By Jim O'Sullivan

Ego Ezedi promised both his supporters and his opponent on Election Night, "I'm not going anywhere."

And, aside from a wedding anniversary jaunt to Florida with wife Melissa, he plans to be true to his word. But the 30-year-old Baptist minister, freshly defeated in last week's showdown for the District Four City Council seat, said this week that he wants to spend some time reviewing his options before diving back into community activism or the contentious world of Boston politics.

"My plans for right now are simple," Ezedi told the Reporter Tuesday, "take some time, spend some time with my family, rest up, and take some time to think about the future."

Ezedi said he "wasn't surprised" by the 10-point, 689-vote loss to incumbent Councillor Charles Yancey, who won re-election to his 11th term by staving off a vigorous and at time testy challenge. And he said he wouldn't have changed anything about the way he ran the campaign.

Ezedi left his post as district coordinator for Congressman Michael Capuano to run for the council seat, but said he hadn't talked with Capuano about returning to the job. And he declined to speculate about other openings - in either the public or private sector - that have intrigued him.

"The opportunities are there, but right now I'm just focused on tightening things up," Ezedi said. "I just want to close out things. I have a lot of folks who supported me and I want to thank them."

Next week, Ezedi said, he and his wife will celebrate the eighth anniversary of their marriage with a week of R&R in Florida. After that, he said, he would scan the horizon.

"Just because I don't have a title doesn't mean I'm not going to continue to do the work that I've always done," Ezedi said. "One of my reasons for running was to energize the community, and I believe this race has done just that."

Ralph Cooper, executive director of the Veterans Benefits Clearinghouse and a longtime political insider, said the nearly 7,000 votes cast in the Dorchester-Mattapan district, a total approaching the level of a mayoral election year, indicate a surge in political involvement. Cooper, who supported Yancey in the campaign, said he called Ezedi after the election last week and left a message.

"I told him that, you know, I hope that he will continue to be active politically and will run again for some office," Cooper said. "I would be honored to work with him on a campaign - provided, of course, that I wasn't already committed to his opponent.

"It's always exciting when young people get involved; it's good for the political process."

Cooper said Ezedi's showing was an encouraging one for a first-time candidate, but that Yancey's 20-year lock on the office proved too powerful to overcome.

"He's got all those years and people don't send him back over and over again because they don't like him," Cooper said. "They send him back because he delivers what those constituents want."

Despite an Election Night onstage reunion, the rancor of the campaign is likely to linger between the two combatants. Yancey said he would seek Ezedi's counsel on certain issues, but no more than other constituents'.

"I certainly think that everyone in District Four should be involved in trying to improve the conditions in Dorchester-Mattapan, as well as the rest of the city - and that applies to former candidates as well as those who have never run," Yancey said.

Jack Kowalski, Ezedi's press secretary during the campaign, said Ezedi's "leadership skills, his ability to articulate the issues" afford him the ability to pressure Boston's established black political leadership to listen to the voices of "the next generation."

"The past is a history lesson, but the thing is that this generation is a generation of young minds that need to be forged by those who they have a bond with," Kowalski said.

On Election Night, Ezedi told supporters at his time at the Zodiac Lounge on Blue Hill Avenue, "If something is not broken, then I don't think you need to fix it. In two years, if it's still broken, we're going to fix it."

"If he should decide to stay in the political arena," Cooper said, "he's going to be a force to be reckoned with, particularly if he's going to have the backing of the religious and City Hall support."

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