Boston set to elect first female mayor

Two Boston city council members will face off in November for the right to become the first woman elected to govern one of America’s most significant cities.

Preliminary results show Michelle Wu, an at-large member of the city council who scored 33 percent of the vote, and Dorchester council member Annissa Essaibi George, who won 22.5 percent, leading the field of contenders. They will advance to a general election in November.

The winner will replace acting Mayor Kim Janey, a former city council president who took over command of the city when Marty Walsh accepted President Biden’s nomination to become Labor secretary.

All four candidates who received significant shares of the vote were women: Janey, the first woman to lead the city in an acting capacity, finished fourth in the runoff, at 19.5 percent, just behind another city council member, Andrea Campbell.

Wu declared victory last night, as early tallies put her well ahead of her rivals. Essaibi George claimed the second spot soon after.

The election marks a turning point in a city where ethnic politics long meant power struggles between politicians of Irish or Italian descent. Either Wu, who is of Taiwanese descent, and Essaibi George, whose father is from Tunisia, would be the first nonwhite person to run Boston.

Both women hail from the Democratic Party, though with different allies in a city where Democrats have long held total control. Essaibi George is seen as a close ally of Walsh’s, while Wu studied law at Harvard under now-Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), for whom she worked on Warren’s 2012 U.S. Senate campaign.