Tito Jackson (born April 11, 1975) is an American politician who was a member of the Boston City Council. He represented council District 7, representing parts of the Roxbury neighborhood and parts of Dorchester, South End, and Fenway.[1]In 2017, he ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Boston against incumbent mayor Marty Walsh. After leaving the Boston City Council, Jackson worked in the cannabis industry. In 2022, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu appointed Jackson to the city's Commission on Black Men and Boys.
Jackson is considered to be a political progressive.
Early life, family, and education
Jackson was born to a teenage mother who had been impregnated in a sexual assault.[2] He was adopted by Rosa and Herb Jackson after months in foster care.[3] Jackson is African American.[4] His adoptive father was a community activist and his adoptive mother ran a home day care.[5] In his activism, Jackson's father supported the election of political candidates of color through voter registration campaigns and applied pressure to construction companies in the city to employ more local workers and minorities. Jackson's father died in 2002.[6] Jackson has credited his adoptive parents' progressive politics for shaping his own progressive politics.[6]
Jackson grew up in the Grove Hall neighborhood of the city.[7] As of 2017, he was living in the same Grove Hall home that he had grown up in. The home is located in the border-area of the larger neighborhood of Roxbury and Dorchester.[note 1] Jackson has identified himself with the Roxbury neighborhood, and his city council district was centered around Roxbury.[12]
Jackson attended Brookline High School and later graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history.[13] At university, Jackson founded a "Black Student Union" group which urged the university to work to diversify the makeup of its student body. Jackson was also elected the student body president.[6] His alma mater granted him an additional honorary degree in 2018.[14]
From 2004 until 2006, Jackson worked as a marketer for the drug manufacturer Alpharma.[15]
In 2007, Jackson served as the industry director for information technology in Governor Deval Patrick’s Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development. Later, Jackson worked as the political director of Governor Patrick's successful 2010 reelection campaign.[16]
Boston City Council
Jackson served on the Boston City Council from 2011 until 2018.
Committee assignements
During his time on the council, he served as the chair of the Committee on Education, and the chair of the Special Committee on the Status of Black and Latino Men and Boys. Councillor Jackson also served as vice chair of the Committee on Healthy Women, Families and Communities. In addition, he was a member of six other Committees: City, Neighborhood Services and Veteran Affairs; Homelessness, Mental Health and Recovery; Housing and Community Development, Jobs, Wages and Workforce Development; Public Safety and Criminal Justice; and together with all other Councillors, the Committee of the Whole.[13]
Unsuccessful 2009 campaign
Jackson's first attempt at running for a seat on the Boston City Council had been unsuccessful. In 2009, Jackson ran as an at-large candidate. He lost in this first attempt at running for elected office by 11,676 votes.[17]
In 2012, after Mayor Thomas Menino opted to veto the City Council's first two proposals for its redistricted map, Jackson made his own proposal amending the previously proposed map. The City Council passed Jackson's map, which was then approved by Mayor Menino.[20][21][22]
2014–2015
Unsuccessful campaign for council president
After being re-elected in November 2013, Jackson sought to secure the support of other councilors to choose him as the next council president. Also angling for the position was Bill Linehan (a conservative councilor) and Matt O'Malley. Both Jackson and O'Malley were considered to be members of the council's liberal wing (which had five returning members, including the two of them). An open agreement existed between O'Malley and Jackson that if one of them faltered in their effort to secure support, they would bow out in favor of the other in order to ensure that one of them could receive the votes of all five returning liberal members.[23] At the same time, Linehan was regarded to be all-but-certain to receive the votes of the six returning council members (including himself) who were not part of the council's liberal wing. This dynamic meant that the council president vote only had two obvious swing-votes, the council's only two newly-elected members: Timothy McCarthy and Michelle Wu.[23]
O'Malley had appeared close to prevailing for a period of time, having secured pledges of support from all returning liberal members (including Jackson), as well a pledge of support from McCarthy.[24] This, however, left him one shy of a majority. Despite being aligned with the council's liberal wing, Wu had not joined the rest of that wing in pledging her support to his candidacy.[25] O'Malley quickly lost ground after McCarthy withdrew his backing from him and instead gave his support to Linehan. This put Linehan in a position to receive the vote of a council majority to make him the next council president. Soon after this, Linehan received Wu's backing as well. Her backing came despite Linehan's and Wu's ideological differences.[24] After O'Malley had failed to cobble together the support of a majority and Linehan had, Jackson attempted again in earnest to secure himself backing, but failed to peel away supporters from Linehan.[25][23] Pressley followed, with Linehan defeating her last-minute candidacy.[25] The Council ultimately elected Linehan as its president by a 8–5 vote, with Linehan defeating a last-hour challenge from Ayanna Pressley.[26]
