Boston Mayor Marty Walsh was thanking voters Wednesday morning after crushing the competition in the preliminary race for Boston mayor Tuesday.
Walsh, who garnered 83 percent of the city's precincts said his campaign will, "connect with every neighborhood, every community." City Councilor Tito Jackson, who got 29 percent of the vote, stated his campaign will be an uphill battle. He was also spotted Wednesday morning thanking his supporters.
Walsh and Jackson bested a pair of lesser known mayoral candidates, retired police officer Robert Cappucci and Joseph Wiley, a health care worker, in the nonpartisan preliminary election which generated lukewarm voter interest.
By 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, just 59 voters had cast ballots in a polling location at the Massachusetts Statehouse. At another polling location at the city's West End branch library, about 70 voters had cast ballots by 2:30 p.m.
In his speech Tuesday night, Walsh talked about his vision for the city.
"That's the Boston I fight for every day," said Walsh. "It's the Boston for all of us."
Mayor Walsh told us he will debate his opponent twice before the final election. There were no debates prior to the Tuesday's runoff.
U.S. & World
"I think it's important for us to get out there and talk to voters in every corner of the city and some of that will be through some of the debate we have," said Walsh.
Jackson said, "I've been planning on debating Mayor Walsh and having him keep his word because he said he would have at least one in the primary. He dodged us. But you know what he can't dodge his record."
Walsh, a former union official and state representative, emerged in 2013 from a crowded field to win the city's first open election for mayor in two decades. The Democrat succeeded the city's longest serving mayor, Tom Menino, who did not seek a sixth term. Menino died of cancer in 2014.
Walsh lists education and affordable housing as priorities. A recovering alcoholic, Walsh also has supported addiction prevention and treatment programs and continued Menino's advocacy for gun control measures. He worked to lure General Electric from Connecticut to a new world headquarters in Boston, but was criticized for aborted attempts to bring the Summer Olympics and IndyCar racing to the city.
Jackson is a lifelong resident of the city's Roxbury neighborhood who served in the administration of former Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick, including as Patrick's political director. Elected as a district city councilor in 2011, Jackson chairs the council's education committee and the Special Committee on the Status of Black and Latino Men and Boys.
He has advocated for criminal justice reform and for the use of body cameras by police officers.
Jackson would be Boston's first black mayor if elected.
The general election is set for Nov. 7.
