The following is in regard to the just concluded municipal election in Beverly, MA
The election results for our city remain unofficial as they are contested. There will be a recount
on November 22, 2017. I would have wished to write this article after the officials results are
out. However, due to unavoidable circumstances, I can only issue this response today. The
unofficial results are as follows:
Paul Guanci, 4273 votes – Council President (elected)
Julie Flowers, 3451 votes (elected)
Timothy Flaherty, 3170 votes (elected)
Matthew St. Hilaire, 3160 votes
Esther Ngotho, 1479 votes
Brian D’Apice, 653 votes
There is always a reason for failure just as there is always a reason for success. If you know the
reasons of the failure before, you would not make them, and so you would not fail. It is therefore
ok to start winning by failing.
Although I knew that the chances of winning in the just concluded
municipal elections in Beverly, MA were remote, I was not sure why this had to be so.
Let me do a brief postmortem: all the individuals I contested against are very well known in my
city and I guess very few people knew the hell who I was; all of them have been councilors-at-
large in the city for many years and two of them are current and former president of the council;
one is a secretary of personnel in Governor Baker’s office,one is a First Baptist minister of a
large church, was born and grew up in Beverly and finally; one person is a realtor in the city.
All of them started their campaign many months or even years ago but I campaigned actively for 2
months only. All of them had campaign infrastructure but I had none. I was also operating on a
shoe string budget. Given all these issues, our campaign did exceedingly amazingly well.
I was
very humbled to be the first American citizen of African descent to hold the honor of running as
a councilor-at-large in Beverly, MA. I am proud to say that I attained this candidacy as an
immigrant.
Although the reasons I have enumerated above look like “blames,” they have offered the lessons
that I wish to share with you today. One major lesson is that “A man learns to skate by staggering
about, and making a fool of himself. Indeed, he progresses in all things by resolutely making a
fool of himself” – George Bernard Shaw. Many of us are however, terrified by the possibility of
failure or ridicule. In doing this, we deny ourselves the pleasures and adventures of life. We
mistakenly belief things that are not true.
In my campaign, I was overwhelmingly supported by a
white community.
In every campaign event, candidates’ night and debates I went to, I was either
the only black person there or just about.
Apparently, although that originally bothered me, it did
not bother my community and although I cannot say that there are people who did not vote for
me because I was black, I can unequivocally say that my community voted for me regardless of
being black in a predominantly white city.
My platform was “Diversity.”