With the Lynn mayoral election 15 days away, momentum is clearly in Jared Nicholson’s corner.
Nicholson is riding a campaign-endorsement bonanza into Nov. 2. “We’re for Jared” endorsements have come in from the International Association of Firefighters Local 739, representing Lynn firefighters; the Lynn Teachers Union (LTU); the North Shore Labor Council; Mayor Thomas M. McGee; and the North Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters.
A quick glance at City Council president and mayoral candidate Darren Cyr’s website doesn’t identify endorsements Cyr has earned, although his supporters include Cyr “fan,” former Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy.
Not surprisingly, there is a backstory to each Nicholson endorsement.
The firefighters are well-established mayoral kingmakers and giant-slayers in Lynn.
An acrimonious relationship between the firefighters union and former Mayor Albert V. DiVirgilio put a nail in DiVirgilio’s political coffin in 1991, even as he waged a tough final election battle against the late Patrick J. McManus.
By contrast, McManus enjoyed popular support among the firefighters. McManus’ successor, the late Edward J. Clancy Jr., fought with Local 739 and could not count on their support in a close 2009 election fight resulting in his razor-thin loss to Kennedy, who . . . you guessed it, enjoyed the firefighters’ support.
As the city’s biggest municipal union, the LTU’s endorsement is one any candidate for city office would value.
Labor Council officers in an August letter published on The Item’s Opinion page criticized a Cyr campaign surrogate for misrepresenting Cyr’s involvement in the Council’s founding.
The letter also stated that Cyr was ” . . . not eligible to receive our support” because his campaign did not respond to a request to participate in the council’s endorsement process.
Do endorsements matter in an age when social media moves at lightning speed and serves as a platform for political discourse? The answer is “yes” in a city like Lynn where firefighting, policing, and teaching families include one, two, even three generations working in public safety or education.
Every teacher, police officer, and firefighter — even if he or she has moved out of Lynn — has family and friends living in the city who vote. Organized labor doesn’t carry the clout it once carried in Lynn, with the River Works a shadow of its former self. But Lynn’s still a labor town and family ties to “the GE” run deep.
In endorsing Nicholson, the Labor Council branded him a “coalition builder.” Mayor McGee called Nicholson “a proven leader” in his endorsement.
One of Cyr’s loudest campaign messages to voters is, “I am one of you” — a lifelong Lynn resident with deep ties to the city compared to relatively-new arrival Nicholson.
It would be dangerous for Nicholson’s campaign to dismiss that almost primal appeal to Lynn-centric parochialism. Then again, endorsements, in their most simplistic form, are appeals to the voter to “jump on the bandwagon and join us.”
Nicholson doesn’t have a free ride to Nov. 2. But he sure looks like a candidate who can see the other guy in his rear view mirror.
