Photo: WBZ NewsRadio
BROCKTON, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — Moises Rodrigues becomes the city of Brockton’s first black mayor to be elected to office.
On Monday, Rodrigues, an immigrant from Cape Verde, was sworn into office at Brockton’s City Hall and became the city’s 51st mayor.
This comes after a controversial race against his opponent city councilor Jean Bradley Derenoncourt, who recently filed a request to delay Rodrigues’ inauguration on claims of voter interference.
The request from Derenoncourt was ultimately denied by a judge in Plymouth County Superior Court.
Derenoncourt also requested a recount of the election, but once that was done the new results only confirmed that Rodrigues had won, this time by 259 votes compared to the original tally of 260 votes.
Derenoncourt also asked the city to provide surveillance video that he claims would help prove his claims and has requested the city move the legal dispute to a court outside of Plymouth County, that has also been struck down.
When asked about the controversy with his opponent Derenoncourt, Mayor Rodrigues said, “we believe in the election process, and we take the results as it is, if I was on the other side I would’ve congratulated him as he did the night of the election and move forward to whatever the next 2 years, 4 years bring us.”
“You could see the whole chamber was packed with people, very passionate people, people that were looking forward to this and it was a great day for the city,” said Rodrigues.
Speaking on his campaign strategy, Rodrigues said, “the citizens of Brockton or the residents of Brockton, all they want is to live in a peaceful community, so their quality of life is what I ran on, to improve the quality of life for folks in this community and that’s what I’m going to do.”
The new mayor said he has big plans for the city of Brockton, with one of them being to reinstate a former youth advisory council.
“We’re going to recreate, it exists, but it hasn’t been active in quite some time, the youth advisory council so that we can get firsthand knowledge from the kids in the community [of] exactly what we need to do to improve the lives of young people in the community,” said Rodrigues.
WBZ NewsRadio’s Jay Willett (@JayWillettWBZ) reports.
