At Lydia Edwards’ campaign victory party last week, family, friends and supporters spilled out of the small banquet room at Kelley Square Pub. Nervous excitement filled the air as people checked their phones regularly and refreshed their newsfeeds for any sign of election results. After a supporter shouted, “She won!” Edwards walked into the room grinning and the crowd erupted into celebratory cheers.
“Yes we did. Yes we did,” Edwards’ voice rang out among the commotion.
“This is what a grassroots campaign looks like,” she said, as she stood on a banquet table with a microphone, addressing the crowd.
Edwards bested Stephen Passacantilli by 730 votes to win the District 1 City Councilor seat. The East Boston resident garnered 52.8 percent of the total votes in the district, which includes East Boston, Charlestown and the North End and has been represented by Italian-Americans since it was created in 1982.
As of election night, the campaign had knocked on 73,000 doors, worked with 500 volunteers, and made almost 200,000 cold calls, according to Edwards.
“This was a campaign of many hands, many colors, many languages,” said Edwards.
“Today is the beginning of the relationship we have together. We have work to do. Real work, real issues, real problems, real people we need to love, care, and work with,” she told her supporters. “That’s the campaign I ran on, and that’s the kind of city councilor I intend to be.”
By her side was her twin sister Erika, and her mother Bridget, who flew in from North Carolina.
Among the people she thanked, Edwards called out Gabriela Coletta, her campaign manager, who she described as a “fourth generation Italian girl from Eastie who helped make history,” and her “ride or die person.”
Coletta told the Banner, “We went from launching our canvassers at the cafeteria at the Whole Foods in Charlestown to winning Charlestown. Twice.”
Dan Ertis, field organizer for the campaign said, “There are really big things happening in this district, and she’s what the district needs in terms of solving housing issues.”
Her campaign prioritized accessible home ownership, improving transit options, and combating underfunding of public education through innovative solutions.
Optimism for the new councilor’s ability to mitigate rising housing costs and maintain affordability for residents could be heard among many voters supporting her.
Darnell Johnson, a Roxbury resident who runs the affordable housing advocacy group Right to the City, said he had met Edwards when she was deputy director of housing stability in City Hall and knew she would enact change, not only in District 1, but in the rest of the city.
“I feel energized and ready for change to happen,” he said.
“I woke up today feeling like it was a holiday,” said Abby Cutrumbes, a graduate fellow at political consulting group Blue Lab, with which Edwards contracted to provide campaign services. Since last July, Cutrumbes had helped canvass and make calls for the campaign.
Right before the election results were announced, Cutrumbes felt hopeful but uncertain, she said, because “the preliminary was so close.”
Clara Sandrin, another graduate fellow at Blue Lab, looking back at the whirlwind of the campaign, recalled how everyone who worked on the campaign felt after the preliminary race. “There was a moment of ‘Oh my God, this could really happen,’” she said.
Edwards said that when she first partnered with Coletta to run the campaign, they started off with nothing.
“Just me and her. No office. No paper. No plan,” she said. “But we were going to do it.”
“This was a collective win,” said Coletta after the results were announced. “This campaign is representative of what’s happening in this neighborhood.”
