The un-campaign
On the campaign trail with a mayor who faces no opponent. Question one:
Why do people give him so much money?
by Yvonne Abraham
At a busy East Boston intersection, on a dreary Saturday morning, seven
stalwart Peggy Davis-Mullen supporters have braved the wet to shake big
blue-and-yellow campaign signs at passing cars. One of those cars contains
Mayor Thomas Menino, en route to a high-profile event at a local elementary
school. He sees the signs -- he can hardly avoid them -- but he doesn't say
anything. All over the neighborhoods Menino travels through today, there are
masses of signs like these, trumpeting the candidates in the city elections
that will be held in 10 days. In East Boston and the North End, dueling DIANE
MODICA and PAUL SCAPPICHIO signs are everywhere. In Roxbury, the windows of
Frank Jones's campaign headquarters are covered in his signs, as well as large,
hand-written requests for more campaign workers ("We'll be FRANK with you.
We've got a JONES for more volunteers.")
The mayor, stopped in traffic, looks at those Jones windows for a long time.
"These candidates should be knocking on doors where there are four or more
voters. If you get 25 houses, you've got a hundred votes."
So what are the council candidates doing instead?
"I don't know," the mayor says disapprovingly. "Can't tell ya. I have no idea
what they do."
Menino, up for reelection against no one, is ostensibly watching the city
matchups from the sidelines this time around. But he's at the center of his own
strange campaign, too. It's a campaign aimed at drawing enough voters to the
polls to give him a convincing stamp of approval, not at winning them over with
promises. It's a low-key affair -- a couple of advertisements, a few
consultants, and the mayor's usual public appearance schedule. He's running,
but he's not running.
Call it the un-campaign.
But behind the strange spectacle of the not-quite-candidate is an important
story. Precisely because he has no opponent, Menino's un-campaign is in some
ways more revealing than a real campaign would be. What Menino's reelection bid
lacks in suspense it more than makes up for in money. Opponent or no,
contributions still find their way into his coffers
(see "Hey, Big Spender").
A Phoenix examination of campaign finance reports filed by the Menino
Committee reveals that, even when it was clear that the mayor would not face a
serious challenger, the money continued to roll in. The mayor's campaign has
raised $765,000 this year, and $539,000 in the last four months. This past June
alone, $455,000 was collected -- even though it was obvious to many
folks by then that Menino wouldn't be needing much of it, his kitty having
hovered near the million-dollar mark for over a year.
This un-campaign proves what we often suspect about political campaigns in
general: that people give candidates money for a lot of reasons, and that
helping them win elections isn't necessarily among them.
Yvonne Abraham can be reached at yabraham[a]phx.com.
Kate Cunningham provided research assistance on this article.