Peg & Tom

Watching the feud between city councilor Peggy Davis-Mullen and Mayor Tom Menino is a favorite City Hall pastime. This, however, is an election year, so the stakes will be higher.

by Ben Geman

Seated in a small room packed with about 25 Cleveland Circle residents last Thursday night, Boston city councilor Peggy Davis-Mullen listened silently to neighborhood horror stories of wasted college students running wild after last call. "It's bellowing and very strange noises made by these people, and it will go on until three or four in the morning," complained a woman who lives near a Boston College party house. With equal vigor, the manager of Mary Anne's, a hotbed of BC nightlife, defended his bar, decrying the "McCarthyism" of the angry abutters.

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The council at a glance

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Histrionics aside, the meeting of a neighborhood association with police and city licensing director Nancy Lo was routine town-gown stuff. Still, Davis-Mullen believes the location of the meeting she helped set up -- not at City Hall, but at a Cleveland Circle Jewish community center -- is significant. "Not everybody can get to City Hall for meetings," she says. "They are working. They have to do food shopping, clean their houses, and get their kids ready for school the next day." As she rides through Brighton in an aide's Jeep, heading toward another event, the at-large councilor calls the evening symbolic of what doesn't happen enough in Mayor Thomas Menino's administration. "I don't think Tom Menino has been pro-local neighborhoods in a while," says Davis-Mullen. "I think they have lost touch."

The attack touches on what's become a familiar theme for Davis-Mullen. From the confines of the city council, the ambitious South Boston resident has emerged as one of the mayor's most vocal critics, a rare source of regular barbs in a city enjoying reduced crime, solid services, and (for some, anyway) a booming economy. A Martian who landed in Boston and talked only to Davis-Mullen would wonder why Menino is so popular. To her, Menino has become a "downtown" mayor who's focused on big development at the expense of Boston's neighborhoods. What's more, she argues, Menino's power is almost reason enough to hold his feet to the fire. "It can't be one-person rule," she insists. "It's not healthy. It's not a healthy form of government. This is not a dictatorship, it's a democracy." Of late, Davis-Mullen has stepped it up, positioning herself as Menino's lead critic and, perhaps, his replacement.

Davis-Mullen as mayor? Sure, Menino appears almost invulnerable, but when Davis-Mullen takes her shots at him she clearly has an eye on both this year's city elections and the 2001 mayoral race. Whether she can be an effective and influential adversary will be one of the more interesting questions to emerge from the city's upcoming election season -- a season otherwise unlikely to generate heavy interest or turnout. For local observers, it's something to chew on, something to keep 1999 from becoming a complete political letdown after last year's close governor's race and wild Eighth Congressional District primary.

Davis-Mullen is certainly aware that 1999 will be a pivotal year for her politically. Few believe she is in danger of losing her seat, but a poor showing in this fall's city elections -- in which the top four at-large vote-getters are elected -- could undercut her status as a worthy (if long-shot) challenger to Menino. "If she comes in fourth, well, that's not the momentum you need to take a run at the mayor's office," says Allston-Brighton city councilor Brian Honan. And in the short run, Davis-Mullen's attacks could help give her that momentum. It worked in 1997, when the mayor was so strong he didn't even have a challenger; with Menino allegedly backing a rival council candidate, Davis-Mullen came in second.

Of course, that wasn't the first time the electorate has supported both a strong political figure and his opponent: just look at the divided governments in Washington and on Beacon Hill. In Boston, Honan argues, voters like Menino but don't want to see him get a free ride. "[Davis-Mullen's] not afraid to take on the mayor, and it has proved to be a successful strategy for her," he says. "I think the public and the electorate see a place on the city council for a person willing to stand up to the mayor and question his policy decisions." Adds another City Hall employee: "She made the statement [in 1997] that `I am against Tom Menino.' . . . It was the cornerstone of her campaign and she finished higher than ever. It stunned anyone who has watched politics around here for a long time."

