Five Minus One: Bonura Drops Out

-By Seth Daniel

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JOANNE BONURA

The crowded Ward 5 race has thinned out a little this week as challenger Joanne Bonura backed out of the race on Tuesday despite collecting her signatures and taking out her papers.

Bonura – who lives in the Jack Satter House – cited health/energy issues and funding issues as her main reasons for dropping out. She specified those things in a letter sent out to the media on Tuesday morning.

Health issues surfaced during a recent routine checkup which forced me to re-analyze and focus on the question of a possible lack of the adequate energy factor required to conduct an intense campaign of personal meetings and visits in every neighborhood within the Ward,” she wrote. “My analysis concluded that it would be unfair to begin the campaign and then not be able to properly finish the work needed to get the job done. In order to win I needed to reach every voter in the Ward and until recently I believed that I could do it. The health issue forced me to face the reality that I might not be able to accomplish the task after all.”

Bonura also elaborated about the fact that she did not have the proper funding to run the kind of campaign that she believed necessary.

“It is expected, and rightly so, that each candidate should fund any costs to flourish fund raising for their campaign,” she wrote. “Today’s media madness demands some seed funds for direct communication to the voting public. Unfortunately this is an important part of public office in our times. I was unable to capture the personal necessary financial foundation for funding my campaign and this factor added to questionable lack of adequate energy to conduct intense neighborhood campaigning within the ward brought me to the decision to withdraw.”

She indicated that she had already gathered more than 102 signatures on her campaign nomination papers, more than enough to get her on the ballot.

Bonura emerged as an interested party last summer when Renzo’s Brick Oven Pizzeria on the Beach clashed with neighbors in a quality of life and parking dispute.

Current Ward 5 Councillor John Powers took a position in favor of Renzo’s and it sparked quite a backlash from some residents, who were led by Bonura. From there, she positioned herself as a voice for those in Ward 5 who live on Revere Beach.

With her withdrawal, the field of candidates comes down to sitting Councillor John Powers and challenger Frank Sabbio, also a Jack Satter House resident.