Decision time

Senate president Tom Birmingham knows the dangers of blind ambition, but an open seat in the Eighth District could tempt him into making a run for Congress

by Michael Crowley

A few years ago, Senate president Tom Birmingham learned a painful lesson. It was a Friday afternoon in the mid 1980s, and Birmingham, then a young labor lawyer yet to enter politics, had been summoned to South Boston by a painters' union to help settle their dispute with a contractor.

It was a "blindingly bright sunny day," Birmingham recalls, when he arrived at the meeting site on his bike. Through a window, he could see the gathered union men sizing him up. "And you know how sometimes your eyes don't adjust and you can almost not see?" Well, this was one of those times. Which was a problem, considering the glass doors leading into the building.

"Without even hesitating, I walked" -- Birmingham slaps his hands with a whack! -- "straight into the glass doors. In front of everyone." Adds the president of the upper chamber of the Great and General Court of Massachusetts: "I thought I'd broke my nose!"

Birmingham doesn't walk into doors anymore; people hold them for him now. But as he stands at a once-in-a-lifetime political crossroads, he seems to have learned a lesson from that bent nose and bruised ego: proceed with caution.

Today, Birmingham -- the Chelsea-born, Harvard-educated Rhodes Scholar and heavy-smoking giant of state politics who presides over the Senate from a regal office the size of the Louisiana Superdome -- must decide whether to surrender his throne to run for Congress.

For months the prevailing wisdom on Beacon Hill has been that when Joe Kennedy officially declares his run for governor, Birmingham will join the race to fill the Eighth District seat Kennedy vacates. If so, Birmingham will immediately become the man to beat.

But talk to Birmingham, and it doesn't seem so clear that he's ready to go through with it. Perhaps he is making sure, before lunging forward, that the bright political glare surrounding his congressional prospects doesn't blind his instincts. For despite what some may assume, it's not a given that the seat is his for the taking. Certainly it would be the toughest campaign of his still young career; up to a dozen rivals are lining up, and the price tag might hit a million dollars. And for what? To strain his family, to drain his salary, and to wind up a back-bencher among the 435 residents of the House of Gingrich? At this moment of decision, Tom Birmingham seems wisely to be asking himself: Do I really want to do this?

Part 2

Michael Crowley can be reached at mcrowley[a]phx.com.