Elections Occur! Minorities Affected!

Shocker! While everyone, myself included, thought the at-large council race was going to come down to a battle between John Connolly and Steve Murphy, the opposite happened. Murphy pulled strong numbers, tailing mayoral hopeful Mike Flaherty, and beating Connolly, Sam Yoon, and Felix Arroyo, in that order, which means the lovable, though spacey, Arroyo is out, and Connolly is in.

The turnout was a shockingly low 13 percent, but that, according to the Globe’s coverage, was far less distressing than the resounding blow laid upon Mother Diversity. Here are the leads from the broadsheet’s two reports today:

“Boston’s voter turnout plummeted to its lowest level in more than two decades yesterday, especially in the city’s predominantly nonwhite neighborhoods, a tide of apathy that swept the City Council’s only Latino member, Felix Arroyo, out of office.”

(Wait, can there be a “tide of apathy?” Isn’t that sort of like “an eruption of boredom?” Maybe “a molasses flood of apathy”) Anyway, here’s the second lead:

“Just a year after the state elected its first African-American governor, minority candidates on some local ballots stirred hope of greater diversity yesterday. When the votes were counted, they came up short of their goals in Brockton, Lawrence, and Quincy, but in Fitchburg an Asian-American mayoral candidate clobbered her more experienced opponent with 75 percent of the vote. Worcester appeared to have elected a woman mayor for the first time.”

The second report, which covered other municipal races in the area, was singularly focused on the diversity issue, seeing fit to mention that two Asian candidates for Quincy City Council lost, while ignoring the fact that Quincy mayor William Phelan was crushed by challenger Tommy Koch, which would seem to be more significant.

Other Boston city council races had Chuck Turner roll over promising upstart Carlos Henriquez (featured in this month’s magazine), while businessman Mark Ciommo croaked Greg Glennon for Jerry McDermott’s Allston-Brighton seat.

Other notables:

–Howie Carr does another slurp job on Steve Murphy. My prediction is that Howie will pay a lot more attention to the generally ignored council once the “college boy from Harvard” Connolly steps in. Howie’s already started attacking the guy’s parents.

–David Bernstein offers some thoughts on what the race means for white Irish guys.