What Went Down During The 2021 Elections

Boston is electing a new mayor today, and either way, history will be made. The city has never elected a mayor who is not a white man, but both candidates today are women of color: City Councilor Michelle Wu and City Councilor Annissa Essaibi George.

On policy, though, they are pretty different: Wu, a protegee of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, is a progressive, while Essaibi George is more moderate à la President Biden. In a day full of elections pitting the progressive left against the Democratic establishment, this looks like it will be one of the left’s easier wins, as Wu leads Essaibi George by around 30 points in polling.

Virginians will also be voting for lieutenant governor and attorney general, and what happens at the top of the ticket in the governor’s race between McAuliffe and Youngkin will likely have a strong effect on the results in those races. That’s because recent elections in Virginia have seen very little split-ticket voting, so the two parties have won similar vote shares across all three contests.

In other words, don’t be surprised if the same party wins all three offices, although if the governor’s contest is extremely close, it’s possible we could see a split-party outcome.

But one way or another, each contest will make some history. In the lieutenant governor’s race, Virginia is guaranteed to elect its first woman to the position, as Democratic state Del. Hala Ayala faces former state Del. Winsome Sears, the Republican. Both candidates are women of color, as Ayala identifies as Afro Latina and Sears remains the only Black Republican woman ever to be elected to the House of Delegates, the state legislature’s lower chamber.

Meanwhile, the attorney general’s race will either reward longevity or make some of its own history, too. Democratic Attorney General Mark Herring is the one incumbent running statewide, and he’s seeking a third term in the office, having been elected in 2013 after a recount and then winning reelection in 2017. If Herring does win a third term, he will be the first attorney general to win three consecutive terms since the 1940s. But standing in his way is Republican state Del. Jason Miyares, whose mother fled Cuba in the 1960s. Should Miyares beat Herring, he would be the first Latino to hold the office.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms stunningly announced earlier this year that she would retire after only one term, leaving behind an open-seat race for mayor of one of the largest cities in the South.

Unlike many other mayoral races today, this isn’t a race between a moderate and a progressive either. Instead, most candidates have tacked toward the center, especially by calling for more police officers as crime rates have spiked in the city. The likely front-runners are former Mayor Kasim Reed and City Council President Felicia Moore, but City Councilman Antonio Brown, City Councilman Andre Dickens and attorney Sharon Gay are also in contention.