It’s hard to envision Jack Lally as a hard-bitten veteran of the campaign trail. The first-year political science major was recently elected to the Brockton City Council. Though he’s a newcomer to local politics, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t collected some stories from his days knocking on doors and shaking hands.
His favorite thus far? It involves a man who answered his door wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants who stepped out on the porch and asked Mr. Lally how old he was. Hearing “18,” the man glowered and said emphatically, “People under 25 shouldn’t be allowed to speak.” Then he went back inside.
This chilly reception didn’t dampen Mr. Lally’s resolve one bit.
“You want to fix something, you want to change something, this is where you do it,” he said. “And there are things I want to fix.”
He first caught the bug a few years ago while attending Cardinal Spellman High School, and as he got older and read more and talked to people it began to snowball. Once he started learning about politics and participating in mock trails and Model United Nations programs, he began to connect the dots as to why certain things happened and other things didn’t. With the same smiling doggedness Jimmy Steward brought to his depiction of the titular character of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Mr. Lally believes politicians can make a crucial difference in constituents’ quality-of-life issues.
Still, a bit of skepticism is always good, he added.
“My math teacher in high school always said, ‘Numbers don’t lie, but liars use numbers,’” he said.
Recently, he began to notice things around town that he thought could use a little attention: roads that needed paving, a fire station under threat of closing, a local park in need of fixing. These things, and an abiding belief in the political process, stirred him to action.
“I’m pretty sure I’d go crazy if I didn’t get involved,” Mr. Lally said.
In the election, Mr. Lally captured 58 percent of the vote in Ward 6, which he will begin representing in January. The Brockton Enterprise says he’s the youngest person to serve the city in recent memory. His mother was his campaign treasurer, and he held two fundraising events that brought in a total of $2,000. Newspaper photos show him hustling around the city putting out his own blue-and-white “Elect Jack Lally” signs.
In addition to getting things done, Mr. Lally hopes his election inspires other young people to get involved.
“It’s amazing, we have more of an opportunity than any other generation before us, with every way to communicate one could imagine,” he said. He cites a high school senior he spoke to recently who didn’t know that states had capitals. “Youth involvement is always lower, and people get more involved as time goes by. But I feel if they got involved from the start, they could have a larger impact.”
He half-jokingly says he was swept into office on the same wave of support for “outsiders” that has put Donald Trump at the top of GOP presidential polls. On a serious note, he’s heartened to see that many Brocktonians are interested in having a say about how their city is run.
“I’m happy that so many people are concerned about the city,” he said. “Voter turnout isn’t that high, but it’s still a sizable number of people, and they do care. They see issues that they want to see addressed. It’s really encouraging that people still do that.” (Story by John Winters, G ’11, University News & Media)
