Steady gains for minority voters

Yawu Miller

The trend of increasing voter registration and turnout in the city’s communities of color continued this year with Asians, blacks and Latinos helping propel Sam Yoon to the council.

Voters of color and white-liberal voters put Yoon and incumbent Felix Arroyo in the third and second spots, respectively, in the at-large race.

At the same time, according to data culled by political analyst Bob LeLievre, the traditional race-based voting patterns that have defined politics in Boston over the last three decades have persisted: Irish-surnamed candidates have finished strong in West Roxbury, the white enclaves of Dorchester and South Boston while the candidates of color did well everywhere else.

Because those predominantly Irish-American enclaves vote in higher numbers than any other neighborhoods in the city, they helped propel Council President Michael Flaherty again to a first place finish on the council, this time with more than a 6,000-vote lead over Arroyo.

While Flaherty walked out of West Roxbury with 53 percent of the vote, Arroyo came out with just 27 percent of the votes from the 9,093 voters who turnout out in that neighborhood. In Roxbury, on the other hand, Arroyo garnered an impressive 71 percent of the vote while Flaherty walked away with votes from 36 percent of the 7,032 voters.

Thus, the white enclaves still rule the city. While no at-large candidate can prevail in a Boston election without at least a small percentage of the West Roxbury vote, candidates like Flaherty and Stephen Murphy, who consistently finish at or near the bottom of the list in black and Latino votes can still finish at the top of the citywide vote.

However, candidates of color can take heart in the emerging trend, says LeLievre, who crunched numbers for the Arroyo and Yoon campaigns this year.

“The hope for New Boston is that their turnout is increasing while turnout in white neighborhoods is staying flat or decreasing,” LeLievre said, using the term du jour for the city’s non-white population.

The turnout increase in communities of color over 2001 stands at 10 percent. Turnout in West Roxbury and South Boston, by contrast, was down 4 percent since 2001.

Some of the increased turnout in the communities of color could be the fruit of a three-year $1 million initiative called the Greater Boston Civic Engagement Initiative, funded by a consortium of local foundations.

Through the initiative, community-based organizations including ACORN, City Life/Vida Urbana and the Hyde Square Task Force have identified registered voters in targeted precincts and hit them with phone calls and literature drops urging them to vote.

The nonprofits were not the only ones calling on communities of color to get out the vote. Both Mayor Thomas Menino and challenger Maura Hennigan focused considerable resources on efforts to effect a strong turnout in neighborhoods including Roxbury.

In Roxbury, Menino’s operation engaged in what one campaign operative called blind pulling. While many operations call on registered voters who have been previously identified as supporters, Menino’s troops engaged in get-out-the-vote activities throughout Roxbury.

Their efforts were likely the result of pre-election polls that demonstrated what became evident in the final — the mayor is extremely popular in the black community.

While only 52 percent of voters in South Boston backed the mayor, 86 percent of residents in Mattapan and Grove Hall voted for Menino.

Councilor-elect Sam Yoon, who told Boston Herald reporters he plans to find common ground with his new colleagues on the often sharply divided council, was far less of a polarizing figure among the city’s electorate. While he polled lower in minority communities than did Arroyo, garnering 61 percent of the vote in Roxbury, he polled higher than Arroyo in South Boston with 23 percent of the vote.