The Year in Springfield, 2011...

(WMassP&I)

With another year under Springfield’s belt comes another edition of the Year in Springfield.  In its 375th year of existence the City of Homes suffered through one of the most erratic year of weather on record which brought a range of immense destruction and gross inconvenience.  Politically, it was also a tumultuous time from Springfield City Hall to Beacon Hill to the steps of Harvard University.

The year 2011 opened in Springfield with an eye, as in other places, to Washington, where a cadre of increasingly nihilistic “citizens” took their place in Congress and in state capitals across the nation.  While the boat rocked in Massachusetts with a shrunken, but still massive Democratic edge in the State House, Governor Deval Patrick took the oath of office once more. 

However, America was rocked only eight days into January when Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head, by quite literally a madman.  Early accusations pointed to tea party extremism, but ultimately mental disease and not right-wing anarchy drove the young man to shoot Giffords and twelve others while murdering six.  Gifford suffered a traumatic shot to the head, be saved by the quick thinking of her intern of five days.

Cong. Gifford w/ her Mother weeks

after the shooting (PK Weis via Facebook)

President Barack Obama, given his first significant opportunity to play the healer-in-chief gave a stirring speech at a memorial service attended by Arizona’s Senators, its governor with Obama has frequently clashed, Giffords’ husband, Mark Kelly and Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who oversees the Ninth Circuit within which the slain judge, John Roll, served.

The event took on somewhat of a local relevance when Congressman Richard Neal held a press conference after the shooting noting that he had known Giffords and had raised money for her ahead of what had been a difficult reelection in 2010.  However, he also urged that parties take down a notch the vitriol and anger that had become pervasive in politics whether Loughner was driven by politics or not.

Also in January Amaad Rivera took office as the Ward 6 Councilor following the resignation of Keith Wright.  He took office because the city’s succession law is only written with only at-large councilors in mind and fills vacancies with runners-up.  Technically, Rivera was a runner-up even though he lost the 2009 election.  The chorus of dissent included this blog and came to a head on a vote for eminent domain as part of Forest Park Middle School renovations.  Rivera invoked Rule 20, the council’s parliamentary motion to delay the project to the shock of other councilors.  While we would settle our differences with Rivera, many remained incensed over the use of Rule 20, ironically including some who would encounter similar anger over its usage.

Councilor Amaad Rivera (WMassP&I)

However, the focus on Rivera would lessen as he became one of a super-majority of councilors that opposed a wood-burning biomass plant.  The special permit had been granted in 2008 by the last council on a 7-2 vote.  All ward councilors and two at-large councilors, including Jose Tosado who voted for the permit in 2008.  The Callahan Family, owners of Palmer Renewable Energy and like-named paving company poured money into experts who dismissed, often condescendingly, the health concerns raised by opponents.  Against the din of protests and threats of legal action the council revoked PRE’s permit on a 10-2 vote.

The Insight: Holyoke's Morse Code...

Mayor-elect Morse (© RD Photography 2011)

HOLYOKE--One year ago, Alex Morse was preparing for the penultimate finals of his college career.  Like many seniors, he was already looking past that last pesky semester to a career and post-college life.  Like many of those students he was planning to head home and possibly find a job in the community where he grew up.  Morse, however, was not going to be facing a small hiring committee at a consulting firm or office.  His hiring committee would be made up of thousands of his fellow Holyoke residents.

Morse shocked Holyoke’s political establishment by upsetting incumbent mayor Elaine Pluto and setting himself up to become Massachusetts’ youngest mayor.  Since his November 8 victory, Morse has received a glut of invitations, honors, and accolades and faced a “whirlwind” of events, meetings, press interviews and interviews for potential staff in preparation for the January inauguration. “I haven’t really taken a break, yet,” Morse said in an interview with WMassP&I at his campaign headquarters on Route 5 in Holyoke.

Morse is no stranger to politics local or otherwise.  Ten years ago he joined the city’s Youth Commission and served as a student member of the School Committee.  While in high school, he was an organizing member of a high school gay-straight alliance.  While at Brown University, Morse interned in the office of then-mayor David Cicilline working on neighborhood services.  

