Here are the election results for the Worcester City Council At-Large race in 2009, compared to 2007. The data points are the % of ballots cast for each candidate.
Some obvious points:
- Emmanuel Tsitsilianos did very poorly.
- Joe O’Brien did very well.
- Aside from O’Brien, challengers this time did worse than last time.
- Petty and Toomey are stronger, Rushton and Lukes are weaker. Rushton and Petty basically switched places.
- Two incumbents were forced off the council last time (Perotto and Irish), none were forced off in 2009.
(Yes, charts for district and School Committee races are forthcoming.)
I feel like a lot of this is just “same role – different name.”
Is Tsitsilianos the new Bill Coleman? (I think we need a new perennial candidate, and Emmuanel is as good as any. It would help, however, if he started hanging out at the Pickle Barrel and wrote op-eds in the In-City Times.)
Is Kate Toomey the new Gary Rosen? (i.e., the voting public loves her as a councilor, not so much as the mayor.)
Rushton is likely the new Dennis Irish (annoying as all get-out, at least to me…)