Jean Sullivan McKeigue

On March 19, 1979, McKeigue announced her candidacy for the Boston School Committee. Her sister, Kathleen Sullivan Alioto, had been the top vote getter in the previous two elections, but chose not to run for reelection.^[4] She received the fourth most votes in an election where the top five candidates were elected.^[5] She and John D. O'Bryant were seen as the committee's liberal wing and opposed the removal of superintendent Robert Coldwell Wood.^[6][7] After Wood was ousted, McKeigue led the search committee that chose his successor, Robert R. Spillane and was his lead supporter for reappointment.^[2] In 1981, she was a candidate for school board president, but lost to O'Bryant on a 3 to 2 vote. She was instead elected vice-president.^[6]

She ran for re-election in 1981 and received the second most votes.^[8] On January 4, 1982, McKeigue was elected committee president on a 3 to 2 vote.^[9]

Rather than run for a third term, McKeigue was an at-large candidate in the 1983 Boston City Council election. She finished in sixth-place in a race where the top four vote-getters were seated on the council.^[10]

After leaving the school committee, McKeigue was a regional representative and corporate relations specialist for the National Alliance of Business. From 1988 to 2003, she was Boston College's director of community affairs. She was the school's chief liaison with municipal governments and civic groups.^[11] In 2004, she was diagnosed with mantle cell lymphoma. She died on February 4, 2022, at her home in Lake Worth, Florida.^[2]