Davis-Mullen can draw on some discontent with Menino if she takes the same tack this year. Some Fenway activists, for example, point to massive development proposals for their neighborhood -- an entertainment and housing complex over the Massachusetts Turnpike, the Red Sox' planned expansion -- and conclude that the mayor is not looking out for them. Yet it's debatable whether Davis-Mullen's criticism of Menino as a "downtown" mayor resonates with the majority of voters. Despite such gaffes as the failure to clear the streets for days after a heavy 1997 snowstorm, city services are generally well-regarded. And more broadly, the mayor from Hyde Park just doesn't seem to fit the part -- indeed, it hasn't been that long since Menino was criticized for being too much of an "urban mechanic" who wasn't doing enough to make Boston a "world-class city."

Menino hardly resembled a downtown mayor when he took the stage at the Emerson Majestic Theatre for his State of the City address on January 11. He downplayed development issues to focus on Boston's neighborhoods, stressing the need for affordable housing in the face of skyrocketing rents and home prices. And he moved closer to Davis-Mullen on her bread-and-butter issue, offering a shadowy outline for a return to "neighborhood schools."

Such tactics leave Davis-Mullen grappling with an odd dissonance: policies she likes may hurt her politically. "The problem for her is that where she finds traction, Menino is able to initiate policy maneuvers that limit or eliminate that traction," says Lou DiNatale, senior fellow at the University of Massachusetts McCormack Institute for Public Affairs. "Menino is nothing if not attuned to what's going on in the street and what's cooking politically . . . he's been consistently underestimated. Don't underestimate his ability to sense where his vulnerabilities are." Adds one former City Hall insider: "They definitely pay attention to what she is doing and they try and stay ahead of the curve."

Administration officials insist that Menino, not council critics, drives administration policy. Any mayor is bound to have a vocal detractor, says one top Menino adviser: "If that's what she's chosen to do, fine. We have work to do and I don't think that's deterred us from doing it." By most accounts, though, Menino tends to take things personally, and that could hurt Davis-Mullen. And councilors on Menino's shit list will find their constituent work that much harder, says Suffolk Superior Court clerk John Nucci, a Davis-Mullen critic and former city councilor who was once Ray Flynn's adversary. It's a political price of criticism in Boston or anywhere else. "It [bashing Menino] does not help the effectiveness of a councilor, but it can reap political benefits," Nucci says. "It guarantees quotes in news stories. But often a councilor who criticizes the mayor can't even get a library card for a constituent. That's something that went on long before Tom Menino."

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Davis-Mullen doesn't believe she's stymied by Menino's recent moves. "When you have a sitting mayor, the most powerful mayor that Boston has seen in years . . . and he spends the State of the City talking about your issue, then I would say quite to the contrary, I'm pretty damned pleased," she said. "Obviously this mayor is paying attention to my issues or he would not have talked about them."

Yet when it comes to her top issue -- neighborhood schools -- Davis-Mullen isn't fully satisfied. She's in favor of faster action than what Menino proposed and has been for some time. Clearly, she hopes this can be a way to make inroads against the mayor: she points out that Menino has called the success or failure of Boston's schools a crucial benchmark of his own performance. "I think the business community has every right to be happy [with Menino], but people are very unsatisfied with schools and that's why he tried to reach out," she says. "The city should be judged on more than just the number of high-rise hotels."

Davis-Mullen hits Menino on other fronts, too. She argues, for example, that city-funded adult-education programs are inadequate at a time when welfare reform is forcing many to find new and mostly low-wage jobs. She says she envisions more city schools open at night to accommodate classes that provide computer skills and other instruction. "It makes common sense that education is a lifelong endeavor," said Davis-Mullen, who argues the school department's budget for adult education should be upped from $300,000 to at least $1 million. "Even looking at the MCAS scores -- [parents] have to be able to read and write and have a certain level of schooling if you want to help your kids."

