E-Mail This Article to a Friend Metamorphosis, continued

All this was bad enough, Hennigan recalls. But to make matters worse, some of her colleagues suggested that, as a district councilor representing Jamaica Plain and West Roxbury, she shouldn’t concern herself with the back-and-forth surrounding the team’s future plans.

As Hennigan tells it, once her frustration reached critical mass, she resolved to seek the city’s top job this year. With that goal in mind, she left her district seat in 2001 and ran for a citywide council seat — something she hadn’t done since 1981, the year of her first council campaign. "That’s when I’m saying, ‘I want to change things,’ " Hennigan says today. "I have an awful lot of knowledge and experience, based on people being good enough to send me to do what I do for all these years. So shame on me if I don’t do the very best with it."

As far as epiphanies go, this one isn’t especially poetic or inspiring. (It also may not be the whole story: Hennigan barely kept her district seat in 1999, beating current District Six councilor John Tobin by less than 1000 votes, and she might well have lost her district seat if she’d faced Tobin again two years later.) But while a more compelling eureka moment might have helped Hennigan make her case to voters, the important thing, at this point, is what she would do as mayor. And Hennigan promises that the first year of her administration would be an eventful one.

Here’s her current to-do list: Begin a push toward full-day schooling with an eye toward rolling out after-school programs at 15 Boston public schools in the 2006-’07 academic year. Yank the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s (BRA) planning functions and give them to a brand-new city agency. Audit every single city department, including the BRA, to determine where money is being spent wisely and where it isn’t. File legislation to prohibit any Boston mayor from serving more than two four-year terms. Finally, start planning for a referendum on whether Boston should bring back an elected school committee.

The merits of these ideas can be debated. The current appointed school committee may do little more than rubber-stamp Superintendent Tom Payzant’s proposals, but that doesn’t mean that re-politicizing public education is a good idea (See "Chaos Theory," News and Features, April 15.). And while the BRA’s utter lack of accountability is troubling — witness the sad story of the Gaiety Theatre (See "Curtain Call," News and Features, October 15, 2004.) — a new planning agency would require a vast new bureaucracy that would, in all likelihood, cost the city a lot of money at a time when revenue is tight. But compared with Menino, whose big idea for a fourth term seems to be putting more global-positioning devices on Boston’s public-works vehicles, Hennigan at least seems to have a modicum of vision for the city.

IS THERE A CHANCE?

So why are there still so many doubters?

Part of Hennigan’s problem is structural. Ask any native Bostonian, and they’ll tell you that Boston’s political scene is far less vibrant than it used to be. Demographics are one reason: while the city’s overall population has dropped in recent decades, many new Bostonians, from non-English-speaking immigrants to affluent out-of-state transplants, are still politically disengaged.

As mayor, meanwhile, Menino presides over a workforce of some 16,000 full-time city employees — and thanks to loyalty, fear, or some combination of the two, most of them can be expected to support the guy who signs their paychecks. Throw in the low turnout that’s characterized recent elections (in 1983, when Flynn topped Mel King, 70 percent of Boston voters went to the polls; in 2001, when Menino beat Davis-Mullen, just 35 percent did), and incumbency is more powerful than ever.

The advantages of being a third-term mayor don’t stop there. Menino’s fundraising base is rock-solid, and he’s capable of getting out the vote in any neighborhood in the city. What’s more, under Boston’s strong-mayor form of government, Menino exercises a remarkable amount of control over every aspect of city government — and he’s more than willing to make life difficult for real or perceived opponents. Consequently, anyone who might be inclined to publicly support Hennigan, or even to give her a forum to make her case, has to weigh their own interests first.

Last week’s citywide candidate’s forum at RoxVOTE, a new organization dedicated to cultivating political engagement, is a case in point. When Menino opted not to participate, organizers informed Hennigan that she wouldn’t be allowed to speak either. This decision was both craven and savvy: RoxVOTE was founded by the Madison Park Community Development Corporation, which needs all the largesse it can get from City Hall.

That said, Hennigan may not be blameless when it comes to her credibility deficit. The mayor may be, as Hennigan’s campaign manager Mitch Kates famously put it, "a big teddy bear with drool coming from his mouth," but Hennigan’s own political aesthetics are hardly perfect. When she picks up conversational momentum, Hennigan can speak compellingly about big problems facing the city. Too often, though, she leads with a hokey earnestness that calls to mind a substitute teacher you remember from high school — one who, despite the best intentions, is fated to not be taken seriously.

On a more substantive level, Hennigan isn’t helped by her own political ambiguity. Earlier in her career, Hennigan was known as one of the "Kelly Girls," a cadre of female councilors who routinely backed conservative South Boston councilor Jimmy Kelly for council president. And in 1997 — during an unsuccessful state-senate campaign, and shortly after the gruesome murder of Jeffrey Curley — Hennigan identified herself as a strong supporter of the death penalty. Today, however, she claims to be an unequivocal death-penalty opponent. And Hennigan routinely sides with the council’s progressive contingent, which includes her at-large colleague Felix Arroyo and district councilors Charles Yancey and Chuck Turner.

So what’s her political identity? When the question is broached in an interview with the Phoenix, Hennigan offers the following: "It really is the people. It’s the grass roots — they are really the ones that I have always resonated with. And over the years, you know, I’ve really pretty much stayed very true to kind of what I always feel — you know, really is my calling, is, you know. Always, you know, speak to, you know, the people who are in the local businesses — the people who work in the local daycare centers, the people who are the teachers and firefighters and custodians. It’s really the people out in the neighborhoods — the blue collar, the white collar. These are the people who I have always resonated with, and I’ve always tried to stay true to that." It’s a dishearteningly Menino-esque answer.

And yet, with the mayoral campaign entering its home stretch, Hennigan has managed — through sheer force of will — to inject the race with a modicum of competitiveness. Her success in the WGBH forum lent her instant credibility. That, in turn, has been bolstered by her willingness to spend real money to attack Menino’s record. In the past few weeks, the local media — thanks both to Hennigan’s tenacity and to their own desire for a competitive contest — have been shining a bright light on Menino’s concrete record, as well as the more subjectively gauged flaws (arrogance, inertia, lack of imagination) that increasingly characterize his tenure.

In other words, Hennigan has already won a moral victory. An actual win on November 8 still looks unlikely. But the election could be closer than Menino and his supporters would care for. "The mayor’s in a lot more trouble than he thinks," insists one pro-Hennigan political observer. "If he’s taking this for granted, he’s making a big mistake."

The reception Hennigan received at the Boston Water and Sewer Commission earlier this week seems to bear this out. On a blustery Monday morning, Hennigan walked between the two entrances of the commission’s Roxbury headquarters, promising the arriving workers that their jobs would be safe if she’s elected. The response was surprisingly enthusiastic. "You’ll get a lot of votes," a heavyset man predicted. "I heard your debate," a middle-age woman said a minute later. "Excellent! And you look better in person." "I’m gonna vote for you," another worker promised.

Later, as Hennigan stood outside the building’s service entrance, deep in conversation with another worker who’d ducked out for a cigarette break, I asked a departing employee for his take on the race. "I’d like to see Maura Hennigan get in," he said. "I think it’s time for a change. Menino’s doing a good job, but I think it’s time for a change." And the conventional wisdom that has Hennigan faring about as well as Davis-Mullen? "I never heard of Peggy Davis," he answered. "But I heard of Maura." If enough Bostonians agree, next month’s election could be more dramatic than anyone expects.

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