By JOSH RESNEK
The campaign finance reports filed last week by the city’s politicians revealed, as well as enhanced, all sorts of possibilities for the citywide election now just 8 months away if the primary is what you pay attention to.
If your interest is in Election Day in November, well, that’s ten months away.
Either way one chooses to see it, the city is closer to the next election every day. It will be upon us like the blink of an eye before we know it.
The Campaign finance reports excited a great deal of talk in Internet circles and on Facebook.
Councilor Anthony DiPierro scolded Councilor at Large Gerly Adrien for raising money during a pandemic on a Facebook page.
He called attention to Adrien’s $65,000 war chest and her grassroots money-raising efforts producing results that have shocked many local politicians.
He did this at the urging of his cousin the mayor.
Adrien said she was un- phased by DiPierro’s complaints.
The mayor has been said to be frantic and bitter about Adrien’s success at raising money.
Adrien’s $65,000 war chest and its potential for raising havoc with the mayor’s dictatorship never looked more real than it did Monday morning when her opinion piece appeared in the Boston Globe (and published inside in this edition of the Leader Herald).
The opinion piece highlighted how the mayor last week said he wished someone would turn off Adrien’s Zoom photo box because she was smiling during a recent committee meeting.
That is not exactly collegial. Nor was it collegial some months back when Adrien was scolded by several of her colleagues who asked her to resign if she didn’t attend meetings in person.
The mayor and several of Adrien’s colleagues on the city council have been hostile to her, mainly because she is Black, and she is there, and secondarily because she does her thing without seeking the approval of any of them.
In the Globe op-ed piece, she said her colleagues and the mayor do not treat her with respect because she is an aggressive Black woman with her own point of view about what needs to happen in Everett and especially what needs to happen to erase years of racist city hiring policies.
Adrien has not said she will be a candidate for mayor in the upcoming election.
Many believe she is leaving that door open.
Councilor Fred Capone’s quiet call among his supporters is among the city’s best kept political secrets.
Capone claims he is running for mayor.
He says it is his time to run.
His friends have a great deal of belief in him.
However, running against the mayor takes more than the $5,000 Capone has in his campaign account.
Also, who will contribute to his campaign that doesn’t already contribute to the mayor’s campaign?
Not many, we believe.
Who will hang signs for Capone?
Who will stand by Capone’s side in public?
Who will endorse him over the mayor in a local political environment dominated by the mayor’s angst and his ability to punish those who are not with him?
These are variables quite impossible to measure.
By all ac- counts, Capone faces a tough fight to unseat the mayor.
He will take the high road, we are told.
The city appears to be persuaded by the mayor’s low road approach.
Adrien running against the mayor is another story – and Adrien and Capone running against the mayor has a great deal of potential to hurt the mayor in his perceived re-election effort.
A one opponent battle is easy.
A two opponent battle is much more difficult.
A younger Black woman up against the white mayor in the city with a nearly all-white workforce is a sitting duck for the Boston Globe, organizers, immigrant groups, and women’s groups.
As for the mayor’s call for diversity…that’s a joke.