Jamaica strain

City Councilor Maura Hennigan is in the political fight of her life. Will her home neighborhood of JP bail her out?

by Ben Geman

Centre Street, which runs through the heart of Jamaica Plain, is as restless and changeable a strip as you can find in early-to-bed Boston. Each side of the street is crowded with carved-up houses and apartments and condos; it's home to an array of shops and restaurants offering food from Cuba or Italy or India, and just about anywhere else.

Continue along the street, though, past the Arnold Arboretum, and a different scene emerges. By the time Centre Street meets the West Roxbury Parkway at the rotary overlook by the Holy Name Church, the houses are more spread out, the terrain less urban. Soon you're in West Roxbury, a place with fewer restaurants with food from fewer places, and, at night, a lot fewer people. It's an older neighborhood where the faded sign for Tab soda sticking out from Steve Slyne's Deli is not an intentional piece of retro-cool.

The distinction between the two neighborhoods is obvious to one merchant who's been parked on the sleepier stretch of Centre Street for nearly 20 years. "Jamaica Plain, you could say, is more artistic," says Moses Hasson, from behind the counter of West Roxbury Framing. "Here it's more blue-collar, very quiet. In the evening there's very little activity. A couple of bars here and down the street, but after that, too much you don't see."

One thing you do see in West Roxbury -- more than in Jamaica Plain -- is unmistakable evidence that we're in the middle of an election season. Signs perched on lawns and atop businesses trumpet the re-election pitches of city-council candidates.

And one thing you see in city-election results is that more people vote in slowpoke West Roxbury than in funky Jamaica Plain. During the preliminary election, turnout in much of Jamaica Plain was terrible: 12 percent, for example, in the parts of Wards 10 and 11 that fall in JP. That's peanuts compared with the 33 percent turnout in the sections of Ward 20 that belong to West Roxbury.

But despite the differences between Jamaica Plain and West Roxbury, the two neighborhoods share one city councilor: Maura Hennigan, who has represented the divided district since 1983 (she has served on the council since 1981). Says JP resident Maryfaith Goessling, walking with two companions to Oriental de Cuba restaurant in JP's Hyde Square on a recent Friday night, Hennigan has been there when she's needed her. "She works in the community here," says Goessling, who's part of a neighborhood crime watch. "When I have a problem, she is there."

It's a sentiment echoed at the other end of District Six. West Roxbury resident John Padula says Hennigan's work on opening the Lyndon Pilot School in West Roxbury -- and her continued work with parents -- has put him in her corner. Standing outside the Roche Brothers supermarket in West Roxbury on a recent afternoon, Padula, whose daughter attends the school, says he "saw her [Hennigan] at a lot of school meetings and got to know her."

"That was really my introduction," adds Padula, who now volunteers with Hennigan's campaign. "I'm not really political. But since then I've been involved with her and the issues she deals in."

With this type of voter sentiment behind her, unseating Hennigan would appear tough. But still, the numbers are worrisome for the incumbent. In September's preliminary election, in which Hennigan placed first, a majority of voters cast their ballot for other candidates. Second-place finisher John Tobin won 2516 votes; third-place finisher Mike Rush, who got knocked out, won 1834 votes. Hennigan had 3462. That's 888 votes fewer than her two challengers combined, although it's anyone's guess who will get Rush's votes in the final election. Given that Tobin and Rush are both from West Roxbury, the preliminary results were bad news for Hennigan.

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John Tobin is a 30-year-old West Roxbury resident, and he wants Maura Hennigan's job. In many ways, this is not an ideological fight: it's about the nuts and bolts. Still, the race has not been pleasant. Tobin has whacked Hennigan hard, and she's shot back with equal ferocity.

The reasons for the acrimony are obvious. Tobin has built much of his campaign around the idea that Hennigan has outlived her usefulness. We've waited long enough is the operating principle here. "We've waited long enough for a councilor who will put residents' needs before those of developers," as one piece of Tobin campaign literature says. "We've waited long enough. We need a district councilor who will make education a priority," reads another. "We've waited too long for action" blares a third. You get the picture.

"People say I have been hard on her. Not at all. We are dealing with facts." says Tobin. "In the last eight to 10 years Maura has just not been there."

Tobin's rationale for taking Hennigan on again -- he also ran in 1995 -- is not based on any particular position she holds, though they do have differences of opinion. She is for expanding the Lyndon School, for example; he is against it. But I'LL STOP LYNDON SCHOOL EXPANSION IF IT COMES UP AGAIN is not much of a rallying cry.

