Preliminary results for Somerville’s elections are in: Jake Wilson will be mayor.
At a victory party Tuesday at La Brasa in East Somerville, Wilson said he was going to take 48 hours “to just recharge my batteries, and then we’re gonna make this happen. I can’t wait to get going.”
“I’ve been contingency planning for this for a long time,” and a transition team is “pretty much filled out,” Wilson said.
With all precincts reporting and early votes included – and around 39 percent voter turnout, according to the Election Commission – the count gave 11,185 votes to Wilson, giving him 54 percent to Willie Burnley Jr.’s 44 percent. That’s about 2,000 over Burnley’s 9,054 votes. The two had ousted incumbent mayor Katjana Ballantyne in September’s primary election.
Burnley conceded the race at an event at the Crystal Ballroom in Davis Square around 9 p.m. “This is not the end of this movement, this is not the end of me, this is not even the end of this party,” Burnley told supporters. “But I just wanted to take a moment to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart.”
“I do feel like we won on the issues. We brought social housing into this race in a way that was really powerful. We brought supporting local artists into this race in a way that was really powerful,” Burnley said later. He appreciated the number of people who came out to join his campaign, some as young as 14 years old. “it means the world to me to be able to say that we were and are really a hub of the community and activism and passion for what some rule can be in this moment.”
City Council
The contested City Council at-large race saw incumbents Will Mbah and Kristen Strezo reelected and newcomers Ben Wheeler and Jonathan Link.
Mbah led the pack with 13,381 votes. Wheeler slid past Strezo for second with 11,187 votes to her 10,493. Link took the council’s fourth at-large seat with 8,300 ballots.
During the preliminary, three candidates for an open Ward 7 seat were reduced to two after Emily Hardt and Wilbert Pineda beat out Michael Murray. Hardt will assume the seat – vacated by Judy Pineda Neufeld in June – after receiving 2,022 votes to Pineda’s 802.
The contested race in Ward 5 saw incumbent councilor Naima Sait reelected by a landslide, receiving 2,771 votes to challenger Jason Mackey’s 539.
Ward 3, where Nathaniel Roderick had announced a campaign for councilor but was not on the ballot, also saw an incumbent landslide. Sixty-four write-in votes were made in Ward 3, while councilor Ben Ewen-Campen got 2,722.
School Committee and questions
The preliminary results included upsets on the School Committee: In Ward 2, Elizabeth Eldridge slid past incumbent Ilana Krepchin with 1,383 votes to Krepchin’s 1,161. In Ward 3, Michele Lippens skated past Jessie Ratey in a close vote: 1,574 to Ratey’s 1,451.
Voters also passed all three ballot initiatives in front of them.
Question 1, which proposed changes to the city charter, passed by a landslide 83 percent. With 17,202 voters in favor, “yes” votes on Question 1 made up the largest number of votes provided to any one candidate or either side of a ballot question.
Question 2, which proposed extending the mayor’s term to four years from two, also passed, but by a slimmer margin: 54 percent of voters voted in favor.
Question 3, which was sponsored by activist group Somerville for Palestine, asked the city to end all business with companies deemed to support genocide in Palestine. Fifty-six percent of voters voted in favor, with 11,489 ballots cast in support.
Question 3 faced significant opposition, including a lawsuit by the group Somerville United Against Discrimination. Requests from the group to invalidate signatures for the measure were dismissed Thursday.
“It was for sure a historic day,” said Somerville for Palestine representative Leila Skinner.
To Skinner, the votes for Question 3 mean more than support for Palestine. “Voters are more confident in their stance against Israeli apartheid than they are for our next mayor, Jake Wilson,” Skinner said, alluding to the volume of votes cast for Question 3 over Wilson.
A representative from the opponents, Sam Gechter, said that he saw it differently. “The results are in. In a progressive city with 82,000 residents, Question 3 passed with only 11,500 votes, just 55 percent of those who cast a ballot. That is clearly not the mandate supporters of Question 3 have claimed,” Gechter said, “and proves that most Somerville residents do not want to demonize Israel, hurt their neighbors and divide our community.”
But the future of the nonbinding Question 3 remains uncertain. On the campaign trail, Wilson said he didn’t think it was legal to implement.
A stronger
Please consider making a financial contribution to maintain, expand and improve Cambridge Day.
We are now a 501(c)3 nonprofit and all donations are tax deductible.
Please consider a recurring contribution.
