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	Urban plight There’s no easy solution to Susan Passoni’s problem. If Passoni — a former financial analyst who’s challenging 11-term incumbent Jimmy Kelly for the right to represent South Boston, Chinatown, and part of the South End on the Boston City Council — is going to have any chance, she’ll need to woo prospective constituents who have moved to vote-rich South Boston in recent years: gays, voters of color, Boston newcomers. But if Passoni courts them too aggressively, she could alienate long-time South Bostonians. And without at least some support in Southie, Passoni, who lives in the South End, simply cannot win. Last Sunday, with the temperature pushing into the 90s, the candidate’s dilemma was evident as she knocked on doors in Southie’s Dorchester Heights. Going from house to house, Passoni — a striking woman with close-cropped white hair — hews to a low-key, inoffensive script. I’m Susan Passoni, running for city council in District Two. Just wanted to put a face to the name. Any issues you’re concerned about? Check out my Web site — hope I can count on your vote! One middle-aged white woman gives Passoni the perfect response: "You don’t need to say anything — we’re already ready to sign on." Others are more cautious. One 50-ish man listens patiently to Passoni’s script, but strikes a pessimistic tone when she’s out of earshot. "Jimmy Kelly’s well respected in the community," he says. "It will be very difficult for anyone to beat him." At a townhouse near the end of the block, a shirtless, incredibly buff black man emerges and greets Passoni on his doorstep. After the two discuss Passoni’s fiscal plan, he asks her about Kelly. "I think it’s time for a change," she answers. "He’s been in office 22 years. The city’s changing, and I think it’s time that someone reflected that change." "And the changing face of Southie? How do you feel about that?" Passoni is tentative: "In terms of ..." "Hello!" he retorts, slightly impatient. "Um — me?" Passoni’s answer, when it finally comes, is Menino-esque in its inscrutability. "I think it’s important to maintain the diversity of the neighborhoods," she says. "That’s really the fabric of the city." When Passoni is gone, this gentleman — who moved from the South End a few years back, and says he and his husband feel generally comfortable in Southie — seems ambivalent. "She was sidestepping," he says. "But that was an in-her-face question; I was just curious to see how she’d react to it." So will she get his vote? "I believe that it’s time for Mr. Kelly to step down," he replies." "But I don’t know her. I don’t know her story. I just need more information." — AR

Allen’s pigskin preoccupation is not without risks. To begin with — and to state the obvious — his approach has questionable analytical value. Furthermore, the prospect of importing the ethos of big-time football into the White House may give some voters pause. The partisans who will decide the 2008 primaries might relish the aggression Allen displayed at the 1994 Virginia Republican convention, when he offered the following anti-Democratic exhortation: "My friends — and I say this figuratively — let’s enjoy knocking their soft teeth down their whiny throats." But in a competitive primary like the one the Republicans face in ’08, Allen’s opponents would get great mileage from this kind of nugget.

They’ll have plenty of material. Thanks, perhaps, to the fact that sensitivity is not prized on the gridiron, Allen’s past raises a few red flags. For example, there’s the youthful love of violence Jennifer Allen meticulously describes in Fifth Quarter: throwing one brother through a sliding glass door, breaking another brother’s collarbone, dragging his sister upstairs by her hair. "George hoped some day to become a dentist. George said he saw dentistry as a perfect profession — getting paid to make people suffer," Jennifer Allen writes. "Instead, George became a lawyer and went into politics." When I mention his sister’s reminiscences, Allen is jocular ("Wouldn’t you all love to have your sister write a book about you as kids!"), then defiant ("Growing up in a football family, were we rowdy? Yes!"), then penitent ("I was not an angel, I’ll admit that").

Allen’s track record on racial issues will likely be mentioned as well. During the 2000 senatorial campaign, incumbent Chuck Robb attacked his attitudes on race, telling voters that Allen once kept a hangman’s noose in his law office and a Confederate flag in his home. Allen insisted then that Robb’s description was unfair, and continues to do so today. The flag was part of a large collection, he explains in Manchester, and the alleged noose should be seen in context. "Aw, shoot," Allen says grumpily. "In my law office, I had wagon wheels, I had harnesses, I had all this Western stuff. Somebody gave that to my secretary and I had it there for a while — it had nothing to do with anything but the Western motif." Then it’s back to football for some quick reassurance. "In a roundabout way," Allen says, "if you have the ball, they’re gonna be after it. Just get used to it."

A no-parole kind of guy

Before Allen can run for president, he needs to keep his Senate seat next year. This may prove surprisingly easy; although a few Democrats are mentioned as possible opponents, none has yet declared, even though political observers say the right candidate could give Allen a serious challenge.

If Allen does become a presidential candidate, it may be that his baggage — which he’s managed pretty well while running statewide in Virginia — will be harder to overcome in a national campaign. "Allen hasn’t ever had a really tough race," another Virginia Democrat argues. "He’s never had the kind of focus on him that he’ll have in a presidential race." Then again, Allen has a born politician’s knack for turning his weaknesses into assets. Just this month, for example, he co-sponsored the Senate’s formal apology for its inaction on lynching earlier this century — a decision, Allen insists, that had no connection to the noose controversy.

Furthermore, Allen’s résumé and attitude are likely to play well with Republican-primary voters. As governor, he cut welfare rolls and instituted paternity-identification requirements for welfare recipients; in addition, he tells the crowd in Manchester, he "stopped listening to the criminal apologists" and abolished parole in Virginia’s prisons. In the Senate, Allen has been a lead voice for keeping the federal government— or as he says, the "federales" — from taxing the Internet. Throughout his political career, he’s been a staunch opponent of abortion rights. And as chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), Allen helped the GOP add four seats in that chamber while knocking off the man he calls the "chief obstructionist," former Senate minority leader Tom Daschle. (As it turns out, Allen’s stint at the NRSC was a political gold mine. It gave him good lines for his stump speech. It helped him forge ties with colleagues who could help him in a national run. And it provided him with a new political guru — GOP operative Dick Wadhams, who helped Republican John Thune defeat Daschle and later joined Allen as his chief of staff.)

Democratic critics complain that Allen’s record as governor hardly suggests he’d be a competent commander in chief, and point to his zeal for new prison construction — which proved both unnecessary and expensive — as a cautionary example. (One Virginia political columnist accused Allen of "spending like a Democrat" while governor, and of helping create "fiscal chaos" in Virginia.) "It’s true that he has an ingratiating style and an easy smile," Kevin Griffis, the communications director for the Virginia Democratic Party, says in an e-mail. "Set against his record, however, I think people are going to see through it and notice that it’s the smile of a grade-A political weasel."

Maybe so. Still, it’s worth noting that the Democrats who waited for something similar to happen in the last two presidential elections were gravely disappointed. Allen may be heavy on style and light on substance. But in the current American political landscape, that’s no barrier to success.

Adam Reilly can be reached at areilly[a]phx.com