Scapicchio surprise

A new guy learns old tricks, and wins

by Yvonne Abraham

There's a bunch of fast-talking, chain-smoking, almost-senior citizens who hang out on the benches outside the CVS in Charlestown's Bunker Hill Mall. Paul Scapicchio knows that to get anywhere in this town politically, you've got to win these folks over. If you get in with these guys, they can talk you up and deliver enough votes to put you over the top, even if you're Italian and nobody's heard of you before and your name is hard to pronounce. Even in Charlestown.

So, five days before the preliminary that will decide who gets to run against District 1 incumbent Diane Modica in the council election on November 4, Scapicchio heads down to the mall to hang out with the olds. Night has fallen, and he's late for his next appointment, but Scapicchio goes down there anyway, because if the Bunker Hill gang hears he's been in Charlestown and he hasn't come to see them, they'll be really mad. He asks them about their families, crouches down to talk to a couple of key women, charms them all with his youth, his sincere eye contact, his sympathetic ear, and his anticipatory gratitude for their help.

And the old-school political machinery works just as it should. In Tuesday's preliminary election, Scapicchio wins. And he wins bigger than he'd dreamed possible, trouncing the incumbent, which almost never happens in city politics -- outpolling her three to two. Modica will need a miracle to come back in November after such a beating.

If she doesn't, and Scapicchio wins her seat (which represents Charlestown, East Boston, the North End, and some of Beacon Hill), an era at Boston City Council will have come to an end. There'll be one fewer woman, for starters. And the traditional majority, which is led by council president Jimmy Kelly and includes Modica, will almost certainly crumble. Further, Scapicchio, who is rumored to have been helped along by Menino, will be much less combative toward the mayor than Modica has been during her two terms. City council will likely be even more of a pushover parliament.

Scapicchio, an athletic 31-year-old lawyer who looks even younger than that, grew up in the North End, went to Boston Latin, and has coached kids' sports for years. Consequently, his extra-large campaign organization consists of North End relatives and friends, Boston Latin alumni, and a whole bunch of kids. He milks the Latin thing for all it's worth, certain that a household with a connection to Latin is a vote for him. (His campaign signs are purple and white -- Latin colors -- to seal the deal.) And he's perfected the art of charming voters -- especially women, who seem intrigued by him, and joggers, whom he runs with till they stop, laughing, and hear him out.

For such a young guy, Scapicchio is captain of a pretty old-fashioned campaign. His office mailed out hundreds of letters from his mother, Marie, urging residents of District 1 to give her nice son a chance. And he's been going door to door to introduce himself, especially in Charlestown, since he's not as well-known there as he is in the North End or in East Boston, where his uncle Louis was a popular police captain. These are old-fashioned neighborhoods, and his old-fashioned campaigning works well.

His people even organized an election-eve pep rally, complete with a band and cheerleaders. Some of the neighborhood kids recorded a theme song for it, called "Council Man," to the tune of the Village People's "Macho Man":

Hey. Hey. Hey, hey, hey.
Council, Council Man, yeah
Paul Scapicchio's
A Council Man . . .

Things are a little more sedate, though, at the Blackstone Senior Citizens' Center, at Charles River Park. Here, Scapicchio brings pizza and a truckload of Italian cookies for the residents, and in return, they tell him a thing or two. They're worried that the crosswalk outside their building isn't marked clearly. And they want a shuttle bus to Johnnie's Foodmaster, in Charlestown. Some of the residents say they've asked Modica for these things but gotten nothing. A district councilor's fortunes can rise or fall on such matters. And in District 1 -- where the Big Dig has wreaked utter havoc, ripping up neighborhoods and sucking away parking spots -- those details are all-consuming.

"Diane Modica, she's a crook, fuhgeddaboudit!" yells a man of 80, with a chuckle. Scapicchio promises to do something about the residents' problems if he can.

"[Modica] really left the door open for me there," says Scapicchio later, on the way to Charlestown. "I might not be able to do something about that crosswalk, but I'll write a letter to that lady who was upset, saying `This is what I understand your problem to be,' and she'll feel good about it. She'll think, `At least he listened to me.' " Scapicchio wants to deliver on old-fashioned constituent services.

Of course, Modica's campaign has suggested that Scapicchio's style is a little too old-fashioned. Scapicchio, she says, has been helped by her enemies: former city councilor and Modica foe John Nucci, and Mayor Thomas Menino, who's clashed with the councilor more than once at City Hall. On top of that, the scuttlebutt goes, former city councilor Richard Iannella has been helping Scapicchio because Suzanne Iannella, his sister, is seeking an at-large seat and would benefit from a close race in District 1, which would bring out the Italian vote.

Scapicchio concedes some of this. "John Nucci said, `I'd like to see somebody new in the district,' " says Scapicchio. So he's a campaign adviser. Of Iannella, he says, "I talk with Richie once in a while. His sister's running. They're very happy I'm in the race."

But he insists Menino is not involved. "I've had no help from Menino," he insists. "It's a lot easier to say there's a conspiracy against you than to go out and do the work."

"Yeah, my father is a big-time operator at City Hall," Scapicchio continues, displaying some of the venom that has characterized the race. "He's a retired pipe fitter! And my mother's a secretary! Big conspiracy!"

Guy Fasullo, the man who called Modica a crook, is a devoted Scapicchio supporter. " 'Cause he's my friend," says Fasullo, a tall Italian man with huge yellow-lensed sunglasses and a black baseball cap sitting too high on his head. "That other girl, she's a double-crosser," he says, although he can't say exactly how.

More important to voters like Fasullo -- and there are plenty of them -- is the fact that Scapicchio is "young, and he's got a lot of ambition." That's enough for the old man.

"He ain't gonna do nothin' for me," says Fasullo. "I'm 80 years old. What's he gonna do for me?"

That's the kind of attitude Scapicchio has been banking on. "I'm knocking on doors," he tells a woman in Charlestown later that day, "and I hope you'll say, `Geez, the kid's a hard worker, let's give him a chance.' "

It worked.

Yvonne Abraham can be reached at yabraham[a]phx.com.