Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Ward 21 Democratic Committee Does Not Endorse for District 9 City Councilor

The Ward 21 Democratic Committee has decided not to endorse a candidate for the preliminary municipal election of District 9 City Councilor for Allston-Brighton.

The four candidates for the seat -- incumbent Councilor Mark Ciommo, plus challengers Abigail Furey, Benjamin Narodick, and Alex Selvig -- appeared individually in front of the committee last week to speak and answer questions. The committee then voted, with no candidate receiving the 2/3 majority required under its by-laws to obtain an endorsement.

In the 2007 election for the open seat, the committee endorsed Tim Schofield for the preliminary municipal election. When he failed to make the final by placing third, the committee then endorsed Mark Ciommo for the municipal election -- which was not surprising because the other candidate, Gregory Glennon, failed to appear in front of the committee.

This non-endorsement appears to be a black eye on the re-election bid of Councilor Ciommo, particularly since they have endorsed him previously. Selvig seemed to relish spreading the news on his Facebook page, as did Narodnick via Twitter. Furey? Not so much.

The Ward 21 Democratic Committee has undergone some recent leadership changes in its leadership. Darrin Wilson is the new chair, Eric Fox the secretary, and Nan Davis Evans has switched to the affirmative action/outreach position.


Image of question mark in Esbjerg by alexanderdrachman provided through a Creative Commons license.

3 comments:

nme said...

I want to add a bit to your description of the Ward 21 committee's failure to endorse a candidate. First, we will reconsider the endoresement after the primary.

Second, I do not attribute a great deal of significance to the lack of an endorsement. It simply means that no one candidate received two-thirds of the votes, which are by-laws require for us to make an endoresement.

There have been times in the past when the committee has not made an endorsement because no candidate received 2/3 of the votes. We always try to make endorse candidates - it's one of our most important functions. But when there are several strong candidates, committee members may disagree, as we did in this situation.

Finally, two members of the committee are intimately connected with two of the candidates: one is works as an aide; the other is campaign manager. Both of these members left the room during the voting.

Yours,

Nan Evans (don't know where you got the Davis from!).

Michael Pahre said...

Thanks for the comment -- sorry about my stupid mistake on your surname, I know better...

nme said...

Excuse the numerous typos in my comment. I guess my old eyes have trouble with these little boxes!