City politics for dummies

by Yvonne Abraham

Alienated by the goings-on at City Hall? Overwhelmed by Boston's uniquely byzantine political culture? Fear not. Here, we offer our guide to the weird, the wonderful, the wacky world of Boston politics.

1. His Honor, Mayor Thomas Menino

Alternative appellations:

The Urban Mechanic, the Accidental Mayor, the Education Mayor, Mumbles.

Common barbs shot Menino-ward:

a) He lacks vision, fixating instead on potholes and pavements -- a legacy of his days as the conscientious district city councilor from Hyde Park (the Vision Thing, although popular with pundits, is a less convincing criticism lately, what with Menino's avowed commitment to public education, and the handful of big downtown development projects he's been all over in the last year or so).

b) He is insecure, has a hot temper, and can be a bit vindictive ("at any given time, his enemy is the last person who criticized him," says someone who has criticized him).

c) He lacks the capacity for coherent speech, instead displaying an alarming propensity for textbook-quality malapropisms. When folks make fun of him for this, our mayor gets very angry. See b).

Relevance of all of this to the electorate:

None, apparently.

Just about every criticism in punditland, including accusations that he acts in ways that benefit close friends with business interests in the city, slides right off Mayor Teflon in real life. His approval rating is about 74 percent. Apparently, voters don't want more than Menino can deliver. The tide of public opinion seemed to be starting to turn against him back in April, when an enormous snowstorm overwhelmed city services, but that passed. So he's running unopposed this year, which is unprecedented in this town.

2. The city council

The doormat of city politics, the council has very little real power, since Menino has the last word on just about all matters municipal. The four at-large and nine district councilors do, however, have the final say on the mayor's annual budget. They can't change it much, mind you, but they can hold it up if enough of them want to. Why would they want to? To extract favors. In politics, this form of extortion is called "horse-trading."

But to dismiss the city council as irrelevant would be to miss the most entertaining side of municipal politics. City council is ugly and political in a juicy, old-fashioned way. Here, you will find more shifting allegiances, more dirty tricks, and more instances of politicians hopping in and out of bed with each another (figuratively, that is) than there are in an episode of Melrose Place.

To wit:

Menino used to love Peggy Davis-Mullen, and helped her get reelected to city council in 1995, largely because she wasn't councilor-in-waiting Stephen Murphy, whom Menino disliked.

Then Davis-Mullen and Menino fell out with each other, Murphy got onto city council, and now Menino loves Murphy, mostly because he isn't Davis-Mullen.

Murphy and Davis-Mullen have hated each other all along. Just a couple of months ago, their top aides had fisticuffs in the City Hall parking garage.

Jimmy Kelly, council president, usually votes with the four women councilors -- Peggy Davis-Mullen, Maureen Feeney, Diane Modica, and Maura Hennigan. This makes other councilors angry, and a rival bloc has been trying for some time to break the Kelly cabal.

Diane Modica and Menino aren't friends, at all: she says he's working against her in her current reelection battle. Modica is used to the dirty tricks that make Boston politics so special. During her 1993 campaign, somebody kept kidnapping her father, who has Alzheimer's, and depositing him far from home.

Aged Ornery Guy Dapper O'Neil, who's been on city council for a million years, makes all the women councilors angry 'cause he's sexist and crotchety, calling them "girls" all the time. They don't like that.

3. The school committee

Used to be that the school committee was a rip-roaring slugfest of a body, with elected members trying to please voters and run the schools too. They often used kids' education to grandstand, furthering their own political fortunes. But those days are gone. Since 1991 the committee has been appointed, which (in theory) takes the politics out of schools. This suits Menino, the Education Mayor, and Thomas Payzant, his mild-mannered schools superintendent, just fine.

For a generation, folks have been fleeing Boston's schools, many white and middle-class families leaving the city for the suburbs and better education. Payzant is trying to reverse that, introducing strong standards across the system and holding educators more responsible for student performance. If he succeeds, Menino -- who said in his 1996 State of the City address that he wanted posterity to judge him on his record with Boston's abysmal schools -- will look pretty good.

4. The police department

If you're wondering why someone with as many apparent shortcomings as Menino manages to stay so high on the heap, you might find a good answer right here. Boston's crime situation is the best it's been in decades. Since the gang-violence wave of the early '90s, the police, under commissioner Paul Evans -- working with community groups, social services, and city government -- have managed to bring crime under control. This makes voters very happy -- and unlikely to boot out incumbents.

5. Who really runs the city?

Since nobody else has a leg to stand on, Menino and his advisers really run the city. And the advisers who count are the mayor's oldest friends. "When all the policy wonks go home, you and your friends open a beer and decide what you're really gonna do," says a longtime local pol-watcher. Those friends include West Roxbury developer Robert Walsh; Gerard Doherty, also a developer; and David Passafaro, a former developers' lobbyist. There's also Robert Donahue and Ed Jesser, who both advise Menino and serve as consultants to private entities like Boston University and the development company Carpenter and Co., respectively. (Carpenter recently won the right to build a hotel on City Hall Plaza.) Some columnists have called these relationship a conflict of interest. This has made the mayor very angry.

Menino, as well as the city councilors, also listens to the unions; the police and teachers have especially strong ones. After all, when so few people deign to show up at ballot boxes, a union that mobilizes its members, and tells them how to vote, can be a crucial factor. In union there is strength, and all that.

6. Who votes?

Hardly anybody.

Only 65,000 of the city's 210,000 registered voters turned out at the last city election: just 31 percent. It's usually that bad when there's no mayoral contest, and this year, with Menino running unopposed, the turnout promises to be even more dismal. This means that relatively few voters, from a few mostly white areas, determine who runs the city. In the last council election, Dapper O'Neil, who came second on the ticket, got reelected with just 30,524 votes. Scary, isn't it?

How to register

Intrigued? Disgusted? Want to do more?

There's a city election on November 4.

Register to vote at Room 241, City Hall, at Government Center.

Or you could pick up a registration form at most police stations, fire stations, and libraries, take a minute to fill it in, and pop it in the mail.

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