Turnout on Tuesday for one of the five most exciting Lynn municipal elections I have witnessed since 1989 totaled 22.86 percent.
Think about that number for a minute. If you planned a night out for four people and your three friends bailed, that would be roughly equivalent to Tuesday’s voter turnout. If you asked three friends to help you move and none of them showed up, that would be equivalent to Tuesday’s turnout.
But the one in four voters who bothered to cast ballots struck a blow at Lynn’s long-established political order and proved that change in the city’s power structure is underway and can’t be stopped.
A guy who enjoys wrestling and speaks Spanish is Lynn’s mayor-elect — Oh, and he’s a double Ivy Leaguer. Who would have figured someone fitting that description could have been the voters’ choice even four years ago?
Last spring, when Mayor Thomas M. McGee announced he would break tradition from his predecessors and be a one-term mayor, City Council President Darren Cyr appeared to have the support of most of his 10 colleagues and he had the name recognition to springboard him into an early lead in the race for mayor.
Spring feels like a long time ago, doesn’t it?
Nicholson’s campaign found a second gearn ― and then a third and fourth ― sometime in the summer, and the wrestler pinned down a heap of endorsements and wore out three pairs of shoes walking the city’s neighborhoods knocking on doors.
Did Nicholson outwork Cyr on the way to a landslide win? And why did the city powers-that-be back him?
Answers to those questions will vary depending who you ask. What is undisputed is that Nicholson embraced the change that many Lynn residents already know has arrived in the city.
You don’t have to speak Spanish to know that Spanish-speaking students fill Lynn classrooms. You don’t need to eat Guatemalan, Mexican, Ecuadorian, Salvadorian, Brazilian or Colombian cuisine to know people from these countries and others operate Lynn restaurants, stores, and businesses.
Lynn is changing. Coco Alinsug’s election to be the next Ward 3 councilor is proof of that change. So is the election of Tiffany Magnolia, Eric Dugan, and Lenny Peña to the School Committee. Jared Nicholson’s election is proof Lynn is changing.
There are disgruntled voters who will say Nicholson is just a new face representing the same old system. I might buy that argument if the man hadn’t won every one of the city’s 28 precincts on Tuesday.
The clear message from the “recent Sudbury transplant,” as Cyr labeled Nicholson in campaign brochures, is that it doesn’t matter where you came from to get to Lynn, it matters where we are going.
*****
I thought state Rep. Dan Cahill, Lynn Economic Development & Industrial Corporation Board member Magnolia Contreras and former Councilor Joe Scanlon did a great job commenting on election results Tuesday night for Lynn Community Television, especially Scanlon with his ability to frame the election against history’s backdrop. He recalled how a West Lynn voter told him he couldn’t vote for him because Scanlon wasn’t from that part of the city.
