A third Boston city councilor has joined the race to replace Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, who is expected to head to Washington, D.C. as President Joe Biden’s secretary of labor.

Councilor Annissa Essaibi-George, a Dorchester resident, has held her at-large seat on the council since 2015.

In her campaign kick-off Thursday morning, held on a snow sidewalk in front of East Boston High School where she once taught, Essaibi-George emphasized her background as a first-generation American – her mother Polish and a refugee, her father an immigrant from Tunisia – a mother of four, former schoolteacher and a business owner. Essaibi-George has run the Stitch House knitting store in Dorchester’s Polish Triangle since 2007.

As of this writing, Essaibi-George’s campaign website did not include a policy platform, but she has become seen as a moderate on a City Council dominated by progressives like fellow mayoral candidates at-large Councilor Michelle Wu and District 4 Councilor Andrea Campbell. In her Thursday speech, she repeated that message.

“I believe in a Boston that has growth and inclusion, justice and safety, wealth and equity. These things are not mutually exclusive. Boston can do this,” she said.

The city’s commercial real estate boom is likely to be a prominent flashpoint in this fall’s elections, with Wu prominent among critics of the large amount of luxury housing built in the city over the last 10 years and many neighborhood activists complaining about gentrification and displacement in the city’s residential heart.

In addition to Wu, Campbell and Essiaibi-George, other city figures are considering runs for mayor, including Boston Police Commissioner William Gross, who announced his resignation Thursday, and Walsh’s economic development chief John Barros, who ran for mayor in 2013.