Proposal for a commission on black men and boys
Jackson and fellow city councilor Ayanna Pressley (far right) attending Jamaica Plain Porchfest in 2015
In 2014, the City Council passed an ordinance by Jackson to create a commission on Black men and boys. Mayor Marty Walsh vetoed the ordinance, arguing that such a commission would, "duplicate and complicate efforts that my administration is already engaged in", and that the ordinance was written in such a way that he believed it would violate the Boston City Charter.[27][28][29] Such a commission would eventually be formed in 2021; with the City Council passing a resolution to form a similar commission that was signed into effect by the acting mayor, Kim Janey, in September 2021.[27][30]
Scrutiny of Boston's Olympic bid
In 2015, Jackson applied pressure to the non-governmental committee behind Boston's bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics for them to release the non-redacted copy of its original bid for the games.[31] After the collapse of Boston's bid for the Olympics, the organization No Boston Olympics (which had opposed the bid) endorsed Jackson and three other incumbent Boston City Council members for re-election, praising them as "demonstrat[ing] leadership by asking tough questions" to the leaders behind Boston's Olympic bid.[32]
Other matters
Jackson partnered with Suffolk County Sheriff Steven W. Tompkins to organize a city council committee hearing at the South Bay House of Correction. The hearing, held in September 2015, focused on soliciting input on strategies to decrease recidivism, and was the first hearing in the history of the Boston City Council to be held in a prison.[33]
Jackson was a prominent opponent of 2016 Massachusetts Question 2,[34][35] which would have authorized an expansion of the number of charter schools in the state. In August 2016, the City Council voted 11–2 to adopt a resolution by Jackson and Matt O'Malley that voiced the council's opposition to the ballot measure.[36]
In January 2017 Jackson announced he would run for Mayor of Boston in the 2017 mayoral election against the incumbent, Marty Walsh.[37] In launching his candidacy, Jackson positioned himself as the "progressive" candidate in the race, and cited issues such as income inequality and housing as being central to his candidacy.[4]
In the nonpartisan primary election held on September 26, 2017, Jackson received 29 percent of the votes to Walsh's 63 percent. Jackson moved onto the general election on November 7, 2017. Only 14 percent of the city's voting population cast votes compared to 31 percent in the previous preliminary mayoral contest.[38]
Jackson focused much of his efforts on aiming to win the city's Black vote.[39]
Jackson lost the general election race with 34 percent of the votes to Walsh's 65 percent.[40]
Post-City Council activities and career
Following his city council tenure, Jackson has been involved in ventures related to legal marijuana sales.[41] Jackson has served as the chief executive of Verdant Medical, a Massachusetts medical and recreational marijuana company.[42] He has also worked as the chief executive officer of the Apex Noire marijuana company.[43]
In the 2021 Boston mayoral election, Jackson endorsed the unsuccessful primary election campaign of Acting Mayor Kim Janey.[45] After Janey was eliminated in the primary, he endorsed the successful general election campaign of Michelle Wu.[46]
On March 16, 2022, Jackson was one of fourteen names put forth by the Boston City Council as nominees serve on the newly-established Boston Commission on Black Men and Boys. Mayor Wu had the authority to select seven of those nominees to appoint to the commission.[47] The commission has 21 members, seven of which are selected by the mayor after being first recommended from the Boston City Council, while the remainder are selected by the mayor independently from a pool of applicants. On May 19, 2022, Mayor Wu announced that she would appoint Jackson to the commission.[48]
In October 2022, Jackson spoke before the Boston City Council in support of a proposal by the City Council to raise the pay of city councilors by 20%. He claimed in his remarks that after his election to the city council, he nearly lost his house to foreclosure.[49] While the amendment was passed by the council, Mayor Wu vetoed it. Wu supported an 11% increase, which had been the recommendation of Boston’s compensation advisory board, but opposed a 20% increase.[50]
^While Grove Hall is considered a neighborhood by the City of Boston,[8] it is not considered as one of the city's "main" neighborhoods. Dorchester and Roxbury are among the city's main neighborhoods (per the accounts of the city government[9][10] and unofficial sources[11]). Hence, why Jackson's residence in the Grove Hall neighborhood would also be considered to also be within either of the aforementioned "main" neighborhoods. Different government agencies and entities disagree as to whether Jackson's home is located in Roxbury or in Dorchester. As of 2017, the city's zoning and planning maps labeled the home as being in Roxbury, while its assessing department listed it as being in Dorchester. The United States Postal Service serves the Grove Hall neighborhood through its Dorchester post office, but had prior to 1967 served it through its Roxbury post office.[12] The question of which neighborhood (Roxbury or Dorchester) Jackson lived in garnered minor attention during his 2017 mayoral campaign, as Roxbury is considered the city's most well-known African American community, while Dorchester is a more white neighborhood from which the incumbent mayor that Jackson was challenging had hailed. At the time, local leaders commented on how the boundary lines between the neighborhoods are not strictly-defined.[12]
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