THIS and THAT: Tony Cabral is running for Mayor of New Bedford

quarta-feira, 5 de outubro de 2011

Tony Cabral is running for Mayor of New Bedford

Antonio F. D. Cabral (Tony Cabral) is a Massachusetts State Representative from the Democratic Party. In June he announced that he was running for Mayor of the city of New Bedford (The Whaling City). Mr. Cabral will remain as state representative during the campaign, but will resign his seat if elected Mayor on 8^th November 2011.

Tony Cabral won the primary elections on 4th October (elections in the USA are always held on a Tuesday) and now the mayoral race will be between Tony Cabral and Jon Mitchell.

He was born in the island of Pico, Azores. The Cabral family immigrated to the USA when he was 14 years old. At that time Tony didn´t even speak English but he was very determined to succeed. After graduating from the Bristol Community College, Southeastern Massachusetts University (now UMass Dartmouth) and Brown University, he began his career as a public school teacher.

Cabral was elected for the first time to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1990. In the last two decades he has been successfully re-elected in an area of New Bedford City, where its inhabitants are mainly Portuguese descendants.

As a State Representative, he always cared for matters related to education, passing anti-bullying legislation, securing education funds for New Bedford, and strengthening registration requirements for sex offenders, among many other projects.

Throughout the primary campaign, Cabral mainly focused on his own experience, choosing not to criticize his opponents. Asked by Dan McDonald from SouthcoastToday if that would change, Cabral said, “I’ve always ran positive campaigns, I’ve really believed in ... staying with the issues and debating the issues. I’m going to continue to get my message across.”