United they stand

Massachusetts mayors have a message for gubernatorial hopefuls: Come a-calling now, or we won't play in November

City Hall by Yvonne Abraham

Massachusetts mayors, led by Boston's own Thomas Menino, are fixing to throw their weight around in this year's gubernatorial election. Troubled by the fact that none of the candidates has thus far adequately addressed urban issues, Menino and Co. are getting together to put pressure on corner-office hopefuls. The goal: to persuade them to grapple with the kinds of problems that engulf municipal governments.

To achieve that, the mayors have to show the next governor why cities matter. Suburbs hold most of the votes, but cities are essential to the life of the state. If the cities -- the engines that drive the economy-- flourish, the rest of the state flourishes too. And if the cities go down the tubes, the whole state does too.

At a Massachusetts Mayors Association meeting in mid-December, the usually diplomatic Menino was blunt: urban issues have fallen off the state's radar screen, he said, and unless mayors work together to get them back on, they will be falling down on the job.

Menino rattled off a laundry list of disturbing trends: much of welfare reform's fallout will be laid at cities' doorsteps; affordable housing is growing scarcer; insufficient provision is being made for expanded after-school programs and daycare.

He said the legislature, too, has been less than kind to the metropolises. Last summer's Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) bill shifted hundreds of millions of dollars in local retirees' cost-of-living increases from the states onto the cities; Menino himself took a hit with the passage of a bill to limit his police commissioner's power; and even legislative victory -- the convention center bill -- came at a cost to Boston of $157 million.

Mayors, Menino said, had to start keeping score, beginning with the upcoming gubernatorial election. He proposed that cities' chief executives, as a bloc, question candidates and demand commitments on urban concerns.

"Menino made a powerful presentation," says Springfield mayor Michael J. Albano. "If the mayors get together, it's enormous political strength. Not that we didn't know that, but he said it and it rang a bell in everyone's mind."

As the mayors see it, there's been a vacuum on city priorities in this campaign, and they abhor it. So they're pushing their own agenda into the void. This is how it will work: before candidates get commitments of support from mayors, they'll have to show all of this state's municipal leaders where they stand on such issues as:

education funding

tax incentives to spur economic development and keep middle class residents in cities

urban crime prevention

affordable housing

legislation to clean up brownfields (contaminated urban industrial sites)

This coming Saturday, at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Municipal Association (MMA), a nonprofit organization of this state's cities and towns, Menino will be pushing for that united front again. The association will consider, and probably pass, a recommendation for a '98 election task force, to organize meetings and forums for mayors and candidates.

And since few of the mayors have endorsed any candidates yet -- in a race where a clear favorite has yet to emerge, especially among Democrats -- gubernatorial hopefuls should be listening closely. "There are so many mayors who are unaligned now," says MMA executive director Geoffrey Beckwith. "If someone was able to line up most of the mayors, then that would be major news."

So far, say several municipal sources, candidates don't seem willing to court the cities. And some aren't able. Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, for example, has trouble connecting with the machine politicians who typically inhabit local government. Former state senator Patricia McGovern is still something of an unknown among most voters, and former Boston mayor Ray Flynn has been thousands of miles away from the local action for several years. Indeed, although most mayors are Democrats, those who are watching the race from the municipal level say it is Acting Governor Paul Cellucci who is now paying the most attention to urban issues. He has clearly been supportive of Menino, most recently with his bold but futile veto of a police union bill that curtails the powers of police commissioner Paul Evans. Still, even Cellucci has a ways to go.

"If there were candidates out there with a good, strong urban agenda, you'd see mayors responding, breaking off and making endorsements, and it'd be harder for them to act in unison," says Menino's intergovernmental relations chief, Howard Leibowitz. "Everyone's in the same boat now, so they can paddle together."

If cities are in danger of getting left behind in this governor's race, it's because the candidates so far seem to think that the suburbs are where the votes are. The tax-cut bidding war that has dominated electoral rhetoric to date is tailored to impress middle-class suburban voters rather than urban dwellers, whose incomes are lower, and who are more reliant on the services cities provide courtesy of state tax dollars.

And those tax cuts probably seem extra shortsighted to mayors, whose local aid was arguably cut deepest during the last recession (Dukakis cut Boston's budget alone by $80 million over three years).

Each of those mayors could probably find better uses for the much-ballyhooed state bounty. "Instead of tax cuts, that money should go to programs," says Menino. "You give a family back 50 bucks. What's 50 bucks? It doesn't even get you to a Red Sox game or the FleetCenter. We need other kinds of relief to help us. Put it to after-school programs."

