The time has come

The earth hasn’t stopped quaking in Lynn since Election Day.

Everyone with an interest inside city hall and many of us who are home owners and property owners here are wondering exactly how the new administration is going to play out.

It is hard to know because many of us don’t really know Judith Flanagan-Kennedy and what her plans are.

What her administration will be is her domain at the present.

Of course, there is the perfunctory matter of the Election Day recount.

By all appearances and speculation, the recount isn’t going to substantially change anything, let alone the final outcome.

I’m not trying to make this a Dewey-Truman thing, you know, how a newspaper announced Dewey had won the 1948 presidential election before the votes were counted because the newspaper was so sure Dewey was going to win – and of course it was Truman who won the election when the votes were counted.

Unless a miracle occurs, Mayor Chip Clancy is history.

As a friend of the mayor’s, it hurts a bit to say it like that but he’s a realist. He understands the possibilities and I think if it was up to him, he would have ditched the recount.

But when you lose by just 27 votes, many of your supporters force you to do that which you might otherwise not do on your own.

The voting system Lynn has is not flawless but it comes as close to being flawless as a voting system can be.

Knowing the mayor, as I do, I don’t believe he’s taking his daily runs expecting any miracles.

The mayor is in a period of reflection right now. He is wondering what he did wrong. What he might have done to forestall or to put off this final, miserable outcome to an otherwise long and successful political career.

The mayor didn’t know it, but his time had come and when you are a politician and your time has come there is nothing that can be done about it.

In Boston, there were some people running around the city believing that Tom Menino’s time had come. Michael Flaherty thought Menino’s time had come.

But Menino’s time hadn’t come – that’s why he won, defeating much younger men who came at him in the belief they could win.

The brilliance of Flanagan-Kennedy’s entry into the mayor’s race as a sticker candidate following Patrick McManus’s death is that she threw her fate to the wind on a wing and a prayer – and it was on that wing and prayer that she won the primary.

Clancy knew he was in big trouble after the primary.

To his credit, he upped the ante, pushing hard to clutch a victory out of the jaws of defeat.

In the end, nothing he could have done would have brought him victory.

His time to lose had arrived.

He is thoughtful these days. He is bothered by the loss, as any of us who have been to the mountaintop would be after falling off the mountaintop.

He’s into the day to day mantra of wondering exactly what he will do after January.

As odd as it may seem, and knowing how much he enjoyed his job, the mayor will look at his new life outside of city hall as the beginning of a new period in his life.

The higher you’ve climbed, the greater the fall.

Never speak of the end of a period, because you are always at the beginning of a new one.

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