Bill Owens

A parade, a hug, and a ghost from the past

by Yvonne Abraham

In a few hours, the annual Caribbean carnival parade will snake past Bill Owens's Dorchester campaign headquarters and down Blue Hill Avenue. The crowds are already gathering. Inside, campaign workers are collecting fliers, badges, and big yellow T-shirts to hand out. The candidate, dressed in a gray checked suit, moves slowly among them, confirming the day's arrangements, greeting new arrivals with hugs, preparing to meet the public.

Owens is challenging Charles Yancey for the District 4 seat on the city council. (And for the first time in 15 years, the seat appears to be truly up for grabs: Yancey might be disqualified because of problems with signatures he collected to get on the ballot.) A slight man with gray-speckled hair and deep wrinkles around his eyes, Owens seems quiet, serious. But as soon as he steps out onto Warren Street, Owens is transformed.

Showtime.

Owens is no stranger to the hustings, having completed three State House stints since 1973. He loves public life, walking up boldly to revelers, charming kids into helpless giggles, selling himself without fear. But as much as he enjoys this, he also knows -- not two months into his latest candidacy -- that being a public figure exacts its own price. One newspaper has already dredged up the prison time he served in the 1960s.

Owens makes his way up to the parade. He stops to dance with a large woman, a Grenadian flag tucked into her belt, then gives her a long hug good-bye, and a parting plea for support. He hands another woman a blue-and-yellow button.

"After all these years," she yells, parked in her front-row seat, "all I get is a button?"

"You get more than that," Owens says, his hands on her shoulders. "You get me!"

But Owens wins over most potential constituents through their kids. "Where'd you get that dimple?" he asks a five-year-old girl, bending down to put his face near hers. She pulls her doughnut closer to her chest. Owens, and every adult in the girl's family, laughs. He moves on to her older brother, shaking his hand with mock solemnity.

"You're goin' for president, right?" the 10-year-old asks Owens. "Not yet," the candidate replies, amid laughter. "I'm running for city council, and I need your help. Will you tell your mom to vote for me in September?" The boy's father, standing behind him, nods yes, and Owens pins a button on each of the kids.

Owens became a state representative in 1973. Two years later, he became the first black state senator. He lost that seat in 1982, won it again in 1988, and held it till he was defeated by Dianne Wilkerson in 1992. He's back, he says, for black youth.

"I look at our young people, and I don't hear a voice that relates to them," he says, "They're not interested in criminal acts, and drug dealing, and dying at 20. What they want is someone they can believe in, who can speak the language they speak." And Owens believes it is he, at 60, who can be that someone. He gestures toward his campaign staff -- all in their 20s. "Most of the people in this campaign," he says, "are young people."

That's ironic. When Dianne Wilkerson challenged him for his Senate seat, Owens was cast as the old-guard, alliance-building politician, and Wilkerson as the young heads-will-roll maverick. She won handily. Now Owens is back to try to out-youth the other candidates.

"If I saw other people out there who could develop a second generation of leaders, I would not be doing this," he says. "I would not be putting myself back in the public eye."

That public eye is cited by many in Boston political circles as one of the main reasons a promising young generation of politicians hasn't surfaced in Owens's wake. The fact that the private lives of politicians are fair game these days has discouraged many potential leaders -- black and white -- from entering public life. Owens believes it's even worse for black politicians.

"The press is not always fair to people of African descent," he says. That's why his family and friends asked him not to run. "But I cannot allow the media or the scrutiny to determine what I will do with my life," he says.

He's already been tested: he recalls bitterly the July 27 Herald article about his candidacy, which described him as a "former state senator and ex-convict." Owens spent nearly 20 months in Walpole for stabbing two white men -- men who he says had harassed his wife with racial epithets and beaten him with sticks. It happened in 1965. "The new generation reads that, and they think it happened yesterday," Owens says. Herald columnist Leonard Greene wrote an impassioned defense of him in response.

Even with all of this, Owens says, he doesn't regret putting himself back in the line of fire. "If others feel I'm willing to undergo this kind of scrutiny, maybe they'll be willing to do the same."