"While the state is running a budget surplus, there are lots of deficits out there -- municipal buildings are crumbling, roads need expanding, technology needs updating -- and these are all top priorities of mayors," says Geoffrey Beckwith.

Rather than negotiating their own individual commitments from candidates, the mayors will be working together for more far-reaching promises. "The mayors generally feel there has not been a comprehensive strategy dealing with urban issues," says Springfield's Albano. "We've been successful in some areas, but it's been more hit-and-miss based on regional needs."

Of course, it's early yet. Democratic delegates are elected on February 7, and the convention, where it's decided which gubernatorial hopefuls will make the September primary, isn't until June.

Then again, candidates could simply be looking elsewhere for support. Harshbarger and McGovern may well prefer to concentrate on the voter-rich suburbs. (The likely urban populists -- Flynn and former congressman and ambassador Brian Donnelly -- had not quite declared as of press time.)

But despite the candidates' caginess on urban issues -- and a less than scintillating race to date -- the '98 election could be the best chance mayors have had to press their agendas in years. 1990, dominated by Silber, was more about personality than policy: no danger of that with Joe Kennedy out of this race. This is the most issue-centered election in almost a decade. The '94 race was too lopsided to be a real contest. This one is much more wide open, the kind of race where mayoral support might actually make a difference.

But how much clout do the mayors really have?

Each of them controls delegates who vote at their party's convention -- Menino controls perhaps 300 votes, Albano has roughly the same number, and Fall River's mayor Ed Lambert can deliver close to a hundred. Each gubernatorial candidate needs 600 of the 4000 votes at the convention to get on the ballot. It's hard to imagine any of the currently declared contenders failing to make that 15 percent, even without mayoral assistance, although mayors may be important to where those candidates finish.

But there's talk that three of the mayors -- Menino, Lambert, and Albano -- might pool their delegates at the convention, which would make them more of a force.

Mayors will likely be more important in the primary, at least as far as city voters are concerned. Menino, for example, can mobilize 20,000 city employees; it would be naive to assume that a mayor with a 74 percent approval rating would not have some influence on voters if he endorsed a candidate. And each mayor has similar clout in his own town.

Not to mention machinery. Mayors can provide statewide candidates with valuable local campaign organization. With support from mayors, Beckwith says, "candidates can piggyback on much more sophisticated operations than they can ever hope to have. The best run and oiled wheel in the state's political machinery is operated by the mayors."

But in the end, mayors will probably not endorse candidates based solely on who has the best urban agenda: that would be downright apolitical. After all, there are debts to be settled and favors to be repaid.

As there were in 1994. Although Menino had been vocal about candidates' neglect of city issues that year, when it came time for the June convention, his actions seemed motivated by other concerns. Menino delivered 225 delegates to George Bachrach, the former state senator from Watertown, at the convention, putting him second to then-state representative Mark Roosevelt, from Beacon Hill. This was mostly payback to Bachrach, who had supported Menino for mayor in 1993. It was also payback to Roosevelt, who did not return Menino's phone calls during that mayoral campaign, and remained neutral.

Cagey as ever about his own clout, Menino left the 1994 Democratic state convention without casting a vote himself, and today says he simply stayed out of that election. After Roosevelt won the primary, Menino did not explicitly endorse him, saying only that he would "support the democratic ticket." Folks made a big fuss about that; not having a real endorsement from Menino made Roosevelt look bad, although the election was so lopsided that its absence was more embarrassing than decisive.

Menino will not be so coy this time around, however, and says he intends to make an endorsement. Now, as then, Menino has a cordial relationship with the Republican incumbent. Indeed, he is even friendlier with Cellucci than he was with Weld. Menino wouldn't rule out an endorsement if the Republican turns out to be his favorite candidate after all.

Menino maintains he has good relationships with all the candidates. But he owes some of them more than others. McGovern, after all, shepherded through the hospital merger, which Menino counts among his biggest achievements as mayor. On the other hand, Harshbarger has done little to endear himself to Menino, from putting away former Flynn aide Joe Fisher (who became a close Menino adviser) to publicly raising legal obstacles to the mayor's grand plan for City Hall Plaza. To support Flynn, Menino would have to overlook some old mutual resentment. If Donnelly jumps in, Menino might wish to endorse him, but he's a long shot, and it doesn't look good for the mayor of the state's biggest city to be on a losing team.

On such considerations are the fortunes of candidates made. In the end, noble issues like brownfields cleanup and community policing will be but part of the equation.

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