It may be hard to wake Holyoke up from its sleepy election cycle this year. (created via Wikipedia images)

After eight heated municipal election cycles—three quarters of which featured mayoral races—the ballot will be cooler this year in Holyoke. Mayor Joshua Garcia will face no opposition on the ballot as he seeks another four-year term. There will be races down ballot, but even accounting for the lack of energy a mayoral race would draw, the Paper City may have its quietest November in nearly 20 years.

Garcia is the first mayoral candidate to face no opposition since former Michael Sullivan sought his last term in 2007. The city switched over to four-year terms in 2017, leaving with just School Committee and City Council on the ballot between mayoral contests. However, in this mayoral year, much of the School Committee and most of the ward seats on the Council will have no contest.

That nobody challenged Garcia, the city’s first Latino mayor, is not a shock. His term has had challenges, but an opponent would likely struggle against his cheery municipal nerdiness. What opposition exists spits far less fire than in past years. The number of races with only one candidate is more notable.

City Clerk Brenna Murphy Leary, who is herself up this year but faces no opposition, announced the ballot on July 30. Her release notes that only two contests—Ward 1 City Council and Ward 5 School Committee—will require a preliminary.

The preliminary will occur in those two wards for those specific offices only. Incumbent Ward 1 City Councilor Jenny Rivera faces Victor Machado and Jose Candelario. Ward 5 School Committee member John Whelihan is not seeking reelection. Running in that preliminary are Jens Michaelsen, James Alan Rossmeisl, and Aida Luz Oquendo.

Holyoke will hold the prelim on September 16. The two candidates with the most votes will advance to November.

Things are not much hotter for general on November 4. Other than the contest for Whelihan’s seat, all incumbents on the School Committee are running unopposed, save for Ward 6 which has only one candidate. That candidate is communication professional Patrick Beaudry. A Millennial fixture of Holyoke politics, Beaudry ran for state rep in 2020. His appearance on a municipal ballot had long been the subject of speculation among Paper City political gossipers.

The stability on the Committee’s ballot this year is in some contrast to the previous term itself. No fewer than three Committee members left the body during a critical time period as the state had begun handing control back after a decade of receivership.

Holyoke’s Council/School Committee caucus elected more new Committee members over the last term than voters will this November. (via Holyoke Media)

All three replacements—which a caucus of the City Council and the rump of the Committee chose—have no opponents on the ballot. This includes at-large Committee member Devin Sheehan. He is running in a nominal special election alongside the regularly-scheduled at-large Committee election.

The seat Sheehan filled had belonged to Erin Brunelle who had just won a new four-year term in 2023. Per the city charter, at the next municipal election, Holyoke must hold a special for the term’s last two years. The only candidate on the ballot for the four-year term is Mildred Lefebvre. She succeeded Sheehan when he ran for mayor in 2021.

Of the ward Committee members appointed to fill vacancies, Gladys Lebron returns to the ballot after declining to run for reelection to Ward 1’s City Council in 2021. The appointed member, Orlando Isaza of Ward 4, had not held elective office in the city before.

On the City Council, all six at-large incumbents are seeking reelection. Three challengers, Christopher Dunay, Jennifer Keitt and Mimi Panitch, are on the ballot, too. As is the case in most Massachusetts at-large Council seats, this race is essentially a multi-member contest in a citywide constituency. The math makes successful challenges generally quite daunting—although incumbents have lost in Holyoke’s last two cycles.

Beyond the survivors in Ward 1’s preliminary, the only Council ward contests will be in Wards 3 and 4. Ward 3 Councilor David Bartley will again face Anne Thalheimer, who has challenged him every cycle since 2017. Ward 4 City Councilor Kocayne Givner is retiring. Per the Clerk’s release, Richard Purcell and Peter Diaz, Jr. are running to succeed her.