From last to enroll in 2021 to big man on campus in 2025. (via Facebook/Garcia campaign)

HOLYOKE—The LightHouse, an event space that used to be Gateway City Arts, was full. Mayor Joshua Garcia’s late February reelection kickoff attracted a crowd that included luminaries and grandees from not just throughout the region, but across the state. The Lieutenant Governor and State Auditor were there, but most notable was the span of Holyoke politics present from staunch allies to former rivals.

Nearly a month later, Garcia remains the only candidate for mayor of the Paper City. Candidates have until July to pull papers and some officials likely to seek reelection have not done so. Still, there was not much chatter about who might challenge Garcia beyond people who are always rumored but never running. That could leave the late-entrant to the race four years ago with an uncontested race—or virtually so.

“I was the sixth candidate that threw my name in the ring, very last minute. Adam Gomez was my only endorser,” Garcia said in his speech, referring to the Springfield state senator. “I had no endorsements in the primaries. And, you know, we got through the primaries with $9,000. So, not bad!”

Obviously, Garcia has come a long way from then just by virtue of being the incumbent today. Yet, Garcia could be running for reelection without meaningful opposition. That last happened in 2007, when Michael Sullivan won his final two-year term. (Holyoke switched to four-year terms in 2017.)

By contrast, Garcia’s elected predecessor Alex Morse faced an opponent in each of his three reelection bids. Morse defeated an incumbent mayor in 2011, while 2009 and, obviously, 2023 were open races. These contests varied in competitiveness, but Morse ran a real campaign against all three rivals.

Four years ago, Garcia defeated a different Michael Sullivan to become the city’s first leader of Puerto Rican heritage. It was a seminal moment for the city and its Latino community. Though historic, it may have obscured another significant part of Garcia’s background.

On the stump in 2021 before his surprise second place in the preliminary. (WMP&I)

Having largely left electoral politics after a string of local bids, he had gone into professional municipal management. Upon election as mayor, he applied a lot of those experiences from smaller municipalities—the last town he worked for was Blandford—to Holyoke’s chronic issues.

If timing, luck and grit won Garcia the corner office in 2021, his nerdy eagerness for municipal government may have seeded his strong position in 2025. That approach, sober cheer and an accessible uniform of jeans, coat and tie—his sartorial choice at the kickoff—has seemingly won over Holyoke for Garcia.

At the LightHouse, Garcia mentioned investments in city infrastructure, new companies opening and beefed up code enforcement.

“I strongly believe that if we can establish a stronger foundation in our government and how we operate, we can better respond to meet the needs of this community,” he told supporters. “The last three years, that’s exactly what we did.”

The crown jewel of his first term, however, is likely the end of state receivership of city schools.

“I’m thrilled to stand up here and say that we successfully led efforts to end state receivership of our Holyoke Public Schools,” Garcia said. He did not hesitate to share credit with the School Committee and others for restoring local control.

This is not to say that Garcia’s term has became a new golden age for Holyoke. He ably and with appropriate emotion responded to a 2023 shooting that injured a pregnant woman and killed her unborn baby. Still, it was a stark reminder of the city’s public safety challenges relative to its neighbors.

A court rightly reversed Garcia’s attempt to maneuver the then-councilor—and now-Russian propaganda star—Wilmer Puello-Mota out of office following the latter’s arrest for child pornography.

For all the investment in the city, Holyoke’s finances rely heavily on taxes from the Holyoke Mall. What had been mana from heaven in 1979 may became an unreliable source of revenue in an era of brick-and-mortar retail retrenchment.

The Paper City has problems, but they are not dragging down Garcia… yet. (WMP&I)

Nevertheless such challenges and other enduring issues in Holyoke have not swallowed Garcia up, at least not yet. Politics in Holyoke has also shifted in the last two decades. Twenty plus years ago, it was often the Irish versus everyone else. In the Morse years, battle lines were drawn around the misleading—even false—New & Old Holyoke dichotomy.

That New vs. Old was actually a rough code for establishment versus reform—many in the “New” category had roots in the city going back generations. There always was a bit of left-right coding, but that never fit the two camps well. In the Garcia era, it seems far truer. It is hard to imagine an overtly xenophobic mayor in Holyoke, but Garcia’s more welcoming rhetoric about the city as one of immigrants struck a chord in the current moment.

Garcia encounters adverse majorities and supermajorities less often than his predecessors. This is no accident. Garcia and his supporters have prioritized the Council in elections. Indeed, he spotlighted those races in his kickoff speech.

However, many items, especially financial ones, require supermajorities under state law. There are enough conservative critics and poorly calibrated weathervanes on the Council to create bottlenecks.

The politics of governance is not synonymous with electoral politics, though. None other than Garcia’s 2021 general election opponent, once and again Councilor Sullivan, was at the kickoff. It is not hard to imagine many in the room might have preferred Sullivan four years before. Pols that had been on many different battlelines this century came out for Garcia this time. This speaks to Garcia’s political strength, itself a function of recognition that his mayoralty is harder to assail.

Things certainly could change. Opposition to Morse was in large part irrational and it has been decades since a Holyoke mayor has governed with economic conditions as favorable as the ones Garcia has had. As with many cities like Holyoke, the Death Star of federal maladministration hovers overhead.

That sense that the struggle is bigger than the Paper City was on Garcia’s mind, too. He mentioned the city’s allies in the administration of Governor Maura Healey and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll, who attended the kickoff. He also mentioned the regional partnerships, a nod to the many officials from outside Holyoke who were there. Of course, he also noted the work among many across the city.

“We have also the issues around the political climate. We can’t allow the politics, divisive rhetoric to distract us from the progress that we have all in this room have been able to do together,” he said. “The next few years is going to determine the legacy that we leave for future generations, and just like our predecessors, the challenges we face are great, but so are the opportunities.”