Published in the January 12, 2018 edition
While we congratulate Gail Infurna on her selection as aldermanic president and, by City Charter provision, the first woman to serve as Melrose mayor, we also want to praise Alderman-at-Large Mike Zwirko for the class he showed in defeat.
Back at the beginning of December, when an annual straw vote was taken to choose the next president of the Board of Aldermen, Zwirko was unanimously selected by his peers to handle the often tedious tasks of the post. In short, no one wanted the job and no one had any interest in it except Zwirko, who in November was reelected to a second two-year term, the top vote-getter among those running for alderman.
Then Mayor Rob Dolan was named one of two finalists for the top municipal professional spot in Lynnfield, and the landscape changed drastically.
The jockeying started immediately, and Zwirko’s short time on the board seems to have worked against him.
What will work for him, however, is how he behaved in defeat.
After it became clear Monday night that he had lost in his bid to become the next aldermanic president, Zwirko successfully urged his supporters — Scott Forbes, Peter Mortimer and Manisha Gadia Bewtra — to join with the others to unanimously back Infurna for the job.
He might have looked like he just got run over by a truck, but Zwirko acted like a champion and we hope people remember that two years from now.
