The city reported 100% of unofficial votes on Wednesday morning, with Wu decisively in first place with 33.3 percent of the vote followed by Essaibi George with 22.4 percent. Massachusetts Secretary of State William F. Galvin said Wednesday that the slow count was proof of his determination – and that of Boston election officials – to ensure the integrity of Tuesday’s election.
Wu and Essaibi George struck the stump early Wednesday morning to highlight differences in their views on the city, although results were still being counted. Wu greeted travelers at Jamaica Plain’s Forest Hills T stop, while Essaibi George chose Mike’s City Diner, a South End restaurant.
Both immigrant daughters, Wu and Essaibi George, represent the two poles of the ideological spectrum shown in this year’s camp. Either would be the first woman of color Boston has ever elected mayor, a historic change.
But competition between them will test the city’s desire for change.
Essaibi George, 47, has lived the most moderate lane. He has courted supporters of former Mayor Martin J. Walsh, who left his post to take up a job in the Biden administration, setting Tuesday night’s preliminary election. Walsh himself did not support the preliminary phase, but Essaibi George escorted his mother to the polls.
By contrast, Wu, 36, is a beloved of the city’s young progressives and a protégé of Senator Elizabeth Warren. She has called for free public transportation and a Green New Deal for Boston, sometimes facing criticism because her releases are unrealistic. Constantly the leader of public opinion polls in the weeks leading up to the election, Wu became the top voter on Tuesday night.
“These elections are about the future of our city,” Wu told reporters outside the T stop on Wednesday. we sit and wait and just bite the edges of the status quo. “
Wu said the city faces urgent challenges on many fronts.
“We are in a crisis when it comes to public health, when it comes to rebuilding our economy, investing in our schools and making sure every person has a voice in the city,” Wu said.
He greeted the travelers at the station as well, wishing them a good day and thanking them for the votes.
“How did you go yesterday?” A passing traffic employee joked.
“We’re fine,” Wu said. ”Well, well, well! I’m glad for you! ”He replied.
Some travelers in the morning applauded and congratulated Wu as they headed for their buses and trains. A mother with her preschooler in a stroller said, “We’re fans,” and Wu took a selfie with Cheronna Monroe, a traffic customer service agent.
Outside of Mike’s City Diner, a cheerful Essaibi George expressed confidence on Wednesday about his chances in November, despite statements that showed Wu won significantly more votes in the first round.
For many, the race is shaping up to be a test of the city’s progress.
But Essaibi George rejected as “lazy” the “labels” that painted her as a moderate candidate and Wu as a progressive. However, he presented himself as “a little more pragmatic than others”.
“We can say whatever we want about the challenges we face as a city, but unless we follow up on an action plan, work and roll up our sleeves and do it, we really it’s not that daring, ”he said. they told reporters. “I think many [Wu’s] the plans, unfortunately, are very unrealistic. We need to make sure that every day we work towards solutions to the challenges we face as a city. And this not only involves bold ideas, but also the action behind it ”.
Gene Gorman, 50, a Dorchester defender, says she has been friends with Essaibi George for decades, even when her husband coached his son in a small league.
Essaibi George has the “boots-on-the-ground mentality” needed for leadership at the municipal level, while Wu’s ideas are broader and perhaps too high, he said. And the distinctions didn’t end there.
“She didn’t go to Harvard Law,” he said of Essaibi George, an apparent dig at Wu, who did. Essaibi George, he said, “came to school from the hard blows.”
The contest between the two began to take shape even before all the votes were counted. In declaring victory on Tuesday night, each woman seemed to grab the other, telegraphing what she would bring in the coming weeks.
Mayor Essaibi George insisted, he cannot make the MBTA free or command rent control, once direct to Wu, who has asked to do both.
“You won’t find me in a tray,” he said. “You’ll find me in your neighborhood doing the work.”
Wu, meanwhile, speaking Tuesday night before all votes were counted, appeared to dismiss Essaibi George as a candidate who would allow the city to stagnate.
“This is a choice for our future,” Wu said. “This is an option on whether the City Council addresses our biggest problems with bold solutions or whether we bite the edges of the status quo.”
A strange wrinkle of the electoral drama of the night was that the declarations of victory of Wu and Essaibi George, and the defeat of their rivals, were made by the same candidates, rather than city officials, as part of a chaotic night in which election officials delayed the publication of any results hours after the polls closed.
