“I assessed my chances with my colleagues, and it didn’t look like it was coming to me,” Davis said in an interview yesterday.
Davis said that she thought it was important that the council elect a leader on the first day. In the past several mayoral elections, the council has spent months in deadlock over the selection, with contentious, divisive battles marking the process. In 2000, Galluccio was only elected early in the morning on Feb. 15, six weeks after the council’s voting for mayor began.
In the voting for mayor on Monday, Galluccio—who was the leading vote-getter in November’s city election—was only able to garner two of five council votes necessary to win in his bid for a second term. Marjorie C. Decker also sought the post, winning two votes.
The four who voted against Sullivan later changed their votes to make the election unanimous.
“I’d like to proudly be recorded in favor of my friend Michael A. Sullivan for mayor,” Galluccio said.
Galluccio will be remembered for his consensus-building and, in chairing the School Committee, working to pass the recent plan to integrate Cambridge schools on the basis of families’ economic status, his colleagues said.
“He’s a very inclusive person and he worked hard to further the cause of equity in the schools and I think he did a tremendous amount as mayor,” said former councillor Kathleen L. Born, who worked with Galluccio last term.
But Born said she was excited to see Sullivan at the helm.
“I think Michael was a great choice, and I think that he’s a very practical person, he’s a great listener,” Born said.
Only three times in Cambridge history has the same mayor served two consecutive terms, largely due to the council’s tradition of councillors taking turns serving as mayor.
Sullivan said he spent his first full day as mayor dealing with temporary staffing issues to fill an empty mayor’s office, until he can hire a staff of his own. Galluccio’s five-person mayoral staff lost their city-paid jobs as a result of the change in power.
—Andrew S. Holbrook and Stephanie M. Skier contributed to the reporting of this story.
—Staff writer Lauren R. Dorgan can be reached at dorgan@fas.harvard.edu.