Pressley is No. 1 in at-large contest

The at-large ballot in November will feature two Dorchester residents, while three fell short. Voters, allowed to pick up to four candidates, on Tuesday narrowed a field of 19 candidates to 8.

Ayanna Pressley, an Ashmont resident who won first place in 2011 and is running for a third term as a city councillor at-large, topped the ballot with 43,000 votes. Annissa Essaibi George, who lives in the Columbia/Savin Hill neighborhood, came in seventh place, picking up 12,236 votes. The 13-member City Council has four at-large seats.

The rest of the candidates in the top 8 included former City Councillor At-Large Michael Flaherty (39,871 votes); incumbent City Councillor At-Large Stephen Murphy (31,701); newcomer Michelle Wu (29,359 votes); former City Hall aide Martin Keogh (15,734 votes); attorney Jeffrey Ross (12,929 votes); and former City Hall aide Jack Kelly (11,900 votes).

Dorchester’s Catherine O’Neill, who has worked on a number of local campaigns, came in ninth place, missing the No. 8 slot by 958 votes. Gareth Saunders, a former city councillor who lives in Dorchester, received 5,356 votes, less than perennial candidate and former Dorchester state Rep. Althea Garrison, who received 10,256 votes.

Separately, two City Council districts which include Dorchester and Mattapan held preliminaries: District 4 and District 5.

Charles Yancey, who has held onto the District 4 seat for 30 years, ran for mayor and reelection this year. In the mayor’s race, he came in 10th place out of 12, picking up 2,388 votes. But he came in first for his district seat, with 6,139 votes, or 65.4 percent. He will face Terrance Williams, who picked up 1,545 votes, or 16 percent. Steven Godfrey, whose Roslindale precinct was thrown into District 4 after the City Council’s redistricting efforts, received 8.18 percent and Divo Monteiro, who unsuccessfully ran for state representative in 2010, garnered 768 votes. Yancey and Williams meet in the final on Nov. 5.

District 5 proved far more competitive, due to Rob Consalvo giving up the seat to run for mayor. The top two finishers in that race – Timothy McCarthy of Hyde Park and Jean Claude Sanon of Mattapan – will face off in November. McCarthy received 24.31 percent of the vote, or 3,727 votes, while Sanon picked up 3,049 votes, or 19.89 percent. Mimi Turchinetz came in third with 2,691 votes, or 17.55 percent. Ava Callender, whose grandmother is former state Rep. Willie Mae Allen, was fourth with 1,791 votes, or 11.68 percent. The rest of the candidates fell below 10 percent.


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