Wilkerson wins, barely, awaits recount decision

Yawu Miller

When the dust settled in the 2nd Suffolk District, state Senator Dianne Wilkerson made it clear that she is a political survivor. With 6,395 votes to challenger Sonia Chang-Diaz’s 5,703 votes, Wilkerson is all but assured a spot on the November ballot.

Republican Samiyah Diaz received just 302 votes. Boston Police Detective John Kelleher received 403.

Wilkerson’s primary victory caps a tumultuous electoral season that started on a sour note when her campaign failed to submit enough valid signatures to qualify for a spot on the primary ballot. That misstep was followed by a barrage of negative publicity over issues including alleged illegal payments from her campaign fund she made to herself and her sons.

“This was more a battle about a massive disinformation campaign than anything else,” Wilkerson said. “In one week in August there were six front-page articles in the [Boston] Herald.”

The Herald articles, calling on voters to remove Wilkerson from office, seemed to have little effect in Roxbury’s Ward 12 where Wilkerson came away with 1,575 votes — 94 percent of the total to challenger Sonia Chang-Diaz’s 87 votes.

While Chang-Diaz seemed unable to win votes in the black community, in the more heavily white and affluent parts of the district, however, she was able to open up a considerable lead on Wilkerson. In Ward 19, which covers the Moss Hill and Pondside sections of Jamaica Plain — and posts the highest turnout of any ward in the 2nd Suffolk — Chang-Diaz walked away with 1,740 of the 2,720 votes cast in the race. Wilkerson came away with just 685.

Chang-Diaz filed a petition for a recount Monday, but is not expected to prevail given the 692-vote lead Wilkerson has in the first counting of ballots.

Despite dismal returns in precincts in the city’s predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods, Chang-Diaz beat Wilkerson handily in six of the 10 wards in the 2nd Suffolk District. Her second-place finish was only five percentage points off from Wilkerson’s win, a margin that was slightly smaller than the 705 votes that went to Samiyah Diaz and Kelleher.

Chang-Diaz did not say whether she is planning another run in two years, noting that she filed for a

recount of the ballots Monday.

“Right now, we’re just working to get through the recount,” she said. “I feel really fortunate to have had this experience, but do I know what’s going to happen next week? — I really don’t. I’m going to let the dust settle.”

Election Department officials say the recount will likely be conducted this Friday.

Chang-Diaz says her decision to pursue a recount came after volunteers with her campaign claimed that they witnessed numerous irregularities that occurred during the balloting. Her volunteers were prevented from observing the counting of ballots in some instances. In other instances, they say they saw inconsistencies in the way votes were counted when the sticker was affixed in the wrong position or the oval was not filled in on the ballot.

“There were so many concerns that people raised about what they observed at the polling stations across the district,” Chang-Diaz said. “All along this campaign has been about good governance and helping people to have faith in our political system again.”

Wilkerson’s campaign seemed better prepared for the primary than did Chang-Diaz’s. Her operation went into the primary with an army of 450 volunteers assembled to staff each of the 2nd Suffolk District’s 72 polling stations.

She and her campaign staff worked from the opening of the polls at 7 a.m. to their closing at 8 p.m., making sure her supporters had the necessary stickers to affix on the spot on the ballot marked “senator in general court.”

“My strategy was this: to turn out our base,” Wilkerson said. “I was ceding nothing. We were busting our tails in the Back Bay, in the South End and in Jamaica Plain. Of course we pulled out all the stops in Roxbury and Dorchester. That was our strategy and it turns out it was successful.”

Having won 45 percent of the vote on her first run for office, Chang-Diaz will likely be viewed as a threat to Wilkerson’s incumbency in the next two years before the next race.

Wilkerson acknowledges that she could have done better in the whiter parts of her district.

“I think we have to do a much better job communicating with the parts of the district where people don’t understand exactly what it is that I do,” she said.