As of 11:25 p.m., the city had reported 57.1 percent of precincts, making it impossible to project the specifics of the 10-person race. But the four incumbents — Ruthzee Louijeune, Julia Mejia, Erin Murphy, and Henry Santana — and Frank Baker, a former district councilor from Dorchester, were steadily pulling away from the others.
Louijeune is the current City Council president, though the new council will choose a different president after the winners of the November general election are sworn in in January.
The rest of the candidates — Yves Mary Jean, Rachel Nicole Miselman, Will Onuoha, Marvin Mathelier, and Alexandra Valdez — have not held elected office in Boston before.
As the results unfold, political watchers will keep a close eye on the margins and order. Some have speculated that Santana, a freshman councilor, is a vulnerable incumbent. He needed help from his former boss’ robust political apparatus, that of Mayor Michelle Wu, to collect enough signatures to appear on the ballot.
Baker represented Dorchester for a decade, but it bears watching how well his support there translates citywide. He was a thorn in the mayor’s side before he declined to run again for his former seat.
Of the current at-large candidates, Louijeune and Santana are staunch supporters of the mayor. Mejia has at times criticized Wu from the political left, and Murphy has been one of Wu’s most significant adversaries from Wu’s right.
Given that a successful at-large run requires broad support and a functional political operation, these seats can be a springboard for a run for mayor or another higher office. Wu was an at-large councilor for a decade, and she defeated another at-large councilor, Annissa Essaibi George, to win the leading job. Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley also was an at-large councilor for a decade, and immediately represents about two-thirds of the city in Washington.
The council is composed of the four at-large seats plus nine district councilors, who are elected to represent geographic regions of the city.
Boston’s government is set up to have a strong mayor with broad legal authority, though council approval is needed on legislative changes and the council has some mechanisms meant to provide a check on the mayor.
All councilors serve two-year terms, meaning dynamics on the body can and do change quickly. During the first two years of Wu’s term, a fractured council included many critics of the mayor, but it’s become more friendly during the latter half of her four-year term. In recent years, the council has successfully pushed for more budgetary authority, but has had trouble exercising it.
The most high-profile of the district council races is the contest to succeed Tania Fernandes Anderson, who was recently sentenced to one month in federal prison after pleading guilty to federal corruption charges.
Eleven candidates campaigned to represent District 7, which is anchored in Roxbury and includes parts of Dorchester and the South End. Tuesday’s election narrows it to two, and voters in the district will pick their representative in November’s general election.
By 11:25 p.m., the city had reported 22 of 30 precincts in District 7, and the race remained unclear.
Clustered at the leading of the 11-person race, with fewer than 70 votes between them, were Mavrick Afonso, who works for the state’s Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities; former City Hall staffer Samuel Hurtado; Said Ahmed, a former track and field star and current track coach; Said Abdikarim, a nonprofit executive; and the Rev. Miniard Culpepper, a well-known senior pastor at the Pleasant Hill Missionary Baptist Church.
District 7 is among the most diverse of the City Council areas in Boston, with many residents feeling the squeeze of the city’s housing and cost-of-living crises, and a handful of the council hopefuls from the district debated housing, reparations, and ethics reform at a forum last month.
The majority of residents in Roxbury, where the district is rooted, are people of color: 41 percent Black and 30 percent Latino, according to city statistics. The neighborhood’s median household income is $42,000, well below the citywide median of $94,000.
Whoever succeeds in the general election will look to bring stability to a post that has had scandal swirling around it for months. Indeed, for a City Council engulfed in controversy in recent years, Fernandes Anderson’s indictment represented a legal nadir.
She was the first Boston councilor to be indicted by federal authorities since Chuck Turner in 2008, who at the time represented District 7 as well. He was convicted in 2010 of attempted extortion and three counts of providing false statements to FBI agents for accepting $1,000 in cash in exchange for helping a nightclub owner win a liquor license.
Fernandes Anderson had succeeded Kim Janey in representing District 7. Janey became acting mayor when Martin J. Walsh was tapped to become US labor secretary. Janey then ran for a full term as mayor and lost.
The mayor’s race has dominated coverage of this election cycle, and that is to be expected. Wu and her challenger Josh Kraft, a former nonprofit leader whose family owns the New England Patriots, advanced to the November general election, surpassing two lesser-known candidates. Polling has shown Wu in the driver’s seat as she seeks a second term.
Niki Griswold of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Sean Cotter can be reached at sean.cotter@globe.com. Follow him @cotterreporter. Danny McDonald can be reached at daniel.mcdonald@globe.com. Follow him @Danny__McDonald.
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