By JOSH RESNEK
The mayor forever, who cannot lose, who no one can beat is not guaranteed reelection this year.
The world has changed, the nation is a different place. Everett is hardly recognizable to the old-timers responsible for re-electing the mayor over and over.
What worked four years ago will not likely work this election season.
The mayor is facing two candidates.
Gerly Adrien wants to take the mayor and his cabal of highly paid order takers and send them packing.
She is transparent, honest and she has integrity.
If Adrien can put 500-1000 women in front of city hall with the eyes and ears of the local media world listening to her undress the mayor in public because of his past reported sexual assaults and payoffs to keep women quiet, the general belief is that she can quite possibly pull an upset. Women wanting to be equals in the mayor’s man’s world, women who want their place in city government, and who are excluded or kept out of city government by the mayor could have a big impact.
The particulars of the incidents and subsequent legal actions the mayor has been involved in are only now ready to come to public light. The Boston Globe has published detailed articles about the sexual assaults and alleged payoffs.
Police and court documentation never before printed for the Everett voting public to read will very likely come to see the light of day – and this will be a bad turn of events for the mayor.
If Steve Wynn could be run out of his own company for the same reasons, DeMaria can be driven from his city hall office.
The mayor can’t withstand the righteousness and the might of the #Me Too movement.
The mayor cannot mitigate against the transparency, honesty, and integrity that Adrien and Capone bring to the political arena in this city.
If the women of this city feel uncomfortable with the mayor being around their daughters, they will be heard. Their votes will be for Adrien.
Adrien represents the changed Everett, the Black and Brown and immigrant majority-minority city.
It is these newer residents and voters, not the old-timers, who will elect her and toss the mayor.
Adrien is not afraid of a fight.
Her organizers and backers are bright and driven. They know exactly what they are doing.
This is problematic for the mayor. There is no doubt about it.
The mayor is facing an uprising, or so it would appear.
Fred Capone will not fight the mayor inside the ring nose to nose. He won’t get down into the DeMaria gutter with the mayor. Capone is too smart and too concerned about his reputation to do that. Capone’s personal, political and professional record is pristine. He is not an FBI informant, a sexual abuser, or a racist.
Capone has his own strategy, his own well-developed and followed belief system in himself.
He will try to politely separate himself from Adrien, and especially from the mayor.
Capone and Adrien offer voters an important choice. They both stack up different- ly but nicely when compared with the mayor. The mayor is simply too socially and morally corrupt.
The mayor is right now mimicking the role of gentleman and leader. He is playing the good guy as if studying such a role in acting school. He will try to carry this off for a while, but he is doomed inevitably to be who he is – the town bully, the threat maker to city employees and department heads, the development specialist who needs to stay on because he has nowhere to go; a racist, homophobic, sexual tyrant who mistreats women. Being the mayor of Everett is too profitable for him to give up.
Out of blind, uncontrollable passion and contempt for his adversaries, he will try to destroy them in every way he can.
This is a guarantee.
Can the mayor beat both his adversaries in a hotly contested September primary?
This is the compelling question most political realists in this city are now confronting one another with.
“Can he win?” “Can he lose?” “Can he be made to resign?”
“Can Adrien win?” “Can Capone pull it off with his good-guy approach?” “Is the mayor still in control of the voter base?”
Most people believe this: you cannot beat DeMaria unless you get down to his level and fight with him and beat him by tossing everything at him including the kitchen sink.
Remember, the mayor above all is a bully and a degenerate. His past follows him wherever he steps.
He must be shown as one who uses bullying tactics, displays maniacal jealousy of others, has often indulged in sexual harassment, and privately endorses racial division and hate.
Capone will not do this. He can rely on those who have difficulties with the mayor to vote for him.
The numbers just aren’t there if Capone is relying on those who dislike DeMaria to vote for him. He needs to organize the new voters and those who haven’t voted to win.
On the other hand, if this is the time DeMaria is scheduled to lose no matter what, Capone might just walk into the corner office.
Adrien could do the same thing.
The voting demographic is not what it was four years ago.
That makes for the possibility of change.
Is DeMaria the mayor forever who cannot lose?
That is highly doubtful.
Can he beat Adrien and Capone and send them packing in September?
One of them, maybe, but not both.