderate — then the mayor’s office can appear to be on auto-pilot to voters.

If you vote, a Democrat will win. If you don’t, a Democrat will win.

One of the items on the next mayor’s to-do list should be ramping up civic engagement.