Tito Jackson (politician)

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. 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 young teenager who had been sexually assaulted. He was adopted by Rosa and Herb Jackson after months in foster care. Jackson is African American. His adoptive father was a community activist and his adoptive mother ran a home day care. 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. Jackson has credited his adoptive parents' progressive politics for shaping his own progressive politics.

Jackson grew up in the Grove Hall neighborhood. 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 Roxbury and Dorchester community areas. Jackson has identified himself with the Roxbury neighborhood, and his city council district was centered around Roxbury.

Jackson attended Brookline High School and later graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history. 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. His alma mater granted him an additional honorary degree in 2018.

In 2018, Jackson reunited with his biological mother. His biological mother is one of the subjects of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Common Ground by J. Anthony Lukas, which focused on desegregation busing in Boston.

Early career
From 2004 until 2006, Jackson worked as a marketer for the drug manufacturer Alpharma.

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.

Boston City Council


In the Boston City Council election of 2009, Jackson ran as an at-large candidate. He lost in this first attempt at running for elected office by 11,676 votes.

Jackson ran in the 2011 special election for the 7th district Boston City Council seat to succeed Chuck Turner, who had been expelled from the City Council after a public corruption investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Jackson finished first out of seven candidates in the nonpartisan primary election and defeated Cornell Mills, the son of former State Senator Dianne Wilkerson, 82 percent to 16 percent in the general election.

Councillor Jackson was 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 the 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.

In 2012, after Mayor Thomas Menino vetoed 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.

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. 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.



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. 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.

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.

Jackson was a prominent opponent of 2016 Massachusetts Question 2, 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.

2017 mayoral campaign


In January 2017 Jackson announced he would run for Mayor of Boston in the 2017 mayoral election against the incumbent, Marty Walsh. 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.

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.

Jackson focused much of his efforts on aiming to win the city's Black vote.

Jackson lost the general election race with 34 percent of the votes to Walsh's 65 percent.

Post-City Council activities and career
Following his city council tenure, Jackson has been involved in ventures related to legal marijuana sales. Jackson has served as the chief executive of Verdant Medical, a Massachusetts medical and recreational marijuana company. He has also worked as the chief executive officer of the Apex Noire marijuana company.



Jackson tested positive for COVID-19 in March 2020, early into the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States

In the 2021 Boston mayoral election, Jackson endorsed the unsuccessful primary election campaign of Acting Mayor Kim Janey. After Janey was eliminated in the primary, he endorsed the successful general election campaign of Michelle Wu.

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. 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.

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. 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.

City Council
† write-in votes

† write-in votes