The 14th councilor

John Nucci left City Hall two years ago. Officially, at least.

City Players by Yvonne Abraham

When he was a student at Boston Latin, John Nucci so annoyed his teachers that they used to call him The Itch. Thirty years later, there are plenty of folks in City Hall who would still think that an apt nickname.

Nucci, former school committee president, erstwhile at-large city councilor, one-time mayoral candidate, and now Suffolk Superior Court clerk, likes to stay in touch with Boston politics. Around City Hall, he's known as the 14th councilor.

"I don't deny it," he says. "I like to keep my fingers in city politics. One, politics is my hobby. Two, I live here. I like to think I'd be active in local politics even if I lived in Timbuktu."

Actually, Nucci lives in political junkie-filled East Boston, where 15 years in citywide office have given him some pull. "He's got some good influence," says newly elected district councilor Paul Scapicchio. "You can't quantify it, but he does win you a certain number of votes. He served the district well, and he's well-liked by the community."

Scapicchio should know. Nucci worked to help him unseat two-term district councilor Diane Modica last year, quite a feat in this town, where incumbents are almost invincible. Scapicchio says Nucci was helpful with press releases, and most important, helped him angle for the Herald's endorsement.

That race was one of the most interesting of the election, not least because there was so much talk of outside influence. Modica and her supporters continually claimed that she was being paid back for antagonizing both Mayor Menino and Nucci. Was Nucci helping to dump her because she backed Jimmy Kelly, and not him, for council president in 1994?

"Here it is," says Nucci, laughing. "The inevitable question. I would not have supported Scapicchio if I wasn't sufficiently impressed with him as a candidate," he says. But Nucci can't leave it there. "Did it make it easier to support a challenger to Modica because she was never supportive of me?" he says. "I'd be lying if I said that wasn't the case."

That kind of frankness is one of Nucci's hallmarks, a key to what makes him a player here. "He's a player in East Boston, but mostly, the media makes him a player," says councilor Peggy Davis-Mullen, who has clashed with Nucci at times. "He's got the ability to give such good quotes, and he'll zing ya, as he's done to me many a time."

Few politicians in Boston would or could say the things Nucci regularly says publicly. He is a one-man quote machine, apparently unafraid to offend people -- on the record and for attribution. That makes him a favorite of journalists in this city.

Here is Nucci on making city council: "I began to regret it immediately. I'm not patient enough for the plodding pace of the city council. First I found out where the men's room was. Then I found out where the door was."

On at-large councilor Stephen Murphy: "He and I were pretty good friends, until he felt entitled to a [council] seat he hadn't won. He came to see me last year and said he hoped I wouldn't be out to hurt him. Despite what he might think, I don't stay up nights thinking of ways to get him back."

On the Beach Boys: "I went to see them two years ago. There were all these girls on stage in bathing suits. [The band] looked like a bunch of dirty old men. That was depressing, because those guys aren't much older than me."

Nucci doesn't quite qualify for dirty old man status yet. He is 46, but looks younger, probably because of his daily 5:30 a.m. workouts. Tall and very thin, he's the father of three children, the oldest of whom has just started at Latin, where Nucci once burned his school tie ("I told him he could change his name if he wants").

Despite Nucci's disappointment at what the Beach Boys have become, he did buy the Pet Sounds box set, the litmus test for die-hard Brian Wilson fans. But it's the Beatles for whom he reserves his most fervent love -- and his money. He has a huge collection of Beatles bootlegs and all manner of memorabilia. A couple of years ago, he bought a 1968 Corgi yellow submarine for $600. He says it's worth twice that now: "I could put my money in stocks and bonds, but that'd bore me."

There are plenty of people who say being Suffolk Superior Court clerk must also bore Nucci. Nucci, of course, demurs. "It's rewarding to come to work and deliver a product every day," he says. He cites his office's education and community outreach program, designed to teach schoolchildren how the court system works, as one of his achievements since being elected clerk in 1994.

It's also a kind of rest stop for him. "I'll admit I was a little bit physically and emotionally fatigued from the crazy merry-go-round of Boston politics," he says. Nucci dropped out of the 1993 mayoral race four months before the election. It was a crowded field, and the timing was wrong for him, as it was for most of the other candidates. "An Italian was already acting mayor," Nucci says. "That pretty much shut the door for me."

Still, clerk is not a bad position from which to keep one's hand in the local political scene. Nucci is building up chits, which he can call in if he decides to get back into the ring. (He also supported Mickey Roache, who topped the ticket in 1995, and bequeathed to him one of his former aides, Eddie Coppinger.)

Already, his role in Scapicchio's election has yielded returns. Nucci will be the councilor's appointee to the Massport mitigation board, set up to distribute compensation to neighborhoods ripped up by Big Dig construction. And Nucci has talked with former rival Kelly about a role on the council's task force on student assignment, although the former councilor insists that wasn't part of a deal.

Newspaper reports said that once he'd gotten his guy elected, Nucci tried to get Scapicchio to vote against Kelly as council president. "I wish I had that much power over somebody," Nucci says. Scapicchio also denies that Nucci influenced him. "I talked to everybody," he says. "Then I went away and made a decision on my own."

Still, before the ballot, Nucci says, councilor Charles Yancey called Nucci to ask him to have Scapicchio support him. (Yancey did not return calls by press time.) Sometimes the appearance of power can be enough to build political capital.

Which will come in handy if Nucci decides to jump back in the ring. "I've not closed the door," he says. "If there's a vacant mayor's seat in four years, I might take a look at that."

"But for now," he says, "I'm getting my fix."

This article is one in a series of portraits of the people who wield power in Boston.

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