As appealing as these issues may be to some voters, Davis-Mullen's emergence as a Menino alternative faces plenty of potential obstacles. For one thing, city-council sessions have a way of degenerating into political circus. Last year the council tackled several important issues. But what stands out? Council president Jimmy Kelly's divisive and pointless hearings on affirmative action. More recently, the council took the worthy step of deciding that a monument to Martin Luther King Jr. should be built on City Hall Plaza. In the wake of his solitary vote against the statue at-large councilor Albert "Dapper" O'Neil acknowledged his support for the far-right Council of Conservative Citizens. Davis-Mullen, too, has misstepped. She has a tendency to tee off on the issues of the day, as when she linked availability of pornography on public-library computers to the murder of Cambridge youth Jeffrey Curley by two apparent pedophiles.

As Davis-Mullen positions herself, she faces another big problem that's totally out of her hands: there's no rule book that says a Boston mayor must have a constant or effective nemesis. That can make the dynamics at City Hall very different and often more predictable than at the State House, where Governor Paul Cellucci must make policy alongside Senate president Thomas Birmingham and powerful House Speaker Thomas Finneran.

Menino, by contrast, doesn't have to share. Boston's "strong mayor" form of government means that the mayor gets to do the good stuff -- calling the shots on policy, drafting the budget, setting the agenda. And, as his recent speech proves, that power creates a profile that councilors can rarely match. Menino got back-to-back lead-story coverage in the Boston Globe on January 12 and 13 after using the speech to declare his support for neighborhood schools.

Davis-Mullen, on the other hand, was left with a lower-profile forum -- the David Brudnoy Show -- in which to discuss the same subject. The program draws a good audience, but for someone who's been talking about the schools issue for much longer than Menino, the disparity must have been frustrating. Similarly, Davis-Mullen will have to fight for attention as she weighs in on other Menino moves. Take his plan for the South Boston Seaport, which Davis-Mullen calls "too important to be left up to Menino and the BRA": she has her own ideas, proposing that a new South Boston High School be constructed there and that the existing one be turned into elderly housing.

Davis-Mullen's eagerness to attack plans that are barely off the drawing boards shows why she needs to pace herself. Critics have previously tarred her as an opportunist who uses pressing events for her own gain. When a wave of youth suicides spread through South Boston in 1997, for example, she bashed the Menino administration's response to the crisis. Her behavior drew protest from the mayor's administration and in Southie, where some accused her of grandstanding and then dropping the issue.

Yet Davis-Mullen has shown savvy as a strategist and broadened the scope of her issues, reaching out to the gay and lesbian community and elsewhere. She's worked with state senator Dianne Wilkerson to call for solidarity among mothers in communities gripped by violence -- and, as she likes to point out, she's been instrumental in bringing Shakespeare to Boston Common.

Davis-Mullen is especially effective when she emphasizes her status as a working mother; she believes a new viewpoint is needed in the political culture of what she calls a "very male" city. "You have not seen a lot of women with young children in leadership positions," says the councilor, who gave birth to twins while she was in law school. "It gives you a different perspective." It's not surprising, then, that when asked to speak unexpectedly at the Ward 22 Democratic Committee's annual party last week, she alluded to that experience. "I have no recollection of the whole thing," she joked. "If there's anyone here I went to law school with and I don't recognize you, I apologize."

For now, Davis-Mullen acknowledges only that the mayor's office is an "exciting" job she might look at down the line. Is Menino beatable, assuming he runs again? Well, Davis-Mullen campaigns relentlessly. And Menino, by naming schools as a top priority, hands critics a rope if Boston's scores on the MCAS tests don't improve. He'll be even more vulnerable if the economy tanks, which would hardly be his fault but could make for a more restless electorate nonetheless.

And in a larger sense, clichés like "anything can happen" are clichés for a reason. Take Menino himself, who went from being just another district councilor to what DiNatale calls a political "godzilla." "In today's political world, anyone can metamorphosize into a giant," he says. "Davis-Mullen may play herself out of the game by overplaying her hand, or she may find a crease and ride it until 2001." If nothing else, watching her try to manage the latter could make city politics more fun in the years to come.

Ben Geman can be reached at bgeman[a]phx.com.