Jared Nicholson, a member of the Lynn School Committee, has announced that he will be a candidate for mayor in the 2021 fall election.
Following is Jared Nicholson’s announcement:
“I am excited to announce that I am running for Mayor of Lynn. I’m running to help with the recovery from COVID-19 and to provide leadership for growth that includes all of Lynn.
I would like to thank Mayor McGee for his tremendous record of public service and steadfast leadership. I’m particularly grateful that as Mayor, he has steered us out of deep fiscal trouble, made lasting and strategic infrastructure improvements, and, most of all, guided us through the unprecedented crisis of COVID-19.
Going forward, we need to continue to learn and adapt to beat the pandemic and heal from the pain it has caused us. We must also address the challenges that Lynn faced before COVID-19. We need better jobs, better schools, better housing, and more peace.
These challenges have been aggravated by the pandemic and are magnified by racism and discrimination. We can meet these challenges by turning to Lynn’s amazing strengths: our diversity, our history, our work ethic, and our heart. To tap into Lynn’s strengths and lead effectively, our next Mayor needs vision, experience, and energy.
My record of leadership on the School Committee and in the community working with small businesses shows the experience I would bring to this role. My perspective as a Dad excites me about a vision for Lynn that prepares my young son to go anywhere but inspires him to love it here. My skills as a lawyer and professor trained at Princeton and Harvard Law and my ability to speak Spanish make me ready to step up as a Mayor who’s prepared, open, and inclusive.
It has been an honor to serve on the School Committee over the last six years. I’ve been proud to work on building pathways for students to college and jobs and elevating public education as the foundation on which the city’s future is built.
I’m ready to contribute more as Mayor, to provide leadership for inclusive growth through better schools, better jobs, better housing, and more peace.
• Better schools for Lynn means building new schools, starting with Pickering Middle School. It means supporting the efforts underway to return to school safely and make up for lost learning and social-emotional development.
• Better jobs for Lynn means supporting local entrepreneurs. As a law professor who works with and researches small businesses, I see potential for more growth from our community entrepreneurs. Better jobs also means a recovery that makes up for the unequal impact of the current crisis. It means preparing people for good jobs and bringing more diversity to public jobs so that our agencies can better serve the community. It means improved transportation to get to good jobs and supporting workers who are fighting to make their jobs better.
• Better housing for Lynn means supporting growth that’s inclusive and sustainable. It means protecting renters from bad conditions in the existing housing stock and making space for Lynners in new housing stock. Tenuous housing circumstances can undermine our community. I have seen that firsthand as a former advocate for low-income tenants and we have all seen that during the pandemic.
• More peace for Lynn means addressing underlying mental health and social emotional needs in our community. It means speaking up about the toll of intimate partner violence. It means a comprehensive view of public safety, where we can send the right team with the right skills in the right moments. Crime is traumatic for individual victims and for the whole community. Everyone has a right to peace in their community. Peace is a precondition for opportunity.
Lynn can be a factory of opportunity, where we break down barriers of race and class and make bright futures possible for all of Lynn. That will require us to come together as a community to listen and then act with purpose and with urgency.
I am running for Mayor because I believe I can offer the forward-thinking leadership that the city needs in this moment to recover and grow together. I look forward to a campaign full of conversations about the community’s vision for Lynn’s future.”