Progressive vacuum

Frank Jones declines to run; what's that say about Boston politics? Plus, Menino vs. Cellucci; Stephen Murphy vs. bike couriers; and Tom Keane says good-bye.

City Hall by Ben Geman

What a difference a river makes. As Jamaica Plain lawyer and civil-rights activist Frank Jones was dashing the hopes of Boston progressives who long to see one of their own in the Boston City Council's at-large seats, Cambridge residents who vote left were picking up yet another choice.

Around the same time Jones declared last month that he would not run for an at-large seat after a close-but-no-cigar bid in 1997, progressive activist/pundit Jim Braude said he was mulling a campaign for the Cambridge City Council, a body friendlier than Boston's to Braude's politics. "It's likely and it's getting more likely every day," said Braude, former head of the Tax Equity Alliance for Massachusetts, who ran John O'Connor's failed campaign for the Eighth Congressional District.

Less likely would have been Jones's breaking into what's now an all-white and fairly conservative pack of at-large councilors. Indeed, the timing of his and Braude's declarations reveals a stark contrast between the two cities. Both have solid progressive communities and a slew of nonprofit activist groups. In Cambridge, that translates into votes in the ballot box. In Boston these days it doesn't, at least for the at-large councilors. It's a shame, say some locals, who see a missed chance to use the citywide seats as a pulpit for Boston's left. "Without a clear kind of progressive voice doing that, it is a clear loss in terms of public policy and leadership," says Mimi Turchinetz, an activist now leading the implementation of the city's living-wage ordinance.

Boston's at-large councilors -- Dapper O'Neil, Francis Roache, Peggy Davis-Mullen, and Stephen Murphy -- are, taken as a group, right wing by Cambridge standards. True, Davis-Mullen has moved left in recent years, reaching out to gays and lesbians. And Roache helped lead the way on the city's living-wage ordinance, a favorite cause of the left. All four, though, are loyal to anti-busing, affirmative-action-hating South Boston councilor Jim Kelly. Jones has twice tried to break into this group, and each time he has fallen short.

Meanwhile, the Cambridge City Council is generously stocked with lefties like Ken Reeves and Katherine Triantafillou. Sure, that doesn't seem surprising in a city known as the People's Republic. But it's a different PR -- proportional representation -- that may be responsible for much of that tag's staying power. In Boston, the top four at-large vote-getters win. In Cambridge, voters rank nine choices in order; once any candidate has met a needed quota to win (based on the number of seats and ballots cast), the voter's ballot for that candidate is transferred to that voter's next-highest choice. Proponents say this system allows racial or ideological minorities to gain representation, even if they don't necessarily have a large support base.

"I'm not sure voters in Cambridge are wildly different than voters in Boston," says Braude. "The election system here is far friendlier to anyone who . . . knows how to organize. You move Frank Jones over here with a little local history and he would do very well."

Voter turnout tells much of the story in Boston. Jones, who finished sixth in 1997, actually won 9 of the city's 22 wards outright. But he didn't do nearly as well in the high-turnout, and largely white, neighborhoods of South Boston, Hyde Park, and West Roxbury. "Look at voting patterns," says political consultant Jim Spencer. "As participation has lowered, the people who have continued voting are the people who have city jobs or are involved in local politics -- the more conservative Boston types, long-time residents." Several years ago, Spencer collaborated with Turchinetz, former councilor David Scondras, and others in an effort to form a liberal-left coalition that would run progressives in council races. The plan never got off the ground.

Critics of Boston's voting system would say that that was no surprise. "The politics makes it hard and race makes it hard," says George Pillsbury, program director for the nonprofit Commonwealth Education Project. "Being a progressive makes it hard [to win] the at-large seats because they are controlled by five or six wards." The at-large seats become, in effect, bonus seats for those wards, charges Pillsbury, who authored a 1995 study of Boston voting trends.

To be fair, Jones's near-miss campaigns would also have benefited from more cash and field organization. The problem is broader than that, though. Boston's progressives simply have not focused on city-council races lately. "In a place like Jamaica Plain, with all these activists, there is so much other stuff going on. . . . For whatever reason, the electoral stuff does not come first for a lot of people," says Turchinetz. The situation was different just a few years ago, when Boston's at-large slate included left-of-center councilors John Nucci and Rosaria Salerno.

Absent an obvious candidate in the fall, progressives say they hope to lay the groundwork for future races. "If we continue to organize around issues and get people interested in issues rather than a person, and then run candidates on those issues, we will stand a lot better chance of winning," says activist Maude Hurd, a member of Progressive Massachusetts, the state chapter of the national New Party. "I'm hoping it is not that far off at all."

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Is Mayor Tom Menino finding out the price of friendship with Governor Paul Cellucci? Last week, Menino savaged the administration's welfare policies as "crazy" and "in the dark ages" for refusing to allow job training to count toward recipients' work requirements. "There's no way to move up and out of poverty without job training," said Menino, who filed a bill to repeal the rule, in testimony before the legislature's Joint Committee on Human Services and Elderly Affairs.

But there is a "reap what you sow" element to all this. Menino, who has a good rapport with Cellucci, showed little enthusiasm for Scott Harshbarger's near-miss gubernatorial campaign last year, offering only a tepid endorsement and declining to crank his powerful machine into gear for the former attorney general. Harshbarger still won Boston, but, in a heavily Democratic city, the roughly 25,000-vote margin was paltry. A more decisive victory in the city could have helped turn the tide against Cellucci, who won by only about 65,000 votes statewide.

