Casting a ballot in a Boston City Council election is usually about as meaningful as picking up your cellphone and dialing in a vote for your favorite D-list celebrity on Dancing with the Stars.
But this Tuesday, going to the polls could be important, because it might help determine who becomes mayor next year if (or when) Michelle Wu decides to move on.
Rumors are rampant that two years after her election, the 37-year-old drifter from Chicago is “despondent” over the job, as well she should be, as abysmally as she’s performed her duties.
Last week, Wu was asked by reporters if she’s been talking to Harvard about a job. She denied it, sort of.
Maybe they should have asked her about MIT. That’s the other rumor.
If Wu resigns, she would be replaced by the president of that third-rate clown-show known as the City Council.
The current president is Ed Flynn, son of former mayor Ray Flynn. Not a bad guy, but Ed’s never been on the short list for Mensa. When a riot breaks out at a Council meeting, he bangs the gavel and yells “Clear the galleys!”
Not galleries, galleys.
Under no circumstances is Ed Flynn going to become the next mayor. So if she wants out, Wu will have to wait until his term expires in January. Then her faction of comrades and card-carrying fellow travelers on the Council can vote in a successor to keep the program going.
What’s the program, you ask? To paraphrase Che Guevara on Vietnam in 1967:
“Two, three, many Mass & Casses.”
If Wu flees across the river, the local Reds want to replace her with Councilor Ruthzee Louijeune. Like Wu, she’s an acolyte of the fake Indian, Elizabeth Warren, who raised big bucks for the Haitian-American in her 2021 race.
Louijeune’s far-left bona fides are all in order – after Harvard Law she worked for Perkins Coie, the corrupt Democrat law firm that in 2016 served as a cut-out for funneling Hillary Clinton’s cash to concoct the phony Steele dossier used in the Russian collusion hoax.
But there’s a problem with the Louijeune succession. Some of the councilors from the Mass & Cass crew are jammed up legally. If the electorate votes them off the island, there’s an off chance someone who’s occasionally worked for a living could become the next mayor.
On the Council get-rid-of list, let’s start with incumbent Kendra Lara, a/k/a Hicks, who was recently busted for unlicensed driving of an uninspected, uninsured, unregistered motor vehicle. I don’t have the room (or stomach) to go into every sordid stunt this shrew has been mixed up in, but now she’s demanding to have all the latest charges against her dropped.
Which is amusing, because the guy prosecuting her is Kevin Hayden, the district attorney, whom she vehemently tried to defeat last year. Payback is a… Kendra Lara.
In her West Roxbury-Jamaica Plain District 6, vote for William King to get rid of Lara. He is not known to DCF, and he has a driver’s license. In other words, he’s normal.
In District 5, which includes Hyde Park, Roslindale and Mattapan, incumbent Ricky Ricardo Arroyo is a boil on the body politic. He tried to rig the DA’s race last year against the aforementioned Hayden.
And he’s got other legal problems besides getting the shady US attorney fired in his scheme to fix the election by leaking fake news to the corrupt Boston Globe.
Arroyo was just fined $3000 by the State Ethics Commission for a different offense. And then there’s that ongoing investigation against him by the Board of Bar Overseers regarding a photo finish he had with the BPD during high school.
Jose Ruiz is running against Arroyo. He is a 30-year Boston cop. Vote Ruiz, not the sleaze.
Next, Tania Fernandes Anderson, the Roxbury city councilor, will be more difficult to knock off. She recently made a mysterious visit to Mass & Cass on a Saturday night at dusk and had her cell phone stolen. She claimed she had double-parked to deliver food to the junkies.
Anderson canoodles with a convicted thug doing life for murdering a (legal) immigrant. She brags of being the first African Muslim illegal alien elected to the City Council. She too has been fined by the State Ethics Commission — $5000, for hiring both her son and her sister as aides.
Her most well-known statement on the City Council floor, after being told she had to fire her two nationwide searches:
“What the bleep does a black woman have to do on the bleepin’ Council to get some respect as a black woman?”
Maybe stop breaking the law, for starters.
In Roxbury, District 7, vote for Althea Garrison. She’s served on both the City Council and in the state legislature, and never disgraced herself, not once. Go Althea!
Incumbent Frank Baker is not running for reelection in Dorchester District 3. The Globe has endorsed one Ann Walsh – how much more do you need to know? She says she’s against the “secret knock” – meaning, I guess, the old-boy network.
Which is fine, but how is the “secret knock” any less odious – or racist – than “checking the box,” which is the sine qua non for every last one of these scoundrels in the Mass & Cass crew.
In District 3, vote for John FitzGerald, even if his father was the crooked state rep and bag-lady stalker Kevin “Money Fitz” FitzGerald. Even a FitzGerald spalpeen is preferable to a Globe stooge.
Meanwhile, to return to the subject of Michelle Wu’s likely departure, I’ve been futilely trying for 11 months now to get the Boston Police Department to hand over its CAD (computer-aided dispatch) records for her home in Roslindale.
The cops have dragged their feet, stonewalled me, given me spread sheets I didn’t ask for, told me I had to go to other agencies etc. etc.
Finally, last week the BPD admitted they have the records I’m seeking. They reveal all calls to an address by first responders — including ambulances.
But the BPD still won’t turn them over to me. I wonder why.
You’d almost think City Hall was trying to hide something. What’s in those CAD records for the mayor’s house on Augustus Avenue that they’re so desperate not to release?
Anyway, vote Tuesday and then vote again Nov. 7, unless you want a Mass & Cass in every neighborhood in the city – their dream, everyone else’s nightmare.
At the top of this column, I compared a Council election to voting in Dancing with the Stars. But this year’s fight is more like The Gong Show.
On Tuesday, if you live in Boston, you can be Chuck Barris. Bang the gong on all these clowns. See ya later, Kendra, Ricky, Tania and all the rest!
Vote like your neighborhood depended on it, because it does.
(Order Howie’s new book, “Paper Boy: Read All About It!” at howiecarrshow.com or amazon.com.)