But Wu, the leader of the polls, expressed confidence in his supporters shortly after 10pm, even though the city’s polling station showed nothing more than zero. She said she was sure she had gotten one of the top two spots to advance to the finals. The individual campaigns had gathered and counted the number of votes in each district before the city released them, and said their clues showed that those in Wu victory was inevitable.
Galvin said Wednesday that officials had expected to collect 3,000 e-mail notes and send them on Tuesday, but ended up receiving a total of 7,000 by 8 p.m.
Since then, Galvin said, municipal and state election officials have been making cross-references to polling lists from polls with email and ballot boxes to make sure no one votes twice.
“I wanted to make sure that the integrity of the electoral process was impeccable. Sorting can sometimes be slow, and it was, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong, ”Galvin said.“ I think what we’re talking about here is accuracy, it’s important. There’s no mystery here. I want that all the voters are satisfied that if they voted yesterday it was counted. I want all the candidates to be satisfied “.
At 9:53 a.m. Wednesday, unofficial results released by the city showed Wu in the lead with 35,888 votes, followed by Essaibi George with 24,186, city councilor Andrea Campbell with 21,221, the acting mayor, Kim Janey, with 20,946, and the Hub’s former economic development. chief, John Barros, with 3,436.
On Mike’s Wednesday morning, Essaibi George acknowledged that “it was a long night” waiting for the Boston election results to be presented. But he praised the city workers for continuing to count all the votes and said it is a crucial effort.
In the coming days, Essaibi George said, he hopes to see “a little post mortem to see what happened there and find out how we do best for the November election.”
He said he could not speculate on what caused the delays, which crept so late into the night that the candidates declared victory and awarded the race based on the numbers collected internally by their own campaigns.
“We haven’t really had a chance to hold that conversation with the election department,” he said.
Tuesday was disappointing participation levels, with only about 100,000 voters, or about 25% of the voting electorate. According to a recent poll conducted by research group MassInc, the low level of interest in the race probably helped Essaibi George, who had built a solid base among voters most likely to vote in a preliminary election. Turnout in the preliminary municipal elections is usually lower than in other races and only attracts the most consistent voters.
These conditions did little to help Janey and Campbell, who had been in fierce competition for second place with Essaibi George until Tuesday and who depended on high turnout, according to the recent poll. Wu had been the leader in this and other recent polls.
What comes next is a historic and definitive confrontation between Wu, a champion of the politically progressive movement that has consolidated in Boston and reformed its ideological identity, and Essaibi George, who has taken a more conservative path to focus on quality of life issues. , such as public safety and school improvement.
An aide to Essaibi George told the Globe that the campaign was already preparing for a final between the two candidates and would define Wu as a progressive overview the focus on issues such as the environment and transportation was unrealistic and unrelated to day-to-day tasks as mayor.
Essaibi George had laid the groundwork for placing social workers in schools and focusing on education and public safety.
But Wu has overcome the very progressive moment that has brought about an ideological shift in Boston, as voters identify as more liberal and progressive, according to recent polls. City councilor since 2014 and first woman of color elected chair of the council, she has also built a platform to address housing inequalities and address racial and economic disparities.
On Wednesday at the Forest Hills stop, some Wu sponsors were visibly pleased to greet her, including Petasch Francis, a Mattapan resident who passed by after leaving his son at school and listening on the radio to Wu. would greet voters at the station.
Francis brought his three-year-old twin daughters to be photographed with a historic mayoral candidate. Francis said she was thrilled with the historic nature of the election and was sure Wu would do an amazing job running the city.
“Long live! We can’t wait to see you as our next mayor!” Francis said as his girls flanked Wu and posed with her.
Wu is also popular with younger and younger voters, in a city that has seen its population grow by more than 60,000 people over the past decade, according to a recent Balloon survey.
The poll of 500 likely voters shows that what matters most to them is education (20 percent), followed by housing (19 percent), racism and equity (17 percent) and the economy. and employment (14 percent).
This is a story in development and will be updated.
Danny McDonald, John Ellement, Milton Valencia, Stephanie Ebbert, Meghan Irons, Dugan Arnett and Laura Crimaldi, of the Globe staff, and Globe correspondent Julia Carlin contributed to this report.
Emma Platoff can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @emmaplatoff. You can contact Tonya Alanez at [email protected] or 617-929-1579. Follow her on Twitter @talanez. John R. Ellement can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @JREbosglobe. Travis Andersen can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @TAGlobe.