CHALK ONE UP for the goo-goos. Actually chalk two up. 

The term came into use in the late 1800s and early 1900s as a reference to good government reformers who were looking to rid municipal government of corruption. In yesterday’s Boston city election, the modern-day goo-goos decided they’d seen enough and tossed two incumbent city councilors, Ricardo Arroyo and Kendra Lara, out of office.

Both had been dragged down by questions about their behavior and, in Arroyo’s case, ethics, but the drubbing each received was striking, with the two left-leaning councilors both finishing third in preliminary races in which the top two finishers advance to the November final election. 

Arroyo, a second term councilor from Hyde Park, has faced questions about his interactions with then-US Attorney Rachael Rollins, who resigned following two reports showing she improperly tried to influence the 2022 Suffolk district attorney’s race in his favor. He also paid a $3,000 fine for an ethics violation, and was dogged by years-old accusations of sexual assault – which he denied and for which he was never charged. 

Lara, who represents Jamaica Plain and West Roxbury, has faced withering fallout from a June incident in which she crashed a car into a Jamaica Plain house while driving an unregistered car without a valid driver’s license. 

Both Arroyo and Lara had urged voters to judge them on their zealous work to advance progressive policies, not incidents that may have reflected moments of bad judgment. But voters may have decided they didn’t need to choose between those factors. 

If there was a template for how yesterday’s races played out it might be found 15 years ago, in 2008, when veteran Roxbury state senator Dianne Wilkerson was ousted in a Democratic primary by Sonia Chang-Diaz. 

Wilkerson was a smart and forceful voice for progressive causes but had been dogged by a string of campaign finance and tax violations, which included a six-month home confinement sentence on federal tax charges. On the campaign trail, Chang-Diaz pounded away with a consistent message to voters drawn to Wilkerson’s fearless politics: You don’t have to choose between vigorous advocacy for progressive policies and high ethical standards – with me you get both. 

As in that race, voters committed to progressive causes had choices when they went to the polls yesterday besides the tarnished incumbents on their ballot. 

In District 5, Hyde Park activist Enrique Pepén – who had the backing of Mayor Michelle Wu – appeared to win over left-leaning voters who helped Arroyo win office four years ago. He placed first and will face retired Boston police officer Jose Ruiz in the November final. 

Meanwhile, in District 6, workers’ rights lawyer Ben Weber rolled over Lara in the progressive Jamaica Plain precincts that had been her base on his way to a first-place finish. He’ll go up against IT manager William King of West Roxbury, who placed second, in November. 

Arroyo and Lara made history by becoming the first incumbent councilors to not even get past the preliminary election since Boston put in place its current configuration of nine district and four at-large council seats in 1983. 

With a reputation for bare-knuckle machine politics, Boston has had a mixed history when it comes to tolerance for politicians with checkered records. It was, after all, in the era of the original reform-minded “goo-goos” in the early 1900s that James Michael Curley was famously elected to a seat on the board of aldermen (the predecessor to today’s City Council) from a prison cell. 

He went on to serve four terms as mayor (the last of which included another stint behind bars). 

As beloved as Curley was at the height of his power, voters eventually tired of his antics, and he, too, holds an unenviable place in Boston electoral history: His loss in 1949 stands as the last time an incumbent mayor was turned out of office.