GREENFIELD — The election field for this November just got a blast from the past with two local political staples.
The city’s first mayor, Christine Forgey, has announced her intentions to run for an at-large seat on the City Council this November.
Dan Guin, the city’s first council president, is also entering the race as he plans to run for the open Precinct 2 seat.
Monday afternoon, Forgey and Guin happened to walk into the City Clerk’s office at the same time to pull papers and begin their respective campaigns.
“It just feels right at this time,” Forgey said at the clerk’s office when taking out election papers. “It’s an opportunity to become involved in a groundswell of change that’s happening in this community.”
The two candidates enter a field that has not yet filled out but is beginning to take shape.
“People keep asking me when I’m coming back,” Guin said. “I think it’s a good time.”
The mayoral race, to replace William Martin, features three candidates to date: Precinct 3 Councilor Brickett Allis, Precinct 6 Councilor Sheila Gilmour and former Planning Board Chairwoman Roxann Wedegartner. The race will go to a primary in September.
Martin is not seeking re-election.
On the council side, six seats will be up for grabs.
While Forgey and Guin will offer leadership from years past, the council will lose at least four of its multi-term local legislators.
City Council President Karen “Rudy” Renaud officially will not be running for re-election. Neither will be At-Large Councilor Isaac Mass.
The two councilors, in what amounted to effectively a lame-duck period for them, brokered the library-zoning deal that was deemed a compromise to fix age-old divides. After much politicking, that deal hangs in the balance and up for a potential citywide vote.
Allis, a councilor for 19 years, is not expected to run for his Precinct 3 seat as he focuses on his mayoral campaign. His campaign manager, Wanda Pyfrom, the Precinct 4 councilor, is also not running for re-election.
Precinct 1 will be contested as its current councilor, Verne Sund seeks re-election. Former Greenfield Fire Deputy Chief Ed Jarvis is also running for the seat.
While Guin is the only candidate to have declared for the Precinct 2 seat, he is likely to have competition.
Current Precinct 2 Councilor Mark Berson has said he would consider running for the seat but has not taken out papers yet.
Berson was appointed in January following the departure of John Lobik, who left for health reasons. Berson’s nomination was viewed as a crucial swing vote on the library vote although councilors appointing him sought to remove politics from the appointment.
He was selected among a group of five candidates. Berson boasted expertise with the city’s charter, which he helped to draft.
A committee of five councilors made the recommendation for Berson as a compromise pick. Three of the councilors preferred Rachel Gordon, the co-director of NELCWIT, but chose Berson as an effort to remove politics from the pick.
Gordon was encouraged to run for the seat this November.
Guin was seen by some as a natural front-runner for the one-year council seat, given he was the lone candidate with experience on the council.
Guin, who is the director of WHAI radio in Greenfield, said at the January interview a councilor should be “socially conscious and satisfy that, but we also want to be fiscally responsible.”
He underwhelmed a couple of the progressive councilors on the committee, who favored Gordon.
“It got people talking to me again,” Guin said Monday. “They liked when I was a councilor and they look forward to me coming back.”
Originally serving as a Precinct 7 councilor before shifting over to an at-large seat for three terms, Guin was the original president of the Town Council.
When Guin was the first president of the council, Forgey became the first mayor of Greenfield. Together, they formed some of the precedent for city governance we have today.
At the March library vote, Forgey spoke publicly in a rare appearance. Vocalizing her support for the controversial project, she said to the council: “You have a chance to put it to rest in compromise, which is a very healing process. It’s not often done in government.”
When speaking before a packed Greenfield High School cafeteria, Forgey also commented on the general state of the city’s politics.
“Myself, Mayor Martin, we’re transitions mayors,” Forgey said in March. “The next election that’s coming up is really about setting up the tone in the future for what mayoral government will look like and what leadership will look like in this community.”
For two at-large seats, three residents have thrown their names into the hat.
Alongside Forgey, Jim Henry, a former town councilor and school committee member is also running for an at-large seat.
Philip Elmer, a former reporter for Time and Fortune and longtime blogger on Apple, took out papers for at-large as well, Monday. Elmer moved to Greenfield in 2014.
You can reach Joshua Solomon at:
jsolomon@recorder.com
413-772-0261, ext. 264