Daily Pulse: October 8, 2026 (A Hodgepodge of News)

If you follow InsideLowell.com, and by now you should, clearly you do if you're watching this podcast, but we do have a website that is pretty good about putting some news stories out there, especially when it comes to the greater Lowell political scene.

And the last couple of days have proven to be quite busy.

In that regard, you'll recall that a couple of weeks ago, Lowell City Councilor Danny Rourke, the District 1 Pawtucketville neighborhood representative, resigned from the council.

Didn't take long for two big names to jump into the pool.

Ray Booten, who we just told you a little bit about, is his real estate job, but he was also a former school committee member.

at the Greater Lowell Regional Technical High School.

He immediately entered that race, as did former state rep, former city councilor, and former Lowell Mayor Rodney Elliott, who entered the race as well the morning after Danny Roark's surprise announcement.

Well, yesterday we got word that Rodney Elliott has decided against seeking the seat.

He sent a statement out announcing that, you know, with his new job, he's going to be focusing on that.

Now's not the right time.

Statement did leave open the door to a future run in the city, which he had also kind of said on August 24th when he was here on the Daily Pulse.

So we'll see what the future holds in store for Rodney Elliott politically, but it does not hold a run for the District 1 Pawtucketville City Council seat.

Last night, we caught rumblings of another candidate who was interested in running in the race.

And we got a statement late at night last night.

We published it bright and early this morning.

A young man, Zuhair Saeed is his name.

He is going to be running for the District 1 seat.

Saeed sent us a statement to InsideLowell.com late last night.

We've published it this morning and told you a little bit about his background.

He is, I guess, born and raised in the city, Lowell High graduate, class of 2018.

If I remember, he works with the Merrimack Valley Project as a community organizer.

He's a UMass Amherst graduate.

graduate i believe it was like political science and sociology he has a master's degree in public affairs from umass just got that in 2023 young man new face on the scene but he has been very politically active as an organizer and in other campaigns throughout the area here so we welcome him into the race and look forward to welcoming him to the wellpoint studios to introduce him to you and talk a little bit about why he's running get into more detail on that and some of his thoughts on the issues out there in that neighborhood affecting the city and our region as a whole.

So welcome to the race, Zuhair Syed, and we look forward to any other announcements to come.

Tuesday night at the Lowell City Council meeting, the council actually set the date of the special election for February 2nd, so there is still time for people to go pull their nomination papers.

If you follow InsideLowell.com, and by now you should, clearly you do if you're watching this podcast, but we do have a website that is pretty good about putting some news stories out there, especially when it comes to the greater Lowell political scene.

And the last couple of days have proven to be quite busy.

In that regard, you'll recall that a couple of weeks ago, Lowell City Councilor Danny Rourke, the District 1 Pawtucketville neighborhood representative, resigned from the council.

Didn't take long for two big names to jump into the pool.

Ray Booten, who we just told you a little bit about, is his real estate job, but he was also a former school committee member.

at the Greater Lowell Regional Technical High School.

He immediately entered that race, as did former state rep, former city councilor, and former Lowell Mayor Rodney Elliott, who entered the race as well the morning after Danny Roark's surprise announcement.

Well, yesterday we got word that Rodney Elliott has decided against seeking the seat.

He sent a statement out announcing that, you know, with his new job, he's going to be focusing on that.

Now's not the right time.

Statement did leave open the door to a future run in the city, which he had also kind of said on August 24th when he was here on the Daily Pulse.

So we'll see what the future holds in store for Rodney Elliott politically, but it does not hold a run for the District 1 Pawtucketville City Council seat.

Last night, we caught rumblings of another candidate who was interested in running in the race.

And we got a statement late at night last night.

We published it bright and early this morning.

A young man, Zuhair Saeed is his name.

He is going to be running for the District 1 seat.

Saeed sent us a statement to InsideLowell.com late last night.

We've published it this morning and told you a little bit about his background.

He is, I guess, born and raised in the city, Lowell High graduate, class of 2018.

If I remember, he works with the Merrimack Valley Project as a community organizer.

He's a UMass Amherst graduate.

graduate i believe it was like political science and sociology he has a master's degree in public affairs from umass just got that in 2023 young man new face on the scene but he has been very politically active as an organizer and in other campaigns throughout the area here so we welcome him into the race and look forward to welcoming him to the wellpoint studios to introduce him to you and talk a little bit about why he's running get into more detail on that and some of his thoughts on the issues out there in that neighborhood affecting the city and our region as a whole.

So welcome to the race, Zuhair Syed, and we look forward to any other announcements to come.

Tuesday night at the Lowell City Council meeting, the council actually set the date of the special election for February 2nd, so there is still time for people to go pull their nomination papers.