Tuesday’s Lowell City Council meeting was brief with just three motions and a handful of motion responses on the agenda. None seemed controversial. In the absence of any pressing council business, today I’ll provide a preview of the coming city election which will be held on Tuesday, November 4, 2025. All city council and school committee seats will be on the ballot. Perhaps the biggest question is, will anyone besides the incumbents run?

Back in 2019, after the city had been sued for violating the federal Voting Rights Act on the grounds that Lowell’s winner take all, all at large method of electing city councilors diluted the votes of members of minority groups, two methods of electing councilors that would comply with the law were offered as alternatives.

One option was ranked choice voting. That option would retain a city council of nine, but would elect its members by ranked choice voting, a system the city had used from the adoption of Plan E in the 1940s until the late 1950s when the city changed to the winner take all system. A benefit of ranked choice voting would have been that minorities would not have to be segregated into smaller districts to have the impact of their votes realized because ranked choice voting would permit members of minority groups to elect their preferred candidates regardless of where they lived in the city. A downside of this system was that candidates still had to run citywide which, due to the size of the city and the large number of registered voters, could be intimidating and off putting to new candidates. Also, the method of counting the votes in ranked choice voting is complicated and slow.

The second system considered, and the one ultimately adopted, increased the number of councilors from nine to eleven, made three of the council seats elected citywide and the other eight elected from districts, each of which would represent one-eighth of the city’s voters. Two of the districts were required to be “minority-majority” meaning the district’s boundaries must be drawn to have a majority of the registered voters with in it be members of minority groups. The benefit of this system was that smaller districts would make it easier for candidates to compete, and more candidates should lead to more participation in the voting process. The downside of the district system, according to the election experts who spoke on the topic, was that once a councilor was elected to a district, that councilor tended to be electorally safe in the seat in all the following elections. In other words, the power of district incumbency tended to reduce competition after the first election to fill the district seat.

This hybrid system of three at large and eight district councilors was adopted and first used in the 2021 city election.

Under Massachusetts election law for cities like Lowell, if the number of candidates running for an office is more than double the number of seats to be filled, then there must be a preliminary election to narrow down the field. Consequently, under the old nine-member city council, if 19 or more candidates qualified to run, a preliminary election to cut down the number of candidates to 18 (double the number of seats to be filled) would be required. Under the new hybrid system, if seven or more candidates sought the three at large seats, there would be a preliminary election; and if three or more candidates sought any of the district seats, there would be a preliminary election but just for the districts with three or more candidates.

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In 2021, there were enough candidates to require preliminary elections in four of the eight districts. One of the reasons the old system had to change was that so many of those elected lived in just one neighborhood, Belvidere. Consequently, in the transition to the hybrid system, three incumbent city councilors, John Leahy, William Samaras, and David Conway, all sought the District 3 (Belvidere) seat. In that district’s preliminary election, Conway was eliminated leaving Leahy and Samaras to appear on the November ballot.

In the District 2 preliminary, Corey Robinson and Robert Gignac advanced and Martin Hogan was eliminated. In District 4, Wayne Jenness and Ryan Rourke advanced and Paul Belley was eliminated. And in the District 7 preliminary, Paul Ratha Yem and David Ouellette advanced and Kamara Kay and Patricia Stratton were eliminated.

In the November election, 12,145 of 67,867 registered voters cast ballots. Here are the results:

AT LARGE: Vesna Nuon, Rita Mercier and John Drinkwater (all incumbents) won; Bobby Tugbiyele, Deb Belanger, and Robert Hoey lost.

District 1: Dan Rourke defeated Rodney Elliott (both incumbents)

District 2: Corey Robinson defeated Robert Gignac

District 3: John Leahy defeated William Samaras

District 4: Wayne Jenness defeated Ryan Rourke

District 5: Kim Scott defeated Tooch Van

District 6: Sokhary Chau defeated Justin Ford

District 7: Paul Ratha Yem defeated David Ouellette

District 8: Erik Gitschier defeated Ty Chum

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The 2023 city election had a substantial drop in the number of candidates and in the number of people voting. Whereas 12,145 people had voted in 2021, only 7,516 voted in 2023, even though the number of registered voters had increased from 67,867 to 75,294 over those two years. In 2023, no district needed a preliminary election and in two of the council districts, incumbents ran unopposed. Here are the 2023 results:

AT LARGE: Erik Gitschier, Rita Mercier and Vesna Nuon won; Corey Belanger, Bobby Tugbiyele and Virak Uy lost. (Belanger has since joined the council when he was selected by the other councilors to fill the vacancy created with John Leahy’s resignation.)

