Talking trash

Mike Flaherty knows your woes

by Ben Geman

Ask Mike Flaherty why he should be on the Boston City Council, and the 30-year-old South Boston lawyer answers that he's one of the people. "I have the children, the rent, the car payments," he says Sunday afternoon as he and David Breen, his partner in campaigning for the afternoon, leave Boston's Sheraton Hotel midway through the 1999 Barney [Frank] Awards. "These are the issues on people's minds in the city, and they are the issues that I face on a daily basis."

By the time Breen's car pulls away from the event, hosted by the Bay State Gay and Lesbian Democrats and the National Stonewall Democratic Federation, Flaherty has made that case to all kinds of people. He's logged hours of "Hi how are ya Mike Flaherty running for city council citywide I'd appreciate your vote" today, having also unleashed his spiel earlier on breakfast crowds and passersby in Hyde Park and Dorchester.

Now he's on his way to a place that's not nearly as much a part of the city's political power structure as Hyde Park -- the South End. The visit gets off to an auspicious start when he and Breen find a parking space just big enough for the car. Breen, an attorney with the city's law department who worked with Flaherty at Roxbury District Court, manages to navigate deftly into the spot. "That's my Southie training," he says. But culturally speaking, they're miles from Flaherty's base.

First stop: the packed and noisy Fritz, a mostly gay bar and eatery attached to the Chandler Inn. Clutching a bottle of Pure Pride spring water, the i dotted with a pink triangle, Flaherty works the room, looking a bit out of place in his black suit and green print tie. "Next time you should wear jeans and a polo shirt," advises a diner hunched over a large drink with a celery stalk sticking out of it. Flaherty, a slightly stocky medium-sized guy with prematurely gray hair and pale green-brown eyes, surveys his outfit. "Well," he explains, "I was just at an event . . . "

But at least he's getting a chance to practice his constituent-service skills.

"Do you know how to get to Casa Romero?" asks one man.

"Casa Romero? Yeah, that's in the Back Bay," Flaherty answers, pointing north. "You go up this street, go straight, take a left."

But that's not the biggest issue he is confronted with, either at Fritz or later at Francesca's, a Tremont Street coffee shop where he makes similar rounds. He gets an earful when he approaches one packed table of neighborhood residents at Fritz. They're angry about the South End's continuing trash crisis, complaining that the city's street cleaner comes by the day before garbage is put out, and then people who eke out a living collecting returnable bottles make a mess by tearing open trash bags.

Flaherty engages the diners seriously, listening as they describe their efforts to pick up trash and get city officials to deal with the issue. He commends their willingness to take action on their own. "It's important that people stay in the city and make that commitment," he tells one resident. "It's one thing to buy a house; it's another to get involved, step up to the plate." But as the conversation moves on, it hits a roadblock: one of these civically involved men is not a registered voter. Not yet, anyway. Flaherty whips out the first piece of scrap paper available and scribbles down the guy's name and address.

"Hey," he adds later, as he circles the table shaking hands before moving on, "I'm the trash man!"

Flaherty estimates that with his visits to Fritz and Francesca's, he's picked up roughly 10 votes -- but every little bit counts, considering that he finished about 1800 votes short of a spot in the top four in the September 21 preliminary election. In a low-turnout election -- which most city elections are, especially when the economy is good and there's no mayor's race -- it's afternoons like this that help tip the balance.

Flaherty, son of former South Boston state rep Michael Flaherty, is campaigning to the left of the traditional voting base in a city where whites and social conservatives have long called the shots. He hopes to get more gays and lesbians, minorities, and liberals to the polls in November's final election, which tends to draw a less conservative crowd than the diehards-only preliminary.

But is the council's political character ready for change? That's what Fritz general manager Bill Svetz, who supported Flaherty in his failed 1995 run, wants to know. Flaherty is diplomatic when Svetz asks him if he thinks Dapper O'Neil, an enduring symbol of a less tolerant city, could be in trouble this year. "I think the electorate that comes out in the final [election] will be a little bit different," says Flaherty, choosing his words carefully. If the trash man trades his tie in for a polo shirt and continues pressing the flesh in places like the South End, he may just prove himself right.