With Boston’s 2025 municipal election just eight months away, the field for district and at-large city council seats has recently grown. Current and former City Hall staffers, non-profit leaders, and Armed Service members are among those throwing their hats in the proverbial political ring in hopes of securing one of thirteen seats up for grabs later this year.
Said Abdikarim, a nonprofit leader who ran for at-large councilor in 2021, announced in Oct. 2024 that he would challenge District 7 City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson. Although his announcement came before Fernandes Anderson was indicted on federal public corruption charges, Abdikarim reiterates his belief in transparent and accountable leadership.
“If I get the opportunity to serve the residents and [my] community, I’m going to have my office located in the heart of [the district],” Abdikarim said in an interview with The Beacon. “I want to be very accountable for what we do in District 7.”
An immigrant who fled a civil war in Somalia, Abdikarim hopes to leverage the power of serving as a city councilor to protect Boston’s immigrant community.
“The residents of District 7 deserve to be treated with dignity and humanity,” Abdikarim said. “I will do everything in my power to advocate for families that are being mistreated, to make sure they’re protected and they have the resources they need.”
Abdikarim hopes to increase homeownership opportunities, make public education more equitable, and improve green community spaces for residents.
“I’m very big on social justice,” Abdikarim said. “As a kid, spending time at the park, the playground, and the Toby Community Center in Roxbury or Madison Community Center, playing basketball [gave me] an opportunity to feel happy [amidst] the trauma that I experienced.”
Marvin Mathelier, a Marine reservist and Jamaica Plain small business owner vying for an at-large seat on the council, hopes to institute remedial ethics training for councilors.
“In the Marine Corps, we have remedial training on what you can and cannot do, what’s ethical and what’s not ethical,” Mathelier said in an interview with The Beacon, “to ensure that [the council is] doing things the right way.”
As a person of color raising a family in the city of Boston, Mathelier hopes to improve community-police relations by improving conversations and initiating dialogue.
“We have to ensure that law enforcement professionals are doing things the right way when it comes to serving our community,” he said. “We [also] need to ensure that there is a proper relationship between our community and law enforcement agents.”
Alexandra Valdez, executive director of Boston’s Office of Cultural Affairs running for city councilor at-large, says her record working for the city is marked by ethical leadership.
“I am a huge believer that you need to be able to work with your heart, but most of all, work with integrity,” Valdez said in an interview with The Beacon. “That’s something that I always carry out to the rest of my team, to make sure that we are abiding by regulations and rules and coming together as our best selves.”
Like Valdez, each candidate would bring their past experiences into their work as a councilor. Valdez hopes to use her experience in navigating city services and creating policies as an at-large member of the city council.
“Being able to navigate so many [city] departments has taught me the importance of having a voice and speaking up for others,” she said. “Having the chance to do this [as a city councilor] is a different way to support my community with a [larger] platform.”
Valdez discussed how important community voices are to decision-making. She described how she hopes to have “bolder” conversations with students and key stakeholders throughout the city to make it more accessible and affordable.
“At the end of the day, our students are our residents,” she said. “They live in our city, contribute to our city, and it is so important to make sure that we are capturing the student perspective.”
Through these conversations, Valdez hopes to increase the availability of affordable pathways for students: “The point is to make sure, one, that you are civically engaged, two, that your voice is heard, but also three, that you stay in the city and you look to make Boston your home,” she said.
In 2011, Boston adopted a revised Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) program, whereby certain institutions, including many area colleges including Emerson, would voluntarily pay the city a predetermined sum to maintain their tax-exempt status. Mathelier hopes to optimize the PILOT program by pushing these institutions to pay their full voluntary obligations to ensure students are not “priced out” of the city.
“That money will go to community-based initiatives and will help support the city,” he said. “[These funds would] go towards other initiatives where we could be able to keep our graduates [in the city.]”
For years, Abdikarim has been known as “the orange shirt man.” When he immigrated to Boston as a nine-year-old boy, the first piece of clothing Abdikarim received was an orange shirt.
“I came here a young boy and I felt like Boston and [my] community clothed me,” Abdikarim said. “To this day, I wear [orange] every single day [as a reminder] to continue to fight for the people, because that shirt represented opportunities, resources, and things we never had.”
