Q&A #9: Preliminary Prelim Thoughts

"Jim C" asks:

what did you have to say (on BNN) last night about the city election in Boston this year?

"Kevin B. Gilnack" asks:

Do who you expect to make it through the D2 and D3 -- and heck, D7 -- preliminary elections next Tuesday?

I was indeed on BNN last night, yapping for a full half hour with the great Seth McCoy about the upcoming city elections, particularly the three district preliminaries. I'm finding this year that there aren't very many candidates, but I kind of like a large percentage of the ones we've got -- and in what's likely to be a very low turnout election, just about anything could happen.

It might just be that I feel so bad for them -- on top of every other reason they can't get anybody to pay attention to them, now the Red Sox have guaranteed a race for a playoff spot will go at least through the weekend, and quite possibly right down to the final game of the season the day after the prelim. Thanks guys!

My prediction in D2, if I have to make one, is that incumbent Bill Linehan will do well, and that Bob Ferrara will edge out Suzanne Lee for the second spot on the November ballot. I'd pick John O'Toole and Craig Galvin, in that order, to get through for the open D3 seat; and I think Sheneal Parker will take the second spot behind incumbent Tito Jackson in D7, but far enough behind that (like Cornell Mills in the special election) she can't generate any attention for the final push.

All of that, however, is based on conversations, observations, and guesses about turnout that could be turn out to be wayyyyy off the mark -- it can be very very hard to read these small-scale races sometimes. In case you didn't notice in the municipal prelims held elsewhere in the Commonwealth this week, every vote counts in these.