Experience of losing in 2019 fueled McCabe’s 2021 mayoral victory

Jan. 5, 2022 | Peter Currier
peter@thewestfieldnewsgroup.com

WESTFIELD – Newly inaugurated Mayor Michael McCabe said that a more experienced campaign team and a better understanding of the election process helped him prevail in the 2021 Westfield mayoral election.

McCabe said that when he lost the 2019 election to then-state Sen. Donald Humason Jr., He didn’t know that he would make another run just two years later. The decision to do so did come relatively soon afterwards, however.

Humason had served barely two months of his mayoral term before the COVID-19 pandemic rewrote the agenda. McCabe, then serving as a captain in the Westfield Police Department, reached the conclusion that he would have been the better person to lead the city through the pandemic, and had privately made the decision that he would run again in March 2020. McCabe said one of his main criticisms of Humason’s administration was how he responded to the pandemic.

“My response to the COVID pandemic would have been markedly different,” said McCabe, a point he made several times over the course of his campaign. “It became pretty clear to me, especially surrounding COVID and budget management, that I believed my skill set was uniquely better than his.”

McCabe knew he would soon be retiring from the police force, and felt that he still had something to offer to the city.

McCabe’s odds the second time around against Humason were never far-fetched. In 2019 he had lost by fewer than 100 votes, a relatively easy hill to overcome in the context of Westfield’s average voter turnout. To overcome it, however, he would need to mitigate the rookie mistakes he made the first time around, especially when going up against someone who has been in politics for decades and had never lost an election to that point.

“I didn’t really understand how to run an election campaign,” said McCabe of his 2019 run.
He said of his first run that he had little in the way of campaign funds to work with, no real team with the knowledge to run a campaign, and hadn’t hired a campaign manager until two months after he announced his candidacy. Though his efforts in 2019 did not win him that election, he said that they ended up being the backbone of his 2021 run.

The major differences in his campaigns: he announced his candidacy earlier in the process, had funds to work with from the previous election, he retained his campaign manager, Amy Tosi, who now had more experience, and now had a full team of people working on his campaign. He said that having a full team and more time helped him reach more people before votes were cast.

“I didn’t campaign in Ward 5 in 2019 simply because I ran out of time,” said McCabe, adding that he lost Ward 5 by enough votes to cost him the entire election.

Regardless of how he felt about Humason as mayor, McCabe said that there is no animosity between the two.

“We don't see eye-to-eye on some things, but we do see eye-to-eye on many things,” said McCabe.

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