Arroyo, Yoon secure spots on November’s at-large ballot

Yawu Miller

As the Arroyo campaign’s precinct captains filtered into Merengue Restaurant with tallies from across the city, supporters were crowded around restaurant owner Hector Pina’s laptop computer viewing the results that filtered in from the city’s Election Department.

While the city’s results initially put Arroyo in seventh place, the mood in the restaurant shifted from anxiety to elation as results from precincts in communities of color filtered in propelling Arroyo to second place, within 2,200 votes of first-place finisher Michael Flaherty.

In the final tally, newcomer John Connolly clinched third place, bumping incumbent Stephen Murphy to fourth place, within 900 votes of fifth-place finisher Sam Yoon. Rounding out the top eight were Patricia White, Matt O’Malley and Edward Flynn.

Fifteen candidates were in the running for the eight at-large city council ballot slots that will appear on the November ballot.

Arroyo and Yoon’s finish in the top eight demonstrated again what many say is the increasing clout in the city’s communities of color.

While neither candidate did particularly well in the traditionally powerful white ethnic enclaves, both were able to draw votes from wards populated by Asian, black and Latino voters. With African Americans constituting the city’s largest single non-white group, the black vote was key to Arroyo and Yoon’s success.

Activists say the willingness of blacks to vote for candidates of color bodes well for the future of politics in a city long known for its ethnic balkanization.

“When black people are going to the polls to vote for a Puerto Rican and an Asian, you know things have changed,” commented long-time political activist Danielle Williams.

Arroyo’s strong finish, despite having raised little more than $41,000 by September, sparked talk of a mayoral run among political pundits, but Arroyo says it’s too early to think about anything other than getting re-elected.

“It’s a very premature question,” he said responding to the mayoral talk. “At this point I think I play an important role on the council.”

Arroyo says his campaign is aiming to raise another $50,000 by the November 8 final election in order to do mass mailings. But Arroyo acknowledges that his success at the polls has so far depended very little on fundraising.

“I raised less money than the other people, but we use more people power than money to get our message out — phone calls, literature drops, emails,” he said.

Arroyo campaign manager Pat Keaney says the campaign has depended on 300 volunteers.

Even without raising the $200,000 Flaherty raised before the preliminary, Arroyo could well get a boost from the traditional spike in progressive voters and voters of color that comes with the final election. Preliminaries tend to draw a smaller, more conservative voting population that does not favor candidates of color.

In 2003, Arroyo finished in fifth place in the preliminary before rocketing into a second place finish in the final. If pattern holds true in the November election, not only could Arroyo advance to the number one slot, Yoon too could benefit, moving from his fifth place to one of the four at-large seats.

“What these votes show is that political change is happening in this city,” said Chinese Progressive Association Executive Director Lydia Lowe. “Areas that in the past were political strongholds are not as monolithic as before and there’s more participation in communities of color.”

As Lowe points out, Arroyo and Yoon were able to draw votes from areas like Hyde Park’s Ward 18, where Murphy topped the ticket with 2061 votes, but Arroyo came in a close second with 1925 votes. Although Yoon finished seventh in Ward 18, he still walked away with 1,100 votes.

At the same time, Arroyo and Yoon cleaned up in the lower-turnout predominately black and Latino inner city neighborhoods. In Roxbury’s predominately African American Ward 12, for instance, Arroyo finished in first place with 800 votes. Perennial candidate Roy Owens finished second with 526 votes and Yoon was in third with 442 votes.

Arroyo and Yoon finished in first and second place respectively in wards in Lower Roxbury, the South End, Fenway, Mission Hill and the Back Bay/Beacon Hill.

In all, Arroyo won in 11 of the city’s 22 wards — more than any other candidate — although he won in wards with fewer registered voters and lower voter turnout percentages.

While voters of color are expected to turn out in greater numbers in the final election, two high-turnout white neighborhoods could also see elevated turnout in the final election. In South Boston, incumbent district Councilor James Kelly faces off against South Ender Susan Passaoni. In West Roxbury, incumbent John Tobin faces a challenge from Jamaica Plain resident Gibran Rivera.

With the two contested races and two white candidates squaring off for mayor — Maura Hennigan and Thomas Menino — whites could make up a larger percentage of the increased voter turnout in November.

Arroyo says he’s not leaving anything to chance in the final election.

“We feel confident in going forward, but understand that we have to campaign as hard as if we were in it for the first time,” he said. “We have a very little amount of time. We have to get to the voters with information about who we are and what we stand for.”