Thursday, 4:30 PM
Minority candidates make presence felt but gain little ground
By Eric Moskowitz and Maria Sacchetti, Globe Staff
A year after the state elected its first African-American governor, minority candidates on some local ballots stirred hope of greater diversity Tuesday.
When the votes were counted, they came up short of their goals in Brockton, Lawrence, and Quincy, but in Fitchburg an Asian-American mayoral candidate clobbered her more experienced opponent with 75 percent of the vote. Worcester appeared to have elected a woman mayor for the first time.
Lisa Wong, a 28-year-old political newcomer and the daughter of Chinese immigrants, defeated a four-term city councilor to become the first minority mayor in Fitchburg’s 243-year history.
In Brockton, Jass A. Stewart earned 47 percent of the vote, failing in his bid to become the state’s first popularly elected mayor who is African-American and gay. Mayor James E. Harrington, the incumbent, won 52 percent, according to unofficial results.
In Lawrence, where Latinos are a majority of a city’s registered voters for the first time in Massachusetts, five Latino candidates were on the ballot for the nine City Council seats. They tied the city’s past minority high-water mark by electing four Latino councilors.
In Fitchburg, the 5-foot-2 Wong stood on a chair at Cafe Destare and told a crowd of about 100 that her election represented a call for transformation in a city of shuttered mills and boarded-up Victorian houses. She envisions technology firms, young professionals, restored mansions, and recreation on the Nashua River.
"The voters of Fitchburg voted for change," said Wong, who received 5,863 votes, to 1,948 for opponent Thomas Donnelly. "The citizens of Fitchburg voted for energized leadership."
Wong also noted the significance of her win, in a city in which Latino students and other minorities now comprise more than half the public school population. Fitchburg was overdue for a minority mayor, Wong said.
"It’s about time. Fitchburg has always been a diverse city," she said, encouraging other potential leaders to come forward, regardless of age, gender, or ethnicity.
In Lawrence, where about three-quarters of the city’s population of 72,000 speaks a language other than English at home, Latino voters make up an estimated 53 percent of the registered voters, according to city officials. With Mayor Michael Sullivan in the middle of a four-year term, the election for other city positions drew about 18 percent of the 35,700 registered voters, according to preliminary returns.
Four Latino candidates won election to the City Council: incumbents Nilka Alvarez-Rodriguez, Grisel Silva, and Jorge Gonzalez, along with Frank Moran — and Alvarez-Rodriguez was Lawrence’s top vote-getter, claiming almost 3,000 votes in the at large council race.
Dozens of people gathered at City Hall to cheer those results. But Gonzalez said his joy was tempered by the failure to elect a Latino majority to the City Council.
Gonzalez, a school bus driver, said white city councilors are not as attuned to Latino issues as Latino councilors.
"It’s the same; we don’t have a majority," a disappointed Gonzalez said. "If we don’t have a majority, we’re not going anywhere."
In Quincy, where a growing Asian voting bloc represents 9 percent of the city’s electorate, two Asian candidates on the ballot for City Council each lost.
In Worcester, the state’s second-largest city, Konstantina B. Lukes appeared to win by a 105-vote margin, which would make her the first woman elected mayor in the city’s history.
Lukes, who earned the second-most votes in Worcester’s last election, has served as mayor since January, when then-Mayor Tim Murray became lieutenant governor. "We’ve made history," she said last night, after an unofficial count gave her 7,432 votes to 7,327 for Frederick P. Rushton in a race that also included two other candidates.