District 1: Dan Rourke was unopposed

District 2: Corey Robinson defeated Martin Hogan

District 3: John Leahy was unopposed

District 4: Wayne Jenness defeated Amanda Gregory

District 5: Kim Scott defeated Susie Chhoun

District 6: Sokhary Chau defeated Justin Ford

District 7: Paul Ratha Yem defeated Fru Nkimbeng

District 8: John Descoteaux defeated Ty Chum

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Looking ahead to the 2025 city election, until they announce otherwise, we should assume all 11 incumbent councilors will seek reelection.

History has shown that the candidate with the most money is not assured of victory in a city council race, but it does help. With that in mind, let’s look at the amount of money each councilor currently has per the state’s Office of Campaign and Political Finance website.

Dan Rourke – $23,761. He began 2024 with $21,556, raised $14,300, and spent $12,095

Rita Mercier – $15,912. She began 2024 with $19,126, raised none, and spent $3,214.

Vesna Nuon – $10,598. He began 2024 with $11,056, raised none, and spent $458.

Kim Scott – $7954. She began 2024 with $8,260, raised none, and spent $306.

John Descoteaux – $7,634. He began 2024 with $7,634, raised none, and spent $1,750.

Wayne Jenness – $4,976. He began 2024 with $6,263, raised none, and spent $1,287.

Corey Robinson – $4,204. He began 2024 with $7,979, raised $550, and spent $4,325.

Corey Belanger – $3,790. He began 2024 with none, raised $3,790, and spent none.

Erik Gitschier – $2,482. He began 2024 with $5,596, raised none, and spent $3,114.

Paul Ratha Yem – $1,640. He began 2024 with $1,515, raised $125, and spent none.

Sokhary Chau – $587. He began 2024 with $44,660, raised $68,905, and spent $112,978 (Chau ran for register of deeds in 2024 which accounts for all this activity).

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Under its “recently organized” page, the OCPF sites lists three new candidates for Lowell City Council:

Sixto DeJesus of Bowden Street created a campaign account on January 22, 2025. (He lives in District 5 / South Lowell, which is now represented by Kim Scott; I believe he is running for that seat.)

Belinda Juran of Mansur Street created a campaign account on January 9, 2025. (She is running for the District 3 / Belvidere seat now held by Corey Belanger).

Ricky Thach of Bertha Street created a campaign account on October 16, 2024. (I’m not sure whether he is running at large or for the District 7 / Acre seat now held by Paul Ratha Yem.

OCPF also shows eight other individuals with Lowell City Council campaign accounts that contain a balance of more than $1,000:

Bobby Tugbiyele – $5,761

Tooch Van – $2,026

John Drinkwater – $1,867

Kevin Broderick – $1,653

Daniel Finn – $1,482

Justin Ford – $1,474

Martin Hogan – $1,188

Jeffrey Thomas – $1,161

A few of these individuals have run for council recently and might run again; others may be maintaining the account just in case they ever decide to run again; and others may have no intention of running but have not formally closed out the account.

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The office of School Committee will also be on the ballot this year. That is an extremely important office that deserves more scrutiny. Candidates for School Committee raise and spend campaign funds, however, they report locally through the city clerk and not with the state’s OCPF, so their finances are not as easily accessible as are those of city councilors.

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This week on richardhowe.com, Paul Marion recalls the Great Northeast Blackout of 1965; Ed DeJesus has a review of Stephen O’Connor’s new book, Pride of the Acre; Jacquelyn Malone has two new poems; Louise Peloquin wrote about a big snowstorm that struck Lowell on January 17, 1925; and I wrote about the day in 1953 that Martin Luther King visited Lowell.