When it comes to Boston politics, the more things stay the same, the more they stay the same.
That’s especially true in District 4, where the inertia of incumbency is Andrea Campbell’s biggest hurdle as she tries to unseat Councilor Charles Yancey, who has held the seat for 32 years — about as long as Campbell has been alive. When I caught up with her on a recent sweltering day, she was trying to overcome the power of longevity with legwork, knocking on doors on Kingsdale Street, in Dorchester.
A door opened just as she reached it. Raul Felipe emerged, recognized her, lit up. Campbell’s campaign flyer had arrived a few days earlier. It leans heavily on her remarkable biography: a Roxbury and Mattapan childhood beset by social and economic ills; family members lost to incarceration and early death (her twin brother died in pre-trial detention); her miraculous escape through Boston Latin, Princeton, and UCLA law school.
“I was gonna vote for you anyways,” Felipe said. “We’re all gonna vote for you. Your story resonated with us.”
On nearby Nightingale Street, senior Geneva Hagood wasn’t concerned with the backstory. She wanted to know if Campbell would “stop these people flying up and down the street when there’s children playing.” She also took a dim view of Yancey.
“I haven’t seen Charles Yancey,” Hagood said. “I hear a lot of things supposedly he does, but you need to come to the community.” After meeting her, Hagood said she was leaning toward Campbell.
“At least she walked up our street,” she said.
Though she takes pains to say her campaign is about what she wants to do, and not about Yancey and what he hasn’t done, Campbell’s message on this day was clear: It was time for somebody new, more accessible. Here’s my cell number, she told everyone.
“When do you mobilize the next generation?” she told Travis Thompson and his family, who sat in the shade behind an apartment building. “We’re out there every day. We are all about this idea that it’s time for change.”
“I am 33, young and fabulous,” she joked.
It was a good afternoon for Campbell, who is warm and playful on the trail, managing to make her pitch even to those who weren’t interested at first. Though a few people listened with polite forbearance, most embraced her.
“In the past I voted for Yancey,” said Thompson, a grandfather who works in a nearby auto shop. “He’s been there too long. It’s time to get somebody fresh with new ideas.”
Campbell needs just 4,000 more like Thompson to win. It’s a deplorably low bar: Turnout here is among the lowest in the city, especially in an off-year, with no state or mayoral election to bring voters out. In 2011, also an off-year, Yancey won with 3,893 votes (about 30,000 voters are registered). When enthusiasm is low, unions like SEIU 1199 make a huge difference in pulling out votes. And 1199 has endorsed Yancey. Where some of us see a grandstanding blowhard, the health care workers see a loyal advocate who shows up on picket lines and takes public stands for their rights.
Campbell is trying to overcome that advantage with some strong backing — from Emily’s List, and donors from the large network she’s built up from Latin, Princeton, the legal community, and the administration of Deval Patrick, where she was a deputy legal counsel. She has raised way more money than Yancey — $100,000 — almost unheard of for a first-time district candidate. (“This district is not for sale,” sniped Yancey, implying that the progressive Campbell, who could not be more wedded to the community, is some interloper backed by outside, moneyed interests.)
She’s formidable — and she’ll be even more so if she makes it past the primary and gets a firmer grip on the district’s issues. It still might not be enough to overcome Yancey’s strengths: Inertia, political apathy, the fervor of a supportive sliver of the electorate.
Spending time with Campbell makes you feel optimistic about the future: Here is a woman of color in a political landscape that remains decidedly white and male, a woman who beat incredibly long, and depressingly common, odds. Here is a smart, engaging candidate who remains utterly invested in the community, with an unmatched, firsthand knowledge of much that ails us.
In a more active district and year, she’d be a sure thing. But unless she pulls off something spectacular, the future in District 4 will have to wait.
Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at yvonne.abraham@globe.com.