Boston Mayor Thomas Menino won an unprecedented fifth term Tuesday night by his closest margin ever in the culmination of the hotly contested 2009 mayoral race.
Menino, who has been mayor for 16 years, bested City Councilor-At-Large Michael Flaherty and his unofficial running mate and fellow city councilor Sam Yoon with 57 percent of the vote over Flaherty’s 42 percent.
This is the first race of Menino’s five where he has won with less than 60 percent, with Flaherty widely accepted to be his fiercest challenger yet. And with 111,067 ballots cast by more than 31 percent of registered Boston voters, nearly 30,000 more than in the Sept. 22 preliminary election, the significance of the race was clear.
Menino, whose campaign slogan for the past months has been ‘Moving Boston Forward,’ has long represented familiarity and proven effectiveness to many Bostonians who voted for him.
Flaherty focused on the need for change throughout his campaign, promising to enact term limits for the mayor’s office if elected.
Flaherty said in his concession speech that he did not believe his campaign was in vain.
‘This election raised serious discussions about real issues in our city,’ he said. ‘These discussions won’t stop because the ballots have been cast.’
Menino recognized Flaherty in his victory speech for making him ‘earn’ his reelection, but said the challenge he faced this year was not his biggest yet.
‘The stories may say that today we beat our toughest opponent,’ he said. ‘But . . . complacency is the highest hurdle we face. Let us fend off the temptation to rest on past accomplishments or to walk in familiar paths.’
Four city councilors-at-large were also elected Tuesday from a field of eight. Two incumbents, John Connolly and Stephen Murphy, will remain in office, joined by newcomers Felix Arroyo, a community organizer, and Ayanna Pressley, political director for Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. Arroyo and Pressley, who is the first black woman to be elected to the city council, will fill the two spots vacated by Flaherty and Yoon.
Elections elsewhere in the nation saw a variety of surprises and significant changes.
In New York City, incumbent Mayor Michael Bloomberg was narrowly reelected for a third term in a surprising 51-46 percent split over underdog William Thompson, the city comptroller.
Republican candidates swept gubernatorial races in New Jersey, where Christopher Christie defeated incumbent democrat Jon Corzine, despite Corzine’s vocal support from President Barack Obama, and in Virginia, where a hard-fought party struggle saw former attorney general Robert McDonnell defeat state senator R. Creigh Deeds.
And in an extremely close contest, voters in Maine said ‘no’ to same-sex marriage legislation by a small majority.
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