Who were the winners and losers (besides the candidates)? 

WHO WON AND who lost yesterday? Of course, there are the candidates who put themselves and their ideas out there for voters. They all were winners for democracy, though the hard reality of election results will brand some winners and others losers. But beyond the candidates, every election brings another set of winners and losers. These are the people whose actions in the run-up to the election meant they, too, had a lot riding on its outcome. Here’s a quick look at some winners and losers whose names weren’t on any ballot. 

WINNERS 

After the results reporting debacle in the Boston mayoral preliminary, activists decided to take matters into their own hands. Enter Matt McCloskey from West Roxbury, who lined up volunteers to report results from every precinct in the city and organized them into a Google Sheet. The Open Elections Results Portal left the Associated Press in the dust, with precinct-level results posted and updated continually starting soon after polls closed at 8 pm. It also enabled others like The MassINC Polling Group and Rivera Consulting to build maps and models, respectively, off the data. 

Early passengers on the Wu train must be blowing its whistle today, including City Councilor Lydia Edwards, Suffolk County Sheriff Steve Tompkins, and state Reps. Aaron Michlewitz and Mike Moran. Now Michlewitz and Moran have the harder task of negotiating Wu’s agenda, much of which requires sign-off from Beacon Hill.

Former congressman Michael Capuano and current Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley locked horns in their race three years ago — but they agreed on a winning candidate in the race to succeed outgoing Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone: City Councilor Katjana Ballantyne, who cruised to victory over fellow City Councilor Will Mbah. 

Thomas McGee opted not to seek reelection as mayor in Lynn — but he backed the winning candidate to take his spot, Jared Nicholson. 

Diversity. On a night that saw historic gains for people of color nationwide, Asian-American Michelle Wu became Boston’s first non-white elected mayor. Holyoke got its first Latino mayor in Joshua Garcia, Northampton elected an African-American woman and man to City Council while Delmarina Lopez became the first person of color to sit on the Chicopee City Council. Worcester city councilor-elect Thu Nguyen, who is of Vietnamese descent, became the first non-binary person ever elected in Massachusetts. In its first election since changing the voting system in response to a lawsuit by minority groups, Lowell elected six people of color to the school committee and city council.

Rivera Consulting. Boston finally got a taste of what a campaign’s internal vote tally looks like, with a nifty (and public) tracker from the wizards at the Boston-based political consulting firm. Far from relying on raw vote counts without context, the spreadsheet showed what Wu and Essaibi George would need in each precinct to remain competitive based on where they were expected to do well. National elections have had this for a while. This was a first for Boston.   

Pollsters. Four polls, including one from MassINC Polling Group, were released after the Boston mayoral preliminary election, showing winning margins for Michelle Wu of between 25 and 32 points. With the Boston Elections Department showing an unofficial margin of 28 points, the polls were right on (if we do say so ourselves). They also showed the shape of Wu’s coalition, and brought early attention to ways Boston’s politics had changed, well before votes were cast.

Former mayor Ray Flynn can pop the champagne, Miami Dolphins-style, because he retains the record for the highest vote total in a modern Boston mayoral election (“modern” meaning after the city’s population cratered in the 1960s and 70s). As Ari Ofsevit points out on Twitter, Wu’s 91,000 votes is the most since Flynn racked up nearly 130,000 in 1983.  

METZA METZA

Gov. Charlie Baker wasn’t exactly a winner or a loser, landing somewhere in between. He raises most of the money for the Massachusetts Majority super PAC, which spent nearly $260,000 on candidates in 19 municipal races, according to its latest report. Of the 19, 13 won and six lost. Two of the losers were former or current Republican legislators running for mayoral positions — Donald Humason in Westfield and James Kelcourse in Amesbury

Baker is weighing whether to run for the third term, and now he needs to contend with an energetic new Boston mayor, with a landslide mandate, who wants to make big changes to the MBTA. Transportation advocates have long sniped at Baker for neglecting transportation, and now they have a prominent voice in the mayor’s office to push their agenda forward. The bromance Baker enjoyed with former mayor Marty Walsh may be gone, but keep in mind Wu needs Baker’s help to get many of her big agenda items through Beacon Hill. So Wu will have to find common ground, one way or another, with the man in the corner office.

LOSERS 

The two similar sounding super PACs that dumped nearly $2 million into the Boston mayor’s race on behalf of Annissa Essaibi George, with a chunk of it devoted to unfounded attacks on Michelle Wu. The biggest losers: New Balance’s Jim Davis, who poured more than $1 million into the losing cause, and former Boston police commissioner William Gross, the face of the effort in TV and newspaper ads.

The Associated Press: Their election night vote count in the Boston mayor’s race lagged so far behind as to be irrelevant. The crowd-sourced count was the one drawing attention from election night watchers. The campaigns also had data well ahead of the AP, conceding defeat and declaring victory well ahead of the AP’s official declaration. 

Former mayor Marty Walsh. Walsh famously stepped on Michelle Wu’s campaign announcement last year before being tapped to serve in the Biden cabinet. Wu might have gotten a measure of payback by winning Walsh’s home precinct in the Lower Mills section of Dorchester. Walsh did not endorse either candidate in the race, but fellow Dorchester resident Annissa Essaibi George was widely seen as closer to the Walsh orbit, and Walsh’s mother appeared with Essaibi George at her Savin HIll polling place yesterday.

“We have real serious concerns about Michelle Wu,” Michael Ross, a former Boston city councilor now practicing real estate law, told Globe columnist Shirley Leung before the September preliminary, giving voice to a view among some business types that Wu would crush the city’s development boom. The mayor-elect may have serious concerns now about any projects Ross is trying to fast-track through City Hall. 

Rev. Eugene Rivers lobbed a last-minute grenade at Michelle Wu, issuing a press release over the weekend leveling a wildly untethered charge of racially discriminatory lending practices against Wu’s husband, whose name he misspelled, and the bank where he works, and demanding that Wu denounce the practice or withdraw from the race.