A mayoral miss for Black Boston

Campbell, Janey, and Barros finish out of the running 

BOSTON’S NEXT MAYOR will break twin barriers by being the first woman and first person of color to lead the city. But the storyline of big change comes tinged with one where Black residents again are shut out and won’t see a mayor emerge from their community. 

The three Black candidates in Tuesday’s preliminary election, Acting Mayor Kim Janey, City Councilor Andrea Campbell, and former city economic development chief John Barros, finished out of the running as city councilors Michelle Wu and Annissa Essaibi George advanced to the November final. 

Now comes the hand-wringing — and finger-pointing — over what went wrong and what might have been. 

Armani White, a community organizer with the group Right to the City, which backed Janey, expressed bitterness at the result. “I think it suggests that the city is not ready to see a Black person lead it,” he told GBH’s Adam Reilly. “What I’m seeing right now [suggests] Boston is not ready or willing to follow Black leadership.”

“Boston should be ashamed of itself,’’ Barbara Gibbs, a 71-year-old Hyde Park resident, told the Globe. “I just think Boston is a racist city.”

Former state rep Marie St. Fleur, the first Haitian-American to serve in the Legislature, told the Globe, “It’s the story about all of Boston and the fact that in the state of Massachusetts, the city of Boston, we cannot move the White community to really come out overall to support a Black candidate as mayor.”

While we will need to see ward-level results to know exactly how the vote played out, the reality is that voters who turned out Tuesday actually were prepared to send a Black candidate to the final election — just not necessarily the same one. 

The combined vote share of the two Black women in the race, Janey and Campbell, looks like it will be about 40 percent, far more than the total for first-place finisher Wu. 

Campbell sought to put a positive gloss on the turn of events. “The real winner tonight was actually Black women,’’ she told her supporters Tuesday night in conceding the race. “Collectively, our vote share surpassed all others. And what that shows is that there is an appetite indeed in this city for change and I know my candidacy helped ignite it, and I’m proud of it.”

But with that collective vote share split between two candidates, it was a hollow victory for those focused on the here and now. 

Throughout the race, the candidates and commentators emphasized that Black voters are not “a monolith,” and that the Black candidates should not be viewed as interchangeable. That was surely true. But it’s also true that the Black candidates amassed a huge share of their vote counts in predominantly Black neighborhoods — votes that almost certainly would have coalesced behind a single Black candidate had only one of them run. 

Soon after Janey took the reins as acting mayor in March and declared her candidacy, there was talk among her backers of trying to ease Campbell out of the race to provide a clearer path for the city’s first woman and first Black mayor. Campbell was having none of it, with her campaign calling the idea “misinformed and insulting.” Meanwhile, former state senator Dianne Wilkerson led an effort to get Black voters to rally around Janey.  

Janey, a second-term city councilor who had never expressed mayoral ambitions, was basking in the early national media glow of her ascension to the acting mayor’s post in a city known for racial animus. But Campbell declared her candidacy six months before Janey landed in the mayor’s seat by virtue of her position as City Council president, and the Mattapan councilor was articulating a citywide vision for Boston’s future. 

Meet the Author

Michael Jonas

Executive Editor, CommonWealth

About Michael Jonas

Michael Jonas has worked in journalism in Massachusetts since the early 1980s. Before joining the CommonWealth staff in early 2001, he was a contributing writer for the magazine for two years. His cover story in CommonWealth's Fall 1999 issue on Boston youth outreach workers was selected for a PASS (Prevention for a Safer Society) Award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.

Michael got his start in journalism at the Dorchester Community News, a community newspaper serving Boston's largest neighborhood, where he covered a range of urban issues. Since the late 1980s, he has been a regular contributor to the Boston Globe. For 15 years he wrote a weekly column on local politics for the Boston Sunday Globe's City Weekly section.

Michael has also worked in broadcast journalism. In 1989, he was a co-producer for "The AIDS Quarterly," a national PBS series produced by WGBH-TV in Boston, and in the early 1990s, he worked as a producer for "Our Times," a weekly magazine program on WHDH-TV (Ch. 7) in Boston.

Michael lives in Dorchester with his wife and their two daughters.

About Michael Jonas

Michael Jonas has worked in journalism in Massachusetts since the early 1980s. Before joining the CommonWealth staff in early 2001, he was a contributing writer for the magazine for two years. His cover story in CommonWealth's Fall 1999 issue on Boston youth outreach workers was selected for a PASS (Prevention for a Safer Society) Award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.

Michael got his start in journalism at the Dorchester Community News, a community newspaper serving Boston's largest neighborhood, where he covered a range of urban issues. Since the late 1980s, he has been a regular contributor to the Boston Globe. For 15 years he wrote a weekly column on local politics for the Boston Sunday Globe's City Weekly section.

Michael has also worked in broadcast journalism. In 1989, he was a co-producer for "The AIDS Quarterly," a national PBS series produced by WGBH-TV in Boston, and in the early 1990s, he worked as a producer for "Our Times," a weekly magazine program on WHDH-TV (Ch. 7) in Boston.

Michael lives in Dorchester with his wife and their two daughters.

As much as some Janey supporters may have wanted to wish Campbell away, Janey could have opted to steer the city as acting mayor but not run for an elected term. She could have sought reelection to her council seat, a move that undoubtedly would have given Campbell a clearer path to victory. 

It ultimately was a game of chicken where no one budged.