Ward 5 Democrats on Tuesday night endorsed three of the four City Council At-Large incumbents for reelection: Felix Arroyo, John Connolly and Ayanna Pressley.
Fellow incumbent Stephen Murphy, who also is serving as City Council president, fell short, receiving 10 votes, six votes shy of the number needed for an endorsement. Arroyo received 20 votes and Pressley and Connolly both received 19 votes.
The endorsements followed the city’s first at-large candidates’ forum, attended by six of the seven candidates running for the four City Council At-Large slots. A summary of candidates’ remarks is available here at Universal Hub. See this week’s Dorchester Reporter on Thursday for more on the forum, which was moderated by the Boston Phoenix‘s David Bernstein.
Pressley was unable to attend the forum. In a letter to Ward 5 Democrats, Pressley apologized and wrote that her mother Sandra is “fighting for her life.”
“My mother has been hospitalized for weeks and she’ll likely remain there for the foreseeable future,” Pressley wrote. “Her condition is grave and it’s not hyperbole to say she’s facing a life or death battle. For now, I need to spend most of my time at the hospital with my mother. I serve as her medical proxy and the seriousness of her condition requires me to make decisions about the course of her treatment, day and night. But watching my mother fight her illness has only strengthened my resolve to win reelection in November. My mother would have it no other way.”
The breakdown for those who did not receive the Ward 5 Democratic Committee endorsement includes: Former City Councillor At-Large Michael Flaherty (8 votes); Jamaica Plain’s Sean Ryan (6 votes); and Hyde Park’s Will Dorcena (4 votes).
State Rep. Martha Walz, a Back Bay Democrat who is a voting member of the ward committee, cast her votes for Arroyo, Flaherty, Murphy and Pressley.
Joshua Dawson, Ward 5 chairman and executive director of the Steve Grossman Committee, declined to cast a vote.
In 2009, the ward committee endorsed Connolly and Pressley, a former committee member who now lives in the Ashmont area of Dorchester.
