Four and a half years ago, Stephen Murphy won a place on the Boston City Council the hard way: with perseverance after a string of heartbreaking ballot-box losses, and with the support of vitriolic arch-conservative Albert " Dapper " O’Neil, then a councilor-at-large. The elderly councilor viewed Murphy as a protégé, and Murphy even served as his driver for a time.

Though Murphy insists that he’s liberal on social issues (but conservative on fiscal and public-safety matters), the right-wing label continues to dog him. Of course, the consequences are not entirely negative: his reputation probably gains him points in some of the more traditional, high-turnout areas of the city, such as South Boston and West Roxbury. Turnout among progressives is typically low, and many with Murphy’s political lineage might choose to ignore them. But the affable and burly councilor insists that — if they’d only realize it — he’s the guy for them.

Murphy holds one of four at-large slots on the 13-member council, and if this year’s political season runs true to form, he’s not in any danger of losing his job. There won’t even be a preliminary election for the at-large seats this September: nine candidates are the threshold for that, and only seven turned in signatures. In the November final, Murphy and two other at-large incumbents, former police commissioner Mickey Roache and rookie Michael Flaherty, are virtual shoo-ins. Thus, three newcomers — long-time Jamaica Plain/West Roxbury councilor Maura Hennigan, former Boston School Committee president Felix Arroyo, and Rob Consalvo, an aide to State Representative Angelo Scaccia of Hyde Park — will duke it out for the spot being vacated by Peggy Davis-Mullen, who is running for mayor.

After coming in second in 1999, Murphy says, " I’m hoping at a minimum to finish second again, and I don’t see why I wouldn’t. " His work on small, quality-of-life issues has won him fans. He says he’s proudest of his efforts to repave the walkways outside senior citizens’ housing, and of a bill providing extra funding for prescription-drug coverage that he filed with the state legislature in 1999. Murphy’s legislation failed, but a related measure passed. " We started the firestorm, " he says.

But liberal mistrust persists. Earlier this summer, for instance, the Ward Five Democratic Committee, in liberal Back Bay, endorsed the avowedly progressive Arroyo and Hennigan while snubbing Murphy, who had hoped for its support. Murphy believes he had earned it by his outspoken opposition to the controversial 1998 linkage deal that would have given South Boston a disproportionate share of revenue from waterfront development, and he says the snub " hurts personally. "

Murphy insists that he works hard for all communities in the city, noting his support for domestic-partnership benefits and his sponsorship of a hearing to investigate the disproportionate infant-mortality rate among communities of color. Says South End activist Mark Merante, " Stephen Murphy came to the council with a reputation for being very conservative — and more than that, sort of motivated by conservative positions on social issues. But he’s turned out to be a very different councilor. "

Roxbury resident Boyce Slayman, a senior fellow at Northeastern’s Urban Law and Public Policy Institute, concurs. Though Slayman sees Murphy as " definitely right of center, " he says, " Steve’s the kind of guy who’ll help anyone who walks through the door. There’s a misconception in the black community that you can only walk through the doors marked ‘Yancey’ or ‘Turner’ [the council’s two black members], but they’re shortchanging themselves. "

Even former at-large councilor John Nucci, a onetime nemesis, thinks Murphy’s aged with grace. " I must admit that he seems to have grown in a number of ways in recent years, " says Nucci. He believes Murphy’s tempered his early right-wing tendencies: " I’ve noticed a certain maturity that wasn’t present 10 years ago or even seven or eight years ago. " That’s quite a change for Nucci, who in 1995 refused to resign from the council after having been elected clerk of courts because he wanted to prevent Murphy, who’d finished fifth in the 1993 election, from claiming his spot. Murphy went to court and won a ruling that Nucci couldn’t hold both jobs — but by then the regular election was so close that it was a moot point. Murphy finished fifth again.

Whether or not liberal Boston embraces Stephen Murphy, he’s still a favorite in the city’s voter-rich wards, though his opposition to the linkage deal may cost him some support in Southie. And with more than four years on the council under his belt, he’s got enough of an organization and enough name recognition citywide to begin eyeing other opportunities. Earlier this year, he flirted with a run for the Ninth Congressional District seat, and even formed an exploratory committee. But with the special election to replace the late Joe Moakley set for just a week before council elections, he ultimately decided to back State Senator Stephen Lynch of South Boston.

For now, he’s focused on winning re-election to the council — but he’s still looking. " I’m obviously not ready to retire at 44, " he says. " There’s not a lot of institutional authority with this job, so hopefully at some point I’m going to succeed in moving from here to another office. " He says sheriff of Suffolk County — a post currently held by the embattled Richard Rouse — is an alluring possibility, as is mayor, although he quickly adds that he would wait for Tom Menino to step aside first.

Such dreams used to be improbable for Murphy, a former transportation executive who was once dismissed by the media as a " perennial candidate " — in other words, a loser. He tried his luck at a Boston School Committee run in 1985, back when it was still an elected board, and finished just out of the money. Two years later, he ran for an at-large council seat and finished sixth. He narrowly lost a bid to unseat Representative Scaccia in 1992. " I was devastated, " he says. " I thought we were going to win that race. " That was followed by his fifth-place finishes in the council elections of 1993 and 1995.

But when councilor Richard Iannella won election as the Suffolk County register of probate, Murphy took his seat, in January 1997. That fall, he won election in his own right, coming in fourth.

" We have a shrinking electorate, in terms of people watching and paying attention, " says Murphy. Simply by being visible in the neighborhoods, he says, " it’s not all that hard to get it noticed that you care. "

Up to now, Murphy’s done zero campaigning outside his regular duties as a councilor. But with the exhausting schedule that he keeps, and the sheer name saturation he has with voters from running citywide in every municipal election since 1993, he’s expected to cruise to victory.

Whether it will be with the help of progressive areas such as Ward Five — where he finished fifth in 1997 and third in 1999 — remains to be seen.

Issue Date: August 2 - 9, 2001