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Date: 11/16/2023
WESTFIELD — For those who know Mayor Michael McCabe, his convincing win over at-large City Councilor Kristen Mello for a second term as mayor didn’t come as a surprise.
“It’s well-deserved,” said Dennis Hall, who was with his wife Paulette during a celebration party at the Tekoa Country Club just moments after McCabe learned he had handily defeated Mello with 69% of the vote on Nov. 7.
According to unofficial election results released by the City Clerk’s Office, McCabe got 4,521 votes to 1,400 for Mello. Of the city’s 27,842 registered voters, 6,180 voted, a turnout of 22.2%. McCabe won all 12 precincts in Westfield, all of them by margins of at least 2 to 1. In more than half the precincts he at least tripled Mello’s vote: Precinct 1A (where the vote ran 531-161), Precinct 1B (445-146), Precinct 3B (460-135), Precinct 4A (215-50), Precinct 4B (605-155), Precinct 5A (540-140) and Precinct 5B (519-130).
“He’s very sharp guy and deserves everything he’s worked for,” said Hall, a former Westfield Police sergeant who has known McCabe for 40 years.
Hall said he remembers when he first met McCabe four decades ago when McCabe was working at Family Pizza in the city.
“You just knew he was going somewhere, but I didn’t expect this,” Hall said about McCabe retiring from the Police Department as a captain after serving for 36 years before running for mayor in 2019. In that race against Donald Humason Jr., who spent 18 years representing Westfield in the state Legislature, McCabe lost by a mere 90 votes out of 10,020 cast.
McCabe continued teaching criminal justice at his alma mater, Westfield State University, while quietly planning for another run in 2021. When the polls closed that year, McCabe prevailed by 868 votes, getting 4,714 votes to Humason’s 3,846.
It’s that persistence that appealed to John Bowen, a longtime friend and one of McCabe’s jogging partners.
“He’s like a tornado,” Bowen said at the victory celebration on election night. “When he sees a problem, he goes in and fixes it. He’s already gotten so much done.”
William “Bill” Parks, the former CEO of the Greater Westfield Boys & Girls Club, got to know the future mayor while McCabe served on the organization’s board of directors.
“He gets things rolling,” Parks said.
As expected, McCabe was excited about being reelected.
“It’s a pretty cool deal for me,” McCabe said just after learning the election’s results. “I think people like what they see. I think there is spark in the city that is starting to catch on.”
He pointed the success of the downtown corridor.
“You see some things that are really starting to come in,” McCabe said about downtown.
He said his administration’s next goal is to “focus outwards.”
“We’re really trying to figure out a way for the state to buy into the improvements that we want to make in our infrastructure,” he said.
He said he will be focusing on improving Exit 41 off Interstate 90.
“It’s not just about traffic, it’s about clean air, emissions, and people in that generalized area,” he said of the Massachusetts Turnpike interchange.
He also thanked all his supporters and contributors and that he was looking forward to being successful again in two years.
“But there is still more to do. Let’s just keep it rolling,” he said.
The day after the election, Mello remarked she had done “better than I expected.”
“I never thought I would win,” she said, but she ran for mayor to bring “attention on several issues.” Specifically, she wanted to highlight her ongoing concern about the PFAS groundwater contamination and her ongoing efforts to have trees removed from a levee that runs along the Little River, crosses under Ponders Hollow Road and nearly abuts the Columbia Greenway Rail Trail.
She also thanked those who helped get her message out.
“I’m grateful to all the voters who totally believed in me. ... We amplified the voices of people who want environmental justice,” she said.
While she lost the top race on the ballot, she was reelected to her at-large seat on the City Council.