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Date: 11/9/2021
WESTFIELD – Though voters wanted change at the top of Westfield’s Nov. 2 ballot, incumbents ruled the races for City Council and School Committee.
On the same day that Michael McCabe defeated incumbent Mayor Donald Humason Jr., 4,714 votes to 3,846, voters re-elected Ward 1 City Councilor Nicholas Morganelli Jr. and gave the two School Committee incumbents the lion’s share of the vote in a six-way race for three seats.
Incumbents Timothy O’Connor and Heather Sullivan finished first and second in the School Committee race, with 4,429 and 4,349 votes, respectively. Both received votes on more than half the ballots cast in the Nov. 2 election. They were the only School Committee candidates to finish in the top three in all 12 of Westfield’s precincts.
The four challengers split the rest of the vote, with each one finishing in the top three in at least two precincts, and also finishing in last place in at least two precincts. A wide gulf separated the two incumbents from the third elected member, Kathleen Hillman, who finished with 2,472 votes, or 28.6 percent of ballots. Fourth-place finisher Tom Lewis was relatively close behind, at 2,389 votes or 27.6 percent, followed by Martha Marie Breton at 2,342 votes or 27.1 percent, and Jeffrey Gosselin at 2,276 votes or 26.3 percent.
Hillman won the third seat on the committee despite finishing third in just two precincts: Precinct 2A, the downtown area north of Main Street and east of Elm Street, which was also the election’s lowest-turnout precinct, and Precinct 6A, which includes the Holyoke Road-Springdale Road area and all of Westfield north of the Massachusetts Turnpike and east of Southampton Road. She was the fourth-place finisher in six additional precincts, however.
The challengers who won the most precincts were Gosselin and Lewis, who each won four. Gosselin’s support was strongest in the six precincts of wards 1-3, covering the northwest quarter of Westfield and the downtown area. He finished in third place in precincts 1B, 2B, 3A and 3B, and fourth place in precincts 1A, 2A and 4A. Lewis was in the top three in the four precincts that make up wards 4 and 5, the southwestern, southern and southeastern neighborhoods of the city. He leapfrogged Sullivan to finish in second place in Precinct 5B, the southeastern corner.
Breton, despite finishing fifth overall, squeaked by O’Connor to grab second place in Precinct 6A. She finished third in Precinct 1A, the neighborhoods north of the Massachusetts Turnpike and west of Southampton Road, and fourth in precincts 1B, 5B and 6B.
Hillman will take office in January 2022, replacing Cindy Sullivan, who chose not to run for re-election. Westfield’s six School Committee members serve four-year terms; the three members who were elected in 2019 will be up for re-election in 2023.
Mayor
As City Clerk Karen Fanion read the precinct results at City Hall on election night, it became clear that McCabe had an insurmountable lead before half the polling places had even been reported. Humason won just two of Westfield’s 12 voting precincts, and just barely – his lead in precincts 2A and 6A was a combined four votes. Humason won 129-128 in Precinct 2A, and 378-375 in Precinct 6A.
McCabe won every other neighborhood of Westfield. In Precinct 3A, the election’s second-lowest-turnout precinct, he won the downtown area between Main Street and Smith Avenue by 23 votes. In the rest of the precincts, his margin of victory was no closer than 40 votes. McCabe’s best showing was 58.9 percent of the vote in Precinct 3B, which stretches west from downtown along Franklin Street and Russell Road, and parts of Court Street and Western Avenue.
The city’s three highest-turnout precincts were 4B, 5A and 5B, representing the southwestern corner, the central area south of the Little River, and the southeastern corner of the city, respectively. McCabe won these precincts by margins of 146, 168 and 114 votes, accounting for nearly half of his overall 868-vote margin of victory.
A total of 8,641 ballots were cast in this year’s city election, for a turnout of about 33.1 percent among registered voters, according to unofficial results that Fanion announced on election night.
City Council
Incumbent City Councilor Nicholas Morganelli Jr. scored a convincing win in the Ward 1 race, garnering 1,049 votes to challenger Marybeth Berrien’s 609, and earning an additional two years on the council. Morganelli won wide margins in both Ward 1 precincts, which combined cover the quarter of the city north of the Westfield River and west of North Elm Street and Southampton Road.
The rest of the City Council was re-elected without opposition, including at-large incumbent councilors James Adams, Dan Allie, Brent Bean II, Dave Flaherty, Cindy Harris, Kristen Mello and Richard Sullivan Jr., and ward representatives Ralph Figy (Ward 2), Bridget Matthews-Kane (Ward 3), Michael Burns (Ward 4), John Beltrandi III (Ward 5) and William Onyski (Ward 6). All will serve an additional two-year term.
All six incumbents on the Municipal Light Board were re-elected with no opponents. Kevin Kelleher Sr. (Ward 1), Ray Rivera (Ward 2), Dawn Renaudette (Ward 3), Francis Liptak (Ward 4), Joseph Mitchell (Ward 5) and Robert Sacco (Ward 6) will all serve an additional two-year term on the board.
Andrea Pennington was the only candidate for a six-year term as Westfield Athenaeum trustee.