Tomorrow’s a big day for the city—at least for the candidates, and those residents who care enough to show up and vote.
And those residents are the ones who don’t need to be reminded that Tuesday is the preliminary election, the day that the field of three mayoral candidates is narrowed down to two, and the field of 13 at-large City Council candidates is narrowed down to 10. (Here’s the list of all the names that will be on the ballot.)
For the City Council candidates, tomorrow’s vote will pretty much just eliminate the weakest of the bunch, the runts of the litter, as it were. While typically—and sadly—incumbents sail through to be easily re-elected, this year, one of the five at-large seats is vacant, thanks to Council President Jose Tosado’s decision to run for mayor. That means that, even if the remaining incumbents (Tommy Ashe, Jimmy Ferrera, Tim Rooke and Kateri Wash) all win re-election, at least one new name will join them.
And this year’s field of challengers includes some names to watch, including former Councilor Bud Williams, who stepped down from the Council in 2009 to run a losing mayoral campaign but now (Lord help us) wants back on; Justin Hurst, son of former School Committee member Marj Hurst and one-time mayoral candidate Rick Hurst, who hopes to join his wife, current School Committee Denise Hurst, in elected office; and Amaad Rivera, who’s served a rocky half-term as the Ward 6 councilor and is now making a move for an at-large seat. One especially promising name on the Council ballot: Charles Rucks, long-time head of Springfield Neighborhood Housing Services, whose candidacy, unfortunately, has not generated a whole lot of attention so far.
The biggest news, of course, will be which of the three mayoral candidates—Tosado, incumbent Dom Sarno, and School Committee member Antonette Pepe—will go on to the general election on Nov. 8. While, again, incumbents typically survive the preliminary, it’s not unheard of for an incumbent mayor to get knocked out in this early round. In 1995, Mayor Bob Markel lost a three-way preliminary to then-Council President Mike Albano and former Mayor Charlie Ryan. (And may we pause here to consider how differently things could have turned out for Springfield had voters gone on to elect Ryan in the general election that year, rather than waiting another eight years before putting him back in office to clean up the mess left by four terms of an Albano administration?)
Could Tosado and Pepe knock Sarno out at the polls tomorrow? That would be a tall order, given the power of incumbency—although certainly the two feisty challengers have spent the summer in a tag-term assault on Sarno.
In the end, the fate of all the candidates will likely be in the hands of a very small portion of the city’s residents. Springfield has posted some appallingly low voter-turnout figures in recent years, with the figures on preliminary elections especially bad. In 2009, fewer than 10 percent of voters showed up for the preliminary, and just 25 percent voted on Election Day—and that was the election that included the long-awaited advent of ward representation.
This weekend, the Springfield Republican ran an editorial preemptively scolding voters for a dismal turnout. “As for the registered voters who skip the game entirely, and wind up unhappy with the slate of candidates for the Nov. [8] election, they’ll have no one to blame but themselves,” the newspaper chided. Amen.
