Somerville’s election season locked into place at Wednesday’s filing deadline with some things already known: Ward 5 city councilor Beatriz Gomez Mouakad has dropped out to handle a family health emergency; former councilor Will Mbah is making a new at-large run for office that could unseat an incumbent; and Mayor Katjana Ballantyne faces a challenger in her run for a second term.
Gomez Mouakad’s Ward 5 seat is contested between two newcomers, while incumbents in Wards 1, 3 and 6 also face challenges. The council has 11 members who serve, like other elected officials, two-year terms.
Ballantyne’s sole challenger is another returning candidate, William “Billy” Tauro, business owner and publisher of the Somerville/Medford News Weekly. Union Square Neighborhood Council board member Ann Camara took out nomination papers but did not submit them to be certified for November elections. Camara said Wednesday that she didn’t gather enough signatures to quality.
Two years ago, the Trump-supporting Tauro lost a four-way mayoral primary, getting only 15 percent of voter support. Ballantyne went on to win her office with 55 percent of ballots cast to Mbah’s 37 percent as Tauro went on to run as a write-in candidate, winning 6.5 percent of the vote. If the same dynamic plays out, Ballantyne will cruise to an easy reelection.
Sait joins Ward 5 race
It looked like at first like Gomez Mouakad’s seat would be filled without a race; when she withdrew, the president of the Massachusetts Young Democrats and a former campaign adviser of hers, Jack Perenick, filed papers. “I was not intending to get into the Ward 5 race or any race until Beatriz decided to withdraw,” Perenick said. “I’ve seen the good work she has done, specifically on bikes and wage theft. I didn’t want all of that work to end.”
Then he drew a run for Ward 5 from Naima Sait, a first-generation immigrant from Algeria who teaches French and is a union organizer at Somerville High School.
A school teacher for more than a decade, Sait entered the race Monday, after the the June 2 closing of the Winter Hill Community Innovation School building for safety concerns.
“Issues in our schools mirror those in our communities. Lack of mental health services in the wake of the pandemic, the alarming state of public buildings, lack of multilingual services and interpretation, and the housing crisis. As an organizer with the Somerville Educators Union, I’ve been advocating for the staff and students for the past year and a half, but nothing has happened. I think it’s time these issues be brought to the city council more directly,” Sait said Thursday.
While she could have run for School Committee, Sait said she believes the City Council needs a member with more direct insight into public schools.
“During the last election season, the SEU put together a forum to endorse city councilors based on their understanding of crucial issues. But we realized the City Council had no idea what was going on in our schools. We ended up not making any endorsements.That we had to start with explaining the issues before even asking for advocacy was a significant problem for me,” Sait said.
Sait speaks four languages – English, French, Arabic and Tamazight, the language of indigenous people in North Africa – and said she is passionate about creating inclusive environments and bridging gaps in language and income in a variety of forms: affordable housing, interpretation services and immigration resources. “I have a lot to bring to the community. As an immigrant – someone who moved here and had to start a new life – and also as an educator who has been involved in advocating for our youth through our union, I also have a lot of experience in taking initiative,” she said.
School Committee and ward races
For the School Committee itself, elections look simple: In Wards 1-6, each incumbent is running for reelection with no opponent. In Ward 7, member Sara Dion did not file papers, and there is only candidate the replace her: Leiran Biton, a regional coordinator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. A Teele Square resident since 2011, he and his wife Anna have two children at the West Somerville Neighborhood School and a child entering Somerville High in the fall, according to his campaign website.
There will be a battle of Matthews for Ward 1, where incumbent Matthew McLaughlin will defend his seat against Matthew Ryan Hunt, a faculty assistant at Harvard Law School. In Ward 3, John Fitzpatrick will challenge council president Ben Ewen-Campen. Former longtime councilor Jack Connolly will try to reclaim his seat for Ward 6 from incumbent Lance Davis.
Connolly said he is running again because he is concerned about the state of Davis Square. He wants to see more community-minded development and leverage the city’s relationship with nonprofits to support residents, especially those struggling with addiction and homelessness. He wants to see better upkeep of the city’s streets, sidewalks and buildings. But most of all, Connolly wants to be an accessible advocate for his community. “A ward councilor is the neighborhood ambassador to City Hall,” Connolly said Thursday.
There are four at-large seats on the council, and each incumbent filed to return. Mbah will have to unseat either Willie Burnley Jr., Charlotte Kelly, Kristen Strezo or Jake Wilson to get on.
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