Saturday, November 10, 2007

Ward 19 Vote Same But Different

BMG points to O'Malley on the Web's breakdown of Boston City Council votes, ward by ward. My ward was as usual a little bit out of step.

He posted:
Ward 19 (Jamaica Plain: Moss Hill, Pond side, White City/Roslindale)
Yoon, 1771 votes
Arroyo, 1688
Murphy, 1098
Flaherty, 1094
Connolly, 1057

Yoon and Arroyo take Ward 19 with solid victories. Murphy, Flaherty, and Connolly are statistically tied and will almost certainly give a little extra love to Ward 19 with the hopes of edging past the other two in 2009.
Regulars here know that I've been a Yoon guy from when he first campaigned over two years ago...as I was this time. So initially I was pleased to see that my neighbors put him up top.

Sub-neighborhood notes: I assume Matt is not a Ward 19 guy. Locals throughout this area and New England can be real sticklers for terms and pronunciations. So, it's Pondside and White City is the pre-WWII name for Woodbourne for the construction company that built some of the house and stores. Also 19 goes up to the Curley School area and includes the Lamartine Street area — a pretty diverse district both culturally and in family income.

Another glance at the votes shows that despite the different proportion to some candidates from the main vote, we went for the incumbents. I liked that we wanted to keep Felix Arroyo in office, unlike the rest of the city who made him the only incumbent to lose. Otherwise, we're flowing with the river. We like Team Unity member Yoon, the most progressive Councilor, far more than most Boston voters, which goes with our political stereotype.

Yet, the basic tie well below the votes for Yoon and Arroyo for the three Irish-Americans indicates that to most voters seemed to have lumped them together. They do kind of look alike, but there were clear differences in their positions. It appears Ward 19 voters either didn't analyze those differences or there is some validity to complaints that the MSM did not make them aware of the underlying politics. I suspect it was likely both.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Matt actually lives a few blocks from the Ward 19 line in Rozzie so he should be very familiar with the area.

The Ward 19 Dems endorsed all 4 incumbents, with people voting for different people for different reasons. Yoon, Arroyo and Flaherty got first ballot endorsements, while Murphy beat Connolly in round 2, pre- "Mailer Gate" (with apologies to the late Norman Mailer).