Worcester mayoral candidate Khrystian King.
Justin HurstWith second-place finish, Khrystian King becomes Worcester’s first Black vice mayor
Black candidates lost mayoral races to white incumbents in Worcester, Brockton and Springfield, three of the state’s largest cities.
Like Boston, the three cities have never elected a Black mayor. The challengers who tried to undo that record in the Nov. 7 election were Khrystian King in Worcester, Fred Fontaine in Brockton and Justin Hurst in Springfield.
In Worcester, King, an at-large City Councilor trailed Mayor Joseph Petty in a field of five candidates, capturing little more than a quarter of the votes.
Despite losing, King’s concession speech on election night celebrated the seats he did win. As the second highest vote-getter, he will continue to serve on the city council and will also act as its vice chair, effectively the city’s vice mayor, starting in January.
“In a historic election, you have standing before you the first Black vice mayor in the history of Worcester,” he said. “Message sent. Message received.”
Former Boston city councilor and mayoral candidate Tito Jackson said King’s continued role in Worcester’s government will allow him to maintain focus on top local priorities. King made housing and affordability key parts of his campaign.
“He’s still in government, and so these issues still get to be aired and pushed at that level,” Jackson said. “There are some amazing economic projects going
on in Worcester, there are many great things going on there, and the
importance of those things is they affect everybody and not just some
people.”
The Brockton
race saw Fontaine, a small-business owner, challenge Mayor Robert
Sullivan. If elected, Fontaine would have served as the first Black
mayor of a city where Black residents make up the largest share of the
population.
Fontaine lost the race by a large margin, securing about a third of the votes compared to Sullivan’s 64%.
An
earlier Black candidate for mayor, Jass Stewart, came closer to
unseating another white incumbent in Brockton, pulling 44% of the vote
in 2005 and 47% in 2007.
The
city’s shifting demographics — residents of color are a solid majority —
could offer an opportunity for greater political power, if voters
banded together, Jackson said.
“I
think there’s an opportunity in Brockton for coalition-building to
ensure that communities who are facing many of the same realities begin
to work together to coalesce and ensure that their issues are put
forward,” Jackson said, pointing to local issues like financial
challenges facing the city’s public school district, which is
overwhelmingly composed of Black and Latino students.
Springfield’s
race saw City Councilor Justin Hurst lose to Mayor Domenic Sarno by
almost 15 percentage points. The race, at the end, was complicated by
allegations of vote-buying, with video footage appearing to show
representatives of the Hurst campaign paying homeless voters $10 after
casting their ballots. Hurst claimed the allegations were a smear
campaign by Sarno.
In a
series of posts on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter,
Hurst, whose fourth term on the Springfield City Council ends in
January, called the race a movement, not a moment, and encouraged his
supporters to continue to stay engaged, despite the loss.
“And
so, I urge all of you — don’t tune out, don’t turn off, don’t turn
away. PLUG IN,” he wrote. “Join a club, committee, or neighborhood civic
council. Coach, mentor, share, engage, empower, believe, build,
ORGANIZE. Get involved and stay involved. We will never stop fighting to make our city the best it can be. Let’s continue to show up for each other.”
Jackson
said the three races illustrate the benefits of incumbency, like name
recognition and better fundraising. In all the races, the incumbent
mayor raised about two times or more than that of other candidates. In
the Brockton race, Sullivan raised three times more than Fontaine did.
“I
think if you look at all of these races across the board, there tends
to be a financial disparity in the ability for Black candidates to raise
funds, so this is an area where, as a community writ-large, we need to
continue to work on,” Jackson said.
Both
Springfield and Worcester saw higher voter turnout than in 2021, the
last off-year election. In Worcester, turnout was almost 22%, up from
about 16.5% two years ago. In Worcester it was up almost 9 percentage
points to just shy of 19%, compared to 10% in 2021.
Jackson
said he sees the increased turnout as an indicator that voters in the
state are realizing that local elections can have greater on-the-ground
impact.
“We are
finally coming to a time where people understand the government that
actually touches them directly, affects their lives on a daily basis, is
local government,” he said. “When it comes to what’s happening with
their children’s schools, when it comes to the potholes in the streets,
or whether or not there’s a stop sign, or whether there is violence in
your
neighborhood or community, that form of government that is most
connected to the people is the local government.”
Considering the races, Jackson said they mark the importance of diverse leadership across levels of government in the state.
“Massachusetts
is not only Boston, so it’s critical that we see leadership at the
Gateway city level, not only in city government, but also in the
legislature,” he said.
But
he said the mayoral elections, with King earning the seat as council
vice chair and Hurst securing more than 40% of the votes, also show a
changing landscape in the state.
“I
do think you’re starting to see, across the state of Massachusetts,
viable campaigns that are bringing up and voicing the issues that BIPOC
communities need, want, and deserve when it comes to going to polls,”
Jackson said.