It was back in 1949 when the legendary and most notorious of Boston mayors, James Michael Curley, was turned out of office by the electorate and a challenger named John Hynes. Hynes had a little help—Curley had spent much of his term as Mayor in a federal prison, while Hynes filled in as acting mayor. Hynes’ situation was good enough to get him elected. and eventually have a convention center named after him, which is pretty much the only reason anyone ever speaks his name.
Sixty years have passed, and no one else has been able to repeat Hynes’ feat of knocking off a Mayor running for re-election in this City. Boston mayors retire or go to the Vatican or in the case of the current incumbent they attract the moniker “Mayor for Life.”
It’s a riddle that a city with a historical reputation for rebellious sons of liberty as boisterous as the Drop Kick Murphys should go on autopilot at election time and pull the voting lever for the incumbent with the repetitiveness of someone playing the quarter slots at Foxwoods.
Tom Menino has had good fortune in each of his last three—can we call them “races” for re-election. Elevated into the office by the decision of Ray Flynn to become Ambassador to the Vatican, Menino used incumbent advantage as “acting mayor” to get himself elected in 1993. In his very first run for re-election four years later, in 1997, he was actually unopposed. To his continuing good fortune in 2001 and 2005 turnout was small, the media was inattentive—as the city’s daily newspapers, especially the suburban-turning Boston Globe, and tv news stations lost interest in covering City Hall and the City itself—and the candidates who bravely ventured forth were so strapped by their inability to raise money that one of them, Maura Hennigan, even resorted to mortgaging her own home. These are the typical incumbent advantages and Menino maximized them by studiously avoiding both debates and his opponents, making the races even more lackluster and unattractive to news outfits.
A poll by the Globe last year indicated that more than half the city’s residents say they’ve met the Mayor. Like the former Mayor of Providence, Buddy Cianci, who famously said he’d even attend the opening of an envelope, Tom Menino has kept a seemingly endless schedule of appearances at community meetings, ribbon- cuttings, and other events over the years. No surprise that so many people have met Menino, but if you’re a candidate, good luck finding him. In his 2001 re-election Menino granted opponent Peggy Davis-Mullen only one debate, on a Sunday morning. Four years later, he allowed Maura Hennigan a debate in prime-time, opposite a televised Red Sox-Yankees game.
Now we come to 2009 and three opponents, who at first cut, and second cut too, must all be considered long shots. Not that there isn’t reason to believe, as candidates must be able to convince themselves beforehand and during a campaign, that the Mayor can be beaten.
In his election in 2005, though Menino won 68 percent of the vote, the stay at home vote was huge. He won 64,000 votes. But that was out of an electorate of 270,000 registered voters. The professional classes stayed home—not having kids in the public schools, they tend to feel less invested—so too did a high percentage of minorities. In municipal elections, city workers are reliable voters; they have a lot at stake in the status quo. There are twenty thousand of them, much is expected, and for understandable reasons, they mostly deliver for the incumbent.
Look not at 2005, but at 2006 and 2008 and you’ll see the hope that mayoral candidate Sam Yoon finds. 157,000 voters turned out on Election Day when Deval Patrick ran for Governor in 2006, and 237,000 voters turned out on Election Day when Barak Obama was elected President. Get those same people to come out for City elections and you have the ticket for change.
As for candidate Michael Flaherty, look at his vote totals in the last three City elections, and you see why Flaherty thinks he has a shot. In the high-numbered City wards—Southie, West Roxbury, and Hyde Park—where people always come out in the highest numbers to vote, Flaherty has always done well. In the last three elections for City Council, Flaherty has been the top vote-getter. Pump the voter turn-out up there and in the traditionally Irish- American neighborhoods in Dorchester and elsewhere, goes the scenario, and you’ve got a race.
But getting people to come out to vote in big numbers requires a wave of discontent. And a wave of discontent requires attention to the challengers and to the issues they’re raising and to City Hall. Once again there’s the question of whether news outlets, even more diminished in the last four years, will cover the contest closely, or whether the risk-aversive Menino himself will engage in debates. (After being editorially ridiculed by the Boston Globe recently, Menino announced he would do three debates, although he agreed to no specifics or dates.) Once again there’s the question of whether his challengers can come up with enough money to get attention away from Menino and a huge treasury he has built up through contributions, in part, by city employees and developers and vendors with business at City Hall.
Three election cycles for Mayor have now gone by without broad conversation, coverage, or debate out the city’s future. We’d all be better off if we have that now. Whether John Hynes’ record stands or falls, electing a mayor through non-participation, low voter turnout, disinterest, and low expectations is a victory for no one.
