Frank Jones

Why Ralph Martin makes him angry

by Yvonne Abraham

Even if they want to -- and some of them do -- the weary shoppers heading into the Harbor Point Star Market on a recent Wednesday evening cannot avoid Frank Jones, candidate for one of four at-large seats on the city council. Standing at the supermarket's only entrance, right next to a sandwich board trumpeting today's special (FRESH PORK PICNIC SHOULDER 79 ^CENTS/_LB), Jones is set on meeting the people. In this, his second run for a city council seat, he finished sixth out of nine in the September preliminary. Now he's looking to go all the way on November 4.

Campaign worker Linda Perry shepherds shoppers toward him, touching them gently on the upper arm -- "Would you like to say hello to Frank Jones? He's running for city council." Folks can hardly refuse. Jones chats with potential voters, and hands them one of many recent glowing articles about himself. "This is a story about the kind of campaign I'm running," he says.

Jones is a slicker candidate today than he was six months ago. He is more comfortable with the public and more willing to trumpet his qualifications: he's been a civil rights attorney, chair of the Boston Committee under Kevin White, head of the Boston Fair Housing Commission, and the city's Commissioner of Real Property.

But qualifications and good press alone probably won't cut it, and Jones seems to have learned that unfortunate lesson. Six months on the trail have turned him into a politician.

"I'm getting used to it," he says between introductions. "I even know how to raise money now."

"Are you a good guy?" asks a small woman with short blond hair. Jones tells her he is. Then he adds, "A friend of mine always tells me, `You don't have to talk about the issues, you just want people to say you're a good guy.' "

"Well, I need to talk about issues," the woman says.

"Me, too." Jones agrees. "Me, too."

If either being a good guy or talking about the issues got people elected to city council, Frank Jones would already have an office on the fifth floor of City Hall.

They don't. He doesn't.

What counts in a race like this is who you have in your corner. And today, between introductions, Jones wants to talk about his corner.

Last spring, he asked Mayor Menino for his support. "He told me he'd consider it," Jones says. "Apparently, he's supporting [Stephen] Murphy and Suzanne Iannella, and that's okay."

But it's really not okay. Jones is angry that he hasn't gotten more support. Six months ago, he would have tempered that anger, calmly insisting that he was campaigning for himself, and not against anybody else, that the election is not a horse race. Now he lets it rip. Iannella, with loads of money and one of the most famous surnames in local politics, has been talked about as a shoo-in for an at-large seat.

"You need to ask yourself, What has she done in the community to be automatically appointed?" Jones says, with an incredulous laugh. "I know life is unfair, but this is ridiculous! You work all your life to try to bring about change, and the media anoints someone who has no record."

Jones is also angry at Suffolk district attorney Ralph Martin. The way he sees it, although Martin is a Republican and Jones a progressive, both are black, and they have many liberal constituents in common. So he asked Martin for his support.

"I think he was taken aback," Jones recalls. "So he hemmed and hawed and said he'd say nice things about me, and have a meeting with his workers to see if any of them would lend a hand." Then nothing, Jones says. "My locker is right next to his at the YMCA, and I see him every day, and he's never said anything about it again."

Martin is "uncomfortable discussing what I thought was a private conversation" but says, "I've gotten out of the business of endorsing people, even though I think Frank Jones would be an asset to the council."

"Once you start down the slippery slope of endorsing," Martin says, "it makes it harder to maintain the independent character of the prosecutor's office, or at least the perception of that independence." The district attorney allows that he did endorse State Representative Charlotte Golar-Ritchie and City Councilor Brian Honan, but Golar-Ritchie is godmother to one of his children, and Honan used to work for him.

Jones, who can lay claim to no such connection, will plod on as best he can, trying to impress voters for whom the horse race is all.

An athletic, fortyish black man steps up to shake Jones's hand.

"Who'd you beat?" he asks the candidate, who doesn't quite hear him at first.

"Who'd you beat?"

"Well, I didn't beat anybody," Jones explains. "There were nine people on the ballot in the preliminary, and eight got into the final contest."

The man doesn't seem to understand, and stands there, staring at Jones, expecting more. Jones is uncomfortable, doesn't know what to say, shakes another person's hand, starts another conversation. The man is still standing close, staring, sizing him up. Then he makes his decision.

"You're all right," he says at last. "You're all right."