NO ‘PATH TO VICTORY’
Arroyo concedes, bringing bitter primary battle to a close
Ricardo Arroyo has conceded the Suffolk County district attorney race to Kevin Hayden, drawing a brutal primary slog to a close and giving Hayden a glide path to four years in the office — but not without some final turbulence.
“With nearly all the votes counted it is clear we do not have a path to victory,” Arroyo, a Boston city councilor, tweeted Wednesday morning, about 10 hours after The Associated Press called the race and then his opponent declared victory after a couple of false starts. “Running for Suffolk County District Attorney was always about ensuring those most impacted by our systems are treated with the humanity and dignity they deserve.”
Arroyo late Tuesday night had suggested things were heading in this direction, but said he wanted to see the final outstanding votes counted by the city before making the concession. Asked then if he planned on continuing the race via write-in campaign, he said, “I don’t think so, no.”
Hayden, who was appointed DA earlier this year, made the announcement to cheering fans at the SoWa power station in the South End about two hours after his campaign had begun telling reporters he planned to declare victory.
“We did it,” he said shortly before midnight, before thanking God. “Despite every attack of the enemy, despite every adversary, despite everything we went through to get here, He pulled us through.”
Both men faced serious questions about their character, with Hayden, the sitting DA, facing allegations that he had broomed an investigation into two MBTA Transit Police officers and then leaked protected documents about Arroyo. The city councilor had his own scandal based off of the contents of those leaks: the revelation that he’d been investigated twice, though never charged, for sexual assault allegations as a teenager.
Both men insist they’ve done nothing wrong.
Hayden ultimately won by a 54%-46% count of votes cast — 41,011 to 34,951, per The Associated Press, to be the top prosecutor across Boston, Chelsea, Winthrop and Revere. Hayden took Boston, where the vast majority of both residents and voters are in Suffolk County, by nearly 5,000 votes — though 7,336 people who cast ballots didn’t vote in the race, and 644 wrote in someone else, making up a pool of Boston ballots cast for neither candidate that’s more than the margin of victory.
In terms of policy, Hayden was seen as the more centrist candidate, with Arroyo running to the left. Arroyo pitched himself as the successor to the progressive Rachael Rollins, who’s now the U.S. attorney but previously held the DA office before moving to that new job in January. Then Gov. Charlie Baker appointed the then-littleknown Hayden as DA.
Hayden previously chaired the Sex Offender Registry Board. Arroyo, a former public defender, has been a city councilor for Hyde Park since 2020, and comes from a well-known political family.
The general election for DA is Nov. 8, and no one else is on the ballot.
The Arroyo-Hayden race was one of the nastiest local races in recent memory, and the vitriol billowing off of it has permeated many corners of Boston politics, with tensions leading to a council meeting in which pols exchanged barbs and onlookers exchanged blows. The concession did not put frustrations to bed, with Arroyo again calling for an investigation into Hayden.
City Councilor Kendra Lara, a close ally of Arroyo, tweeted that “a sitting state senator and a criminal of a DA, paired up with the corporate media, and two racist councilors to steal an election.”