Holyoke City Hall (wikipedia)

Providence also provided a template for Morse’s ambitions for Holyoke.  Rhode Island’s capital city has faced industrial decline similar to Holyoke, but has managed to resuscitate its urban core in a way most New England cities have not.  However, before Providence's redevelopment, that city had the benefit of being the state capital and, considering its condition at the time, a state embarrassment, which could spur state and civic leaders to action.

The strength of Morse’s bid for the mayor’s had to come as something of a surprise to the Pluta camp.  Early on, Pluta mocked Morse for his age, saying to the Republican that she would debate his education plan when he “graduates from college.”  Other voters simply said, “He didn’t have a chance in hell.”

Morse says his campaign began not only before graduation, but before this year.  During his junior year of college, he spent a semester in the Dominican Republic, during which, in addition to becoming fluent in Spanish, he began seriously thinking about running right out of college.  When he got back to the States was when he began planning in earnest.  He began meeting with people to line up support and raise money.  By the time he announced in January, still not quite a college graduate, it was clear that his opponents would zero in on his age.  

Morse is not the first just-out-of-college graduate to seek political office.  Springfield Ward 2 City Councilor Mike Fenton ran for his seat right of out college against a well-connected scion of a political family who was favored to win early on.

To Morse, his campaign, and apparently the residents of Holyoke, however, his age was not a problem.  “Instead of buying into my opposition’s language” about age, the mayor-elect said he sold his youth as an asset.  Morse, wearing his ever-present colorful “I love Holyoke” button said his campaign portrayed him as somebody with the energy, enthusiasm, digital savvy and new ideas that Holyoke needs to turn itself around.


A candidate declaring his love for the community which he hopes will elect him is probably a campaign tactic older than some centuries-old New England towns.  However, Morse put his whole shoulder into that strategy and instead of coming off tacked on and predictable it translated into a sincerity that resonated with voters of all stripes.

Election Detritus 2011: PAST DUE...

Mayor Sarno (VoteSarno.com)

Anybody watching the elections play out in Springfield and the neighboring towns should not really be surprised what transpired.  Mayor eating that may end the latter's political career and won the city's first four-year mayoral term.  On the other hand, Bud Williams, who was only slightly less bludgeoned by Sarno in 2009 rose from the political dead, Albano ghosts and all, to return the Springfield City Council.  Elsewhere, Holyoke put its future in the hands of an ambitious, recent college graduate.  Ohio spiked the conservative agenda into the face of their conservative governor and Mississippi decided it liked birth control more than it hated abortion.

Locally the results of the Springfield election were really not all that surprising.  All of the incumbents running for the same office won, a feat made easier for the six ward councilors who faced no tangible opposition.  John Lysak dispatched Orland Ramos once again, in a campaign littered with complaints over Lysak's campaign expenditures and rumors Ramos was behind personal attacks on Lysak based on the breakup of the latter's marriage.  In the at-large races all four incumbents running for reelection won.  Bud Williams, whose tenure on the council is distinguished by the very fact that it happened, regained a seat among the at-large seats.

Ward 6 Councilor Amaad Rivera who opted to run at-large failed to crack into the top five falling behind Justin Hurst a scion of the city's arguably most notable black political family.  Meanwhile Kenneth Shea cruised into Rivera's seat facing no opposition.

Mayor Domenic Sarno trounced City Council President Jose Tosado winning nearly all of the city's precincts, including several predominantly minority ones.  While arguably the result seemed inevitable after the June tornado and low turnout in minority wards, the fact is that Tosado ended up being an unlikely standard bearer for reform in the city.  A longtime city official with poor campaigning skills, he lacked the charisma that sells in Springfield politics made famous by Cong. Richard Neal and notorious by former Mayor Michael Albano.  Whatever effort to prop up the minority vote failed as Hispanics voted in abysmal numbers in the city (In an anecdotal side note, Puerto Ricans, who make up the overwhelming majority of the city's Hispanic population are thought to be more prone to voter apathy than Hispanics at large).  Meanwhile, the city's blacks and Asians seemed to have little to get excited about in a Tosado candidacy.

Meanwhile Mayor Sarno took the challenge seriously and fully used the power of incumbency to bolster his position even among minority groups.  The result was one where several other candidates for office further down the ballot, like Amaad Rivera, sought to distance themselves from the Tosado campaign.  Ultimately, Tosado's defeat seems somewhat preordained in retrospect.  From the moment Tosado suspended his campaign after the June tornado to the moment Sarno suspended his after the October snowstorm (which was more effective as the mayor had an emergency he could address, unlike Tosado, who as a city councilor could not address the tornado as directly), it now seems like Tosado's effort was futile.