Instead, Tobin is running because, he says, he'd be more active and energetic on issues that both candidates agree are crucial. He pledges he'll fight harder for the construction of more schools. He'll make sure that potholes are filled immediately -- if not sooner. He'll fight harder for affordable housing. Rents are skyrocketing in Jamaica Plain, and Tobin wonders how people will pay their mortgages in West Roxbury if the economy goes sour.

Warming up over pancakes at Jamaica Plain's Same Old Place restaurant on a recent Friday morning, after an hour of shivering and greeting passersby at Jamaica Plain's Stony Brook T station, Tobin says he's seen the impact of the housing crisis firsthand. The poor state of the city's schools, too. Not long ago, his best friend got married and bolted out of the city, for Rockland. "They could not afford a mortgage and they were leery of the schools," he says. "It really hurts our friendship. I only see the guy once every couple of weeks." It's not the first time he's seen this happen. The days are gone, he laments, when 30 buddies would crowd into a friend's house to watch a baseball game.

Hennigan, Tobin asserts, hasn't been aggressive enough in responding to housing issues. Nor has she dealt with the pressing needs of the schools and the disrepair of the streets, he says. He also doesn't understand Hennigan's support for city-council president James Kelly of South Boston, whom he's pledged to vote against. The council president should be an at-large councilor, not a district councilor, he says. And, he adds, Kelly's conservative politics are not right for the city. "I don't think he speaks for the people of District Six, that's for sure," he says. "A city as diverse as Boston needs someone as city-council president who is sensitive to the many needs of the people of Boston. I think we can do better."

He remembers the time a few years ago when Kelly temporarily blocked a resolution condemning the burning of African-
American churches in the South, ostensibly because it had little to do with council business. "What's that about, picking fights about that?" he asks, shaking his head.

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When Hennigan ran for an open state-senate seat in late 1997, she picked a fight about something else: the death penalty.

The 47-year-old ran in the special election for the seat being vacated by State Senator Paul White at a time when the death-penalty issue was very much alive on Beacon Hill. Hennigan pushed her pro-death-penalty agenda hard, even using photos in her campaign literature of slain Cambridge youth Jeffrey Curley, whose father became a strong advocate for reinstating capital punishment in Massachusetts.

It blew up in her face. Hennigan lost the race badly. Most telling, she lost in Jamaica Plain, her home neighborhood. Now many wonder whether progressive JP voters will turn out to rescue Hennigan at the polls.

"Hennigan's challenge," says one Democratic insider, "is to go back to Jamaica Plain, the moderate to liberal crowd in Jamaica Plain, and to re-
establish her relationship with them, which was damaged by the state-senate race, and get them to the polls."

David Vaughn, a political consultant who ran unsuccessfully against Hennigan in 1995 and is supporting Tobin in this race, says Hennigan's penchant for seeking higher office and supporting the death penalty may catch up with her this time. The 1997 loss in JP was "breathtaking," he says. "That one left a lasting taste in people's mouths."

Although no city councilor will ever have a vote on whether the death penalty returns to Massachusetts, even some of Hennigan's supporters say the issue can't be written off as irrelevant. (Tobin does not support the death penalty.) "The death penalty is not a city-council issue, but I think her stance there, her vocal support for the death penalty, has hurt her in the eyes of many liberal voters," says Jamaica Plain resident Jeremy Pittman, chair of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Political Alliance of Massachusetts, which backs Hennigan.

Brian Wallace, a local journalist and former City Hall employee who recently joined at-large councilor Francis "Mickey" Roache's staff, says that Hennigan's continued quest for higher office -- she's run for state senate twice and auditor once -- will come back to haunt her. "Every time you turn around she is running for something else, and that has an effect on the psyche over there," he says. "Jim Kelly is not looking at other races. People know what Jimmy is running for."

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Kelly represents a district that has similarities to Hennigan's. It encompasses the South End and South Boston, two neighborhoods that are geographically close, but culturally miles apart. Hennigan "has the spectrum from very progressive to conservative in her constituency," points out Frank Jones, a Jamaica Plain resident and attorney who made two unsuccessful runs for councilor at large in 1995 and 1997. Kelly, who gets tremendous support from voters in South Boston, need not worry about the fact that many South End residents don't agree with his politics. But Hennigan has to play to both ends of her district -- which probably accounts for the biennial challenges to her seat. Tobin's support lies clearly in West Roxbury. His campaign-finance records, for instance, show that the bulk of his money came in small donations from West Roxbury addresses. In order to win, Hennigan will need the JP voters who stayed home during the preliminary election to support her in the final.

