Sharon Durkan will hold the District 8 seat on the Boston City Council for the remainder of the year, after defeating Montez Haywood in a special election on Tuesday night.
Durkan, a political organizer who worked for Mayor Michelle Wu and former District 8 Councilor Kenzie Bok, handily defeated Haywood, via a 70% to 29.3% margin, but will have to beat him again in November to hold onto her new Beacon Hill seat.
“You won every single precinct,” Wu said at Durkan’s campaign headquarters, where the new councilor-elect declared victory at about 9 p.m. “There are a lot of folks who are behind this victory with you tonight.”
Durkan, 32, said she didn’t know that “factoid” about sweeping all of the district’s precincts until it was mentioned by the mayor.
“But I could feel it,” she said, citing the conversations she was able to have, and how she was able to connect with voters on the campaign trail. “Over and over again, we were talking to people who have never had a friend in government.”
The District 8 seat has been vacant since late April, when Wu appointed Bok as administrator of the Boston Housing Authority. Durkan, chair of the Ward 5 Democrats, received endorsements from both Bok and the mayor in the weeks leading up to the special election.
Durkan has also benefited from the support of other Democratic lawmakers, according to her campaign website, which lists endorsements from U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, House Majority Leader Michael Moran and two other state representatives, Boston City Council President Ed Flynn and three other councilors, and two state senators.
Haywood, who has worked as a prosecutor with the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office for 17 years, addressed the support his opponent had received from Boston’s Democratic establishment hours before the polls closed. Despite the endorsements, he felt voters would see him as the “more qualified” candidate.
“We have received nothing but positive responses so far,” Haywood, 43, told the Herald late Tuesday afternoon. “It’s not lost on me that the inside baseball, the political machine that is the Democratic Party in Boston is sided with Sharon. However, I feel the people of the district are with me.”
He said he has “every intention” of continuing to run, and plans to spend the rest of the summer campaigning in preparation for the Nov. 7 election.
Durkan addressed the vast support she received in a speech to supporters, saying that sometimes it can seem that there’s something “sinister” going on when a candidate is able to rake in “every single endorsement.”
Rather, she said the endorsements show that a lot of people in government were able to connect with her. She committed to focusing on constituent services during her time on the City Council.
“I am so appreciative,” Durkan said. “I haven’t fully processed that this is all happening, but when I do, you’ll all be getting a thank-you note.”