Mr. President? Eek!
(Urban Compass)

The down ballot effect was palpable, too, as the turnout of Sarno's machine was full-bore, even as Tosado's challenge seemed less lethal week by week.  Indeed, that can be only explanation for Councilor Tom Ashe's top of the ticket performance.  Voters may have mistaken him for Hampden County Sheriff Michael Ashe, who is practically a demigod in Valley politics.  Before the September Primary, Tim Rooke seemed destined for the top spot, but he grabbed the silver with Kateri Walsh getting the bronze.  Ferrera, who seems set to take over the Council Presidency, got fourth beating out his friend Bud Williams, who got fifth.

If there was one outright tragedy of this election, it was the total lack of any meaningful campaign for City Council.  Without passing judgment on the results themselves, there was little if any effort on the part of candidates to actually say what they had to offer the city and why they were running.  Other than vapid statements from candidates assuring they loved the city, a declaration that in itself is as meaningful as declaring one's love for a Kit-Kat Bar, there was nothing that illuminated why anybody was running for the council.  Some candidates tried to offer a more substantive explanation, but they overwhelmingly ended up in the losers pile and even their efforts failed to sharpen the meaning of their races at times.

Mayor-elect Alex Morse

(© RD Photography 2011)

Elsewhere in the Valley, the most notable race was the mayor election in Holyoke where Alex Morse, a 22 year-old Brown graduate beat freshman mayor Elaine Pluta.  Although it seems impossible to diagnose Morse's victory as anything less than the terrific ground game organized by Morse's campaign, in addition to the candidate's fluency in Spanish, there were other factors in play.  Morse had the backing of the Victory Fund, a fund raising group that supports gay candidates, which Morse was.  Additionally, David Cicilline, a Rhode Island congressman for whom Morse intenered when Cicilline was Providence's mayor, held at least one fund raiser for Morse.  That financial backbone, coupled with a campaign that observers say was a campaign better run than Pluta's, led to Morse victory.

Councilor Ayanna
Pressley (Facebook)

In Boston, Ayanna Pressley, who squeaked onto the Boston City Council in 2009 as one of its at-large members topped the at-large field this year as voters returned all incumbents running at-large.  Michael Flaherty, who ran against Mayor Tom Menino in 2009 attempted to get back on the council to set up for a 2013 mayoral run, but was denied.  Pressley's victory is attributed not only to support from political luminaries from John Kerry, for whom she once worked, and a fear that the Boston City Council could go without a female member, but her own tenacity and political savvy.  She forged an alliance with another at-large Councilor John Connolly and the two barnstormed across the city together.  It also gave her invaluable support in West Roxbury, where Connolly lives and which is treasure drove of reliable voters among the immigrant and student-heavy population.  After her victory, prognosticators began talking about her future prospects, but absent a Menino decision to not run in 2013 (his machine backed her toward the end of the campaign) mayor of Boston is unlikely to be one for now.

Across the country, Ohio voters shot down a bill designed to strip collective bargaining rights for virtually all public employees in the state.  The measure was defeated with 61% to 39% voting in favor of repeal.  Gov. John Kasich, following the vote, conceded defeat in a rambling and visibly humble speech.  The win was seen as a major victory for labor, even it essentially maintained the status quo as opposed to gaining any ground.  A loss would have dealt possibly irreversible damage to labor in the Midwest and possibly nationwide.  Instead, it set the stage to embolden efforts in Wisconsin to recall Scott Walker and strengthen Democrats' position in Ohio next year.

In Maine voters restored a forty year-old law that allowed same day voter registration after an opportunistic Republican majority repealed it.  And in Mississippi, a state as blood-red and conservative as it can possibly be, voters dealt a double-digit rebuke to an attempt to define a person as at the beginning of conception.  The measure had been assumed destined to pass given the strength of the pro-life movement in the state, but voters appeared as troubled by the idea as losing access to birth control and questioning ever miscarriage as the fact of abortion.  Another underlying thought has been that Mississippians, who are the nation's poorest citizens as a whole, were upset at being troubled with an arguably ridiculous measure when jobs are people's number one concern.