Tobin acknowledges that the different political views within the district are not always compatible. "Has my view on abortion affected me in JP? Absolutely," says Tobin, who, unlike Hennigan, is pro-life. "Has my view on domestic partnership [both candidates are for it] affected me in West Roxbury? Absolutely. Has opposing Jimmy Kelly helped me in Jamaica Plain? Probably. Has it hurt me in West Roxbury? Probably."

Jamaica Plain is one of the city's most diverse neighborhoods, with a sizable gay and lesbian community. Artists and writers rub shoulders with blue-collar workers. JP resident Mari Perez-Alers, 26, says the neighborhood offers a sense of place unlike any other she's seen in Boston, where she's lived for a decade. The most important goal for a councilor, she says, "is to keep the sense of community that distinguished Jamaica Plain from the other places that I have lived in Boston." But soaring rents threaten that quality, as Hennigan and Tobin agree. In a city where housing prices are spinning out of control in every neighborhood, JP, with its mishmash of cultures and tastes, seems particularly fragile.

"Jamaica Plain remains important because of the image, the symbol -- it's symbolic of the kind of community where people are supportive of one another and by and large tolerant," says Frank Jones. "That still pertains to JP, and that's why people want to live there. It's interesting and ironic that it's that positive quality that attracts people to JP and thereby increases the cost of living there."

Whoever is elected will have the weight of Jamaica Plain on his or her shoulders. "The housing crisis is driving out our diversity," says long-time JP resident Betsaida Gutierrez, coordinator of the Latino home-buying program for the community-development corporation City Life/Vida Urbana. "What's at stake is our community."

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Hennigan was a public-school teacher in Boston before she was elected to the council in 1981. When she talks about Tobin, she exhibits the irritation of a teacher at the end of her rope with a student who is not making any headway. "He'll just say something," she says. "But the point is, he has obviously not done the research."

Seated at a window booth of the JP Licks ice-cream shop on a recent afternoon, Hennigan is showing the strain of the campaign. She has her literature, her opponent's literature, and other documents spread out beside a barely touched cup of coffee. Hennigan, often a low-key and measured presence at city-council hearings, is clearly exasperated with what she calls Tobin's misrepresentation of her record and what she perceives as his shaky understanding of municipal government. After all these years, one thing Hennigan understands is what councilors can and can't do. And the limited power of councilors is something that she says Tobin doesn't get.

His campaign literature, for example, asks why, with "$100 million in surplus," Hennigan hasn't been able to do more for the neighborhood. He wants expanded kindergarten, for one thing. "She's been here 18 years," Tobin says. "Where's the K-1 [expanded kindergarten]? Where's the new schools?"

Hennigan's response can be summed up as: get a clue. Tobin, she says, should educate himself. City councilors approve the city budget. They have a bully pulpit. But they don't set school policy. And, much to their dismay, they sure as hell don't have $100 million to toss around. "It's not free cash. You can't just take it out and write a check," she says. "And he doesn't have to take it from me. Talk to the chief financial officer."

On another issue where their opinions diverge -- her support of Kelly's presidency -- Hennigan also says Tobin is failing to grasp the reality of council life. Although her social politics clash with Kelly's, Hennigan says, her support for him has helped get her assignments to the ways-and-means and housing committees, and that makes up for it all. "He [Kelly] has his faults and his merits," she says. "He's allowed me to be in a position where I have been able to do an awful lot for the district."

Such as advocating for the opening of the Lyndon Pilot School and helping get a city van that offers mammograms up and running. If re-elected, Hennigan would push for education programs about heart disease in women, and for more pilot schools. "I can't wave my magic wand and say 1-2-3-4," she says. "But I can hold the school committee's feet to the fire."

"The bottom line," she adds, "is that Jimmy Kelly is not on the ballot. I am."

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The death penalty, school expansion, the city budget, and the maintenance of city streets are live issues in this election. But Hennigan's toughest challenge has been the personal attacks. For almost a year, Tobin has been offering variations on the theme that Hennigan can't go the distance for the district. He looks at his candidacy as part of this year's youth movement, which includes candidates such as 30-year-old Mike Flaherty and 24-year-old Greg Timilty, who are running for at-large slots, and 27-year-old Mike Ross, who's running in District Eight. "There's a new generation coming up," Tobin says. "It is time for us to take the lead."

Hennigan, a marathon runner, doesn't buy it. "How many marathons do you think he runs after he's 40?" she says. "If he thinks I am tired and washed up, we'll see how well he does after 40."

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