Senate

State Senator Robert Travaglini of East Boston will be just the third Senate president since 1978. Birmingham has led the 40-member body since 1996. Before that, South Boston’s William Bulger was in charge. The shift in power from Bulger to Birmingham brought huge change. For one thing, Birmingham was a true progressive. (Bulger, a social conservative who ran the Senate with an iron grip, had turned to Birmingham, in part out of a sense of loyalty and devotion to Birmingham’s father Jack Birmingham, who had once been a legal client of Bulger’s.) For another, Birmingham’s Senate was much more open.

What will Travaglini bring? A little of both, observers say. Travaglini comes to the Senate presidency with a mix of Bulger’s and Birmingham’s portfolios. Like them, he comes from an old, densely populated city neighborhood. He’s less cerebral than his two predecessors. Bulger, who liked to rail against the city elites, fancied himself something of a classicist. The Chelsea-born Birmingham, of course, is a Harvard-educated Rhodes scholar. Travaglini, a graduate of Boston State College, doesn’t have that sort of intellectual pedigree. But, as a former Boston city councilor and former Senate majority whip, he is a process-oriented creature of politics who knows as much as anyone about how to get things done on Beacon Hill. While he lacks Birmingham’s reputation as a protector of education reform and social programs, Travaglini is a supporter of a single-payer system of health insurance. (Not that we’ll see anything like it during this period of fiscal frugality.) Like Birmingham, he has also received major backing from the trade unions over the years.

Says one state political insider and long-time Travaglini watcher: "Travaglini will be the social conscience. I wouldn’t say he’s a fiscal liberal and a social liberal, but he moves more to the left than Finneran. Travaglini will try harder to help find the money for those less fortunate among us." In other words, Travaglini is no Birmingham, but he’s the best hope (the only hope, really) of progressives who want to blunt the impact of Romney’s almost-certain budget cuts to human services and education reform.

Still, it’s easy to envision Travaglini — a realist and veteran of Boston’s political culture — forging accommodations with the fiscally and socially conservative House Speaker Tom Finneran, with whom he will be developing next year’s budget. The area most likely to reflect this is education reform. One of the reasons the state budget has always been late over the last several years — particularly in 1999 — is that Birmingham simply refused to sign off on any budget agreement that failed to adequately fund the 1993 education-reform law, which Birmingham helped write and which provides educational funding for cities and towns based on need as well as on student performance. Interestingly, Travaglini may be better suited to govern during this time of government penury. Without money to invest in programs such as education and health care, the big-thinking Birmingham would have been enormously frustrated. Perhaps in the current era, the less ambitious the leader, the better.

House of Representatives

The year begins with a leadership challenge to the hugely unpopular Finneran (hugely unpopular with the public, that is, not with the representatives who keep electing him their leader) from State Representative Byron Rushing of the South End. Nobody believes there is a chance Finneran will lose his leadership spot (the vote will take place after the Phoenix goes to press). But the symbolic run is aimed, in part, at pressuring Finneran to open up the legislative process. (It also holds interest as a potential tool in the 2004 House elections: reformers may use a vote for Finneran as a candidate litmus test in district races.)

Finneran’s autocratic style of governing — bottling up in committees measures ranging from the progressive domestic-partnership bill and legislation mandating gender-neutral insurance coverage to the good-government-oriented fire-proof-cigarettes measure, and punishing those who vote against his wishes — has long been a sore spot with many members of the legislature whose priorities differ from the Speaker’s. Yet the issue of challenging Finneran is so sensitive and politically charged that a group of reform-minded legislators who recently met in a downtown restaurant to strategize ways to get their bills to the floor actually tried to hide from Louis Rizoli, the House counsel, who happened to be dining there that day.

It will be interesting to see how Finneran does with Romney in the governor’s office. Finneran’s rise to power coincided with the leadership of weak Republican governors. When he became Speaker, in 1995, Finneran had a relatively easy time making mincemeat of the already disengaged Weld, and an even easier time running circles around Cellucci and Swift. His approach toward Romney already seems different, however. It’s as if the wily Finneran were trying to co-opt the new governor. Romney and Finneran convened a cozy lunch at Locke-Ober last month to prepare for the new administration; Finneran also conducted a jocular interview with Romney last week when the Speaker served as a substitute host for Jay Severin on 96.9 FM. As more than one observer has already pointed out, both Finneran and Romney are fiscal conservatives who also hold conservative views on social issues. They have a lot in common. Much more than Finneran and Weld, Finneran and Cellucci, or Finneran and Swift.

Those close to the outgoing Senate president are quick to point out that while Finneran served on the conference committee that established education reform, he never signed off on the measure