Candidates in Somerville's general city election, November 3

[ron_newman]

It's an odd-numbered year, so Somerville is having a general election on Tuesday, November 3.

Much of it is going to be pretty quiet. Mayor Joe Curtatone has no opponent. Six of the seven ward aldermen are also unopposed. The exception is in Ward 6 (Davis, Powderhouse, Ball, Porter area), where Rebekah Gewirtz is not seeking re-election, so we'll choose between Lance Davis and Elizabeth Weinbloom.

Voters throughout Somerville elect four aldermen-at-large. All four incumbents (Jack Connolly, Mary Jo Rossetti*, Dennis Sullivan, and Bill White, are running for re-election. They have only one challenger, Sean Fitzgerald, who also ran for this office in 2011 and 2013. You can vote for up to four candidates.

In four of the seven wards, the incumbent School Committee member has no opponent. These wards have contests:

Ward 1: Steve Roix (incumbent) vs Ken Salvato*. Salvato has unsuccessfully run for office at least four times, including for School Committee in both 2003 and 2013. He doesn't appear to have a web site. His past criminal record may deserve some attention.

Ward 3: Lee Erica Palmer vs Vivaldo Meneses Jr*. (Incumbent Adam Sweeting is not running for re-election)

Ward 4: Jamie O'Leary vs Andre Green. (Incumbent Christine Rafal is not running for re-election)

Please comment away on any and all of these races!

* indicates that I couldn't find a web page for this candidate. If you know of one, please comment.

Comments

[keithn.livejournal.com]

I know very little about Sean Fitzgerald, but I do know that he ran in 2011 and 2013, and came in 5th out of 7 both times and barely finished behind Rossetti last time, although Rossetti was not an incumbent then. I wonder if being the only non-incumbent this time around improves his chances of winning a seat.

[ron_newman]

Perhaps, but he needs to start campaigning ASAP or else nobody will even be paying attention to him. I've edited the post to include reference to his 2011 campaign.

In wards 2, 5, and 7, this will be the only contested race on the entire ballot.

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

I am not sure that I think that bounced check charges from 1995 ARE worthy of attention 20 years later.

[ron_newman]

I'm not sure whether they are or they aren't. When I was looking through the 1991-93 Journal microfilm, I thought I saw other dubious things about him, but I didn't write them down or copy them because they were not what I was looking for at the time.