E-Mail This Article to a Friend The New Bostonians As Finneran heads for the exit door, the race to succeed him may offer a preview of the Hub’s political future BY ADAM REILLY

GREATER BOSTON HAS seen a bevy of watershed elections recently. A year ago, Boston city councilor Felix Arroyo’s strong showing in the at-large race prompted talk of a potent new alliance of progressives and voters of color. (Time will tell.) Back in March, Scott Brown’s victory in a special state Senate election served notice that the Massachusetts GOP was poised for rebirth. (It wasn’t.) And most recently, Andrea Cabral’s victory in this year’s Democratic primary for Suffolk County sheriff was touted as proof that the "New Boston" had finally arrived. (Maybe, maybe not; see "Winner’s Circle," News and Features, September 24.)

Now, with former House Speaker Tom Finneran set to retire at the end of this year to lead the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, another intensely symbolic election is looming (see "Finneran Bids Farewell," This Just In). Finneran was a masterful Speaker who brought much-needed fiscal discipline to Beacon Hill. He was also an autocrat whose punitive leadership style frustrated many House members — and he leaves office amid a probe of his role in the House’s 2001 redistricting plan, which would have diluted minority voting strength in several Boston House districts and which was deemed illegal earlier this year (see "Back to the Drawing Board?", News and Features, November 7, 2003). Because the court overturned the 2001 plan, Finneran’s district, the 12th Suffolk, now has a voting-age minority population of 69 percent rather than 61 percent, with black voters alone composing 60 percent of the district’s adults. The idea, here and in other districts reconfigured by the courts, is that candidates of color will now find it easier to win elections.

When the legislature schedules the special election to replace Finneran, which it should do next month, this theory will be put to the test. Right now, the field of candidates seeking to represent the 12th Suffolk stands at four: it includes Linda Dorcena Forry and Emmanuel Bellegarde, both of whom are Haitian-American, as well as Stacey Monahan and Eric Donovan, who share Irish ancestry. It’s a safe bet that many liberal and minority activists will back either Dorcena Forry or Bellegarde; after all, if either wins, the lesson would seem clear — out with the Old Boston, in with the New — and the momentum created by Arroyo’s and Cabral’s victories would intensify. But the race to succeed Finneran already points to a troubling vagueness in the concept of a "New Boston": does the city need candidates who espouse certain ideas, or who have a certain skin color? And as things unfold in the coming weeks, a number of other questions — from the cohesiveness of the black political establishment to the continued political strength of Irish Dorchester — are sure to loom large as well. When the votes are counted, one lesson is likely to emerge no matter who wins: namely, that Boston politics are more complicated than they seem.

ON PAPER, Linda Dorcena Forry looks like a formidable candidate. Consider her political connections: she already has the public support of State Representative Marie St. Fleur, a rising political star who is Massachusetts’s first Haitian-American legislator and who grew up with Dorcena Forry in Dorchester’s Uphams Corner neighborhood. (Last week, during a fundraiser for Dorcena Forry at the McKeon AmVets post in Cedar Grove, St. Fleur told the crowd she’d known the candidate "since she was in the womb"; the two are also related by marriage.) Charlotte Golar Richie, the head of Boston’s Department of Neighborhood Development and a former state representative from the Fifth Suffolk, is also backing Dorcena Forry — no surprise, since Dorcena Forry’s entire professional life has been spent under Golar Richie’s tutelage, first in the State House and then in City Hall. It’s also noteworthy that DeWayne Lehman, who handles media relations for the Department of Neighborhood Development, made an appearance at last week’s fundraiser. Whether this abundance of City Hall insiders means Mayor Tom Menino plans to help Dorcena Forry — and if so, how aggressively — remains to be seen. But either way, Dorcena Forry seems poised to benefit from her close ties to Boston’s political establishment.

Her family connections may prove even more potent. While she hails from Boston’s sizable Haitian community, her husband, Bill Forry, is an Irish-American whose family has lived in Dorchester’s Lower Mills neighborhood for decades. Furthermore, the Forry clan operates something of a local newspaper empire: it publishes the Dorchester Reporter, the Boston Irish Reporter, and the Boston Haitian Reporter, where Will Dorcena, Linda Dorcena Forry’s brother, once worked as publisher. Bill Forry, who edits the Dorchester Reporter, recently hired an ombudsman to monitor coverage of the race. But even if the Reporter ends up treating Forry’s wife more critically than it does the other candidates, the fact will remain that, as a Haitian-American woman married to an Irish-American man, Linda Dorcena Forry personifies modern Boston’s racial and ethnic convergence. (A bonus: the Forrys’ one-year-old son, John Patrick, is a cute kid who plays to the crowd at campaign events.) This leads one observer of city politics to speculate that a Boston Globe endorsement of Dorcena Forry is inevitable. "Her candidacy has so many themes — it’s a New Generation/Opportunity for Great Change/Message to the Whole World/Woman/Multiethnic thing," he says. "They’re salivating over there."

But too much emphasis on Dorcena Forry’s connections does her a disservice. Like her competitors, she is emphasizing safe, uncontroversial issues in the early days of her campaign — education, health care, affordable housing. But her temperament sets her apart. Watch Dorcena Forry work a crowd, and it’s clear she has a knack for appearing engaged and delighted, whomever she’s speaking with and whatever the subject. In a race filled with relative political unknowns, this native political gift should be valuable indeed.

Despite this multitude of advantages, however, Dorcena Forry isn’t a sure thing. While she grew up in Dorchester, she’s lived in the 12th Suffolk only since 2001, which could lead more-clannish types to view her as a carpetbagger. Also, despite her gregarious and engaging qualities, Dorcena Forry can be tentative at times: during a recent interview with the Phoenix, she frequently glanced at her campaign manager before answering questions. Furthermore, Dorcena Forry’s conception of her own political identity seems to be a work in progress. A Catholic, she supports abortion rights, while opposing both the death penalty and amending the Massachusetts constitution to ban gay marriage. But she seems reluctant to commit to a particular Democratic identity — initially calling herself a liberal and then saying she’s a moderate, before concluding she’s a "traditional, everyday Boston Democrat" committed to helping the vulnerable. "I don’t like labels," she explains. "And to tell you the truth, I don’t want someone to put a label on me." Fair enough. But given the range of views Boston Democrats still hold, a bit more nuance might not be a bad thing.