Arroyo, Yoon clinch 2nd, 3rd place spots on council ballot

Yawu Miller and
Toussaint Losier

Three weeks ago, when city councilors Felix Arroyo, Chuck Turner and Charles Yancey gave their Team Unity endorsement to Sam Yoon, the move got no mention in most of the city’s news media.

Yoon, who finished 5th in the preliminary, didn’t factor into the prognostications of many of the city’s pundits. But when he marched into the Arroyo campaign’s party at Club Mirage Tuesday evening, it was clear that Team Unity, the joint campaign organization founded by the councilors of color, had expanded its ranks.

With 41,839 votes — more than 6,000 votes ahead of 4th place finisher Stephen Murphy — Yoon became the first Asian American candidate to win a seat on the city council. Arroyo, with 43,492 votes, finished in second place behind City Council President Michael Flaherty, who finished with 49,163 votes.

In clinching his 3rd place finish, Yoon jumped ahead of Murphy and John Connolly and held off Patricia White, Edward Flynn and Matt O’Malley. And, as was noted at the Team Unity celebration, he proved the pundits wrong.

“They want to make Team Unity a joke,” said Arroyo’s son, Ernesto, of the mainstream media. “But Team Unity is the new Boston. The new Boston is the Boston that has been invisible to so many people for so long. It’s been here.”

In the room were activists from the black, Latino and Asian communities as well as labor movement activists and progressive whites. Political elders like former state Rep. Mel King and attorney Eddie Jenkins rubbed shoulders with newcomers including Gibran Rivera, who challenged District 6 City Councilor John Tobin, who garnered 36 percent of the vote in a strong first showing.

Yoon said his own victory was by no means a sure bet.

“I knew people didn’t expect people like me to win office because I come from the nonprofit world, because I’m Asian American, because I live in Fields Corner and I didn’t come with a lot of political experience,” he said. “It has not quite sunk in that we are making Boston history.”

Arroyo and Yoon’s 2nd and 3rd-place finishes — sandwiched between two Irish American politicians — could serve as a potent metaphor for the new reality in racial politics. While neither was able to match the might of Flaherty’s city-wide machine, both were able to prevail over the power of incumbency and political legacies.

Both did so with broad-based coalitions of black, Latino Asian and white progressive supporters, while pushing agendas calling for greater regulation of the rental housing market, improving Boston schools and greater community say in government affairs.

In his remarks, Arroyo pledged to continue what he called his efforts to make government more open.

“In reality, nobody on the council knows better than you what is needed in this city,” he told the gathering at Club Mirage. “We’re not here to tell you what you want. We’re here to do what you want.”

Arroyo message of empowerment seemed to resonate with supporters in the room.

“We have a person who is re-elected who is not only representing Latinos and people of color, but who represents a large number of people in the city,” said Dorothea Manuela. “He ran a campaign with very little money. He wants equity. It was a campaign with very little financial resources, but with a lot of people. He’s giving voice to the people who haven’t had a voice, to the poor, to immigrants. He represents an opportunity to fight all the inequity. We can compete with the people who represent the corporations and their money.”

While there mood in the room was euphoric, Turner reminded the celebrants that the councilors of color occupy just four out of 13 seats on the body. Seven votes are still needed to prevail on the body.

“The reality is that the work is just beginning,” he said. “We’re facing tremendous challenges. We need people to come together to face up to the realities of the struggles that we’re facing in the city of Boston.”

Chinese Progressive Association Executive Director Lydia Lowe said Yoon’s win was a sign of change, but warned that more organizing is needed to attain real power.

“This is great, but not sufficient,” she said. “We need to organize a solid movement to actually change policies. With these victories we should be in a position to do that. We’ve just need to get the community to put the issues forward.”