Menino aides say the mayor's stinging remarks are not surprising -- Menino has long known that he has real differences with the governor, despite their good relationship. Menino spokesperson Jacque Goddard points out that the mayor -- who's also pushing a bill to extend benefits to welfare recipients enrolled in job training -- is a long-time critic of the Weld-Cellucci welfare policy.

But recent days have revealed how harshly Cellucci's policy and Menino's agenda can clash. The same week that Menino was linking the administration's welfare rules to hunger and homelessness, the governor emerged from the dustup over who would be the state's next education commissioner with a partial win that may not bode well for Menino's vision of Boston's schools. Although Cellucci guy Jim Peyser lost out on his bid to become commissioner, the resignation of John Silber as chair of the state's board of education let Cellucci appoint Peyser, the head of the conservative Pioneer Institute, to that post.

While Menino has made schools a top priority, Cellucci's appointee embraces ideas that some call hostile to strong public education. Peyser supports vouchers to help offset tuition at private schools -- essentially public subsidies for private institutions. Backers say vouchers spur competition and choice, but critics charge that they shortchange public education. Menino's school superintendent, Tom Payzant, is among the opponents. "He [Payzant] strongly sees education as a right, and if that education becomes market-driven, you will not have that equity in access," says school-department spokesperson Tracey Lynch.

Human-services advocates, meanwhile, say Cellucci's welfare policies pull the rug out from under his moderate-Republican image. "We are one of the very few states that is not allowing education and training to count toward the workfare or community-service requirement," says Sean Cahill, executive director of the Massachusetts Human Services Coalition. "And now that Cellucci is tightening the screws even further, proposing that welfare recipients work 30 hours per week instead of 20, that has taken us even further to the right." Menino, despite his friendship with Cellucci, may be discovering he doesn't want his city along for the ride.

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Boston's maligned bike messengers may face more regulation if Boston city councilor Stephen Murphy gets his way. Couriers are already required to be insured and to display licenses, rules stemming from a 1997 collision between a messenger and school-committee member William Spring that left Spring seriously injured. Last week, the at-large councilor called for a hearing into whether to ban "people engaged in the courier business" -- otherwise known as couriers -- from using "track bikes" that have no brakes. Murphy says he merely wants to learn whether the lightweight bikes, which have chains connected directly to the back wheel and stop when the rider stops pedaling, are a safety hazard. "I'm not sure there is a problem," he says. "I want to see how they [cyclists] stop with them if they do not have braking devices like regular bikes. I want to see if they can be stopped as quickly as other bicycles."

The track bikes have become more popular over the past three years, says messenger Tom Aldersey of Boston's BreadRunner Couriers, who credits fashion, lighter weight, and easier maintenance for the bikes' increased use. But Aldersey and BreadRunner manager Owen Carlson say the bikes are not hazards. "They are completely safe," says Carlson. "They are easier to maintain and they are easier to control. There is less sliding in bad weather. . . . A good track-bike rider can stop on a dime."

Still, Carlson, who likens slowing a track bike to downshifting in a car, says he can see why the odd-looking bikes may appear dangerous. "There are people who would argue that track bikes are safer, but it is a tough argument for someone who has not ridden one [to believe]," he concedes.

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Back Bay city councilor Tom Keane's Monday announcement that he would not seek reelection after three terms means the council will lose a thoughtful voice that's often independent of Mayor Menino.

It also paves the way for a race that may serve as a barometer of how much anger is really brewing in the Fenway and Back Bay over development proposals that neighborhood activists say threaten to overrun and, literally, overshadow the two neighborhoods.

For months, the Fenway Action Coalition and other groups have taken aim at the proposed Millennium Partners skyscraper over the Massachusetts Turnpike, the planned expansion of Fenway Park, the renovation of the old Sears building, and other plans that they say amount to a "siege" against the Fenway. "There is a tremendous amount of concern, and people are really uptight," says long-time Fenway resident Helen Cox, a member of the Fenway Action Coalition. "I think both projects [Fenway Park and the Millennium tower] will definitely be issues in the campaign."

One possible replacement for Keane is his predecessor, David Scondras. The openly gay Scondras, who lost narrowly to Keane in 1993, was thought all but dead politically after being beaten by a teenager he allegedly made a pass at in a movie theater in 1996. He now directs the organization Search for a Cure, which pushes for research and development in HIV and AIDS treatment.

But if he attempts a political rebirth, he could face plenty of competition for the seat. Within hours of Keane's announcement, a host of names were mentioned as possible candidates, including former at-large councilor Rosaria Salerno, former Eighth District and city-council candidate Anthony Schinella, and Lynda McNally, who challenged and lost to Keane the last time around.

Other possible contenders include Suzanne Iannella, who had planned to run as an at-large candidate, and attorney and neighborhood activist Peter Flynn, who says he's leaning toward a run.

Keane has looked to leave the council before; he ran a good campaign for the Eighth Congressional District last year but finished a disappointing ninth in the 10-person field. Since 1994, he has staked out a quirky mix of positions, sponsoring the city's domestic-partnership ordinance and opposing the living-wage measure that ultimately passed the council. "I promised six years ago I would stay in office six years," says Keane. "I think I have done a good job and want to leave on a high note."

Keane says he plans to devote himself full-time to his work with the venture-capital firm Murphy and Partners, where he has continued to work during his council term. And he says there's a strong chance he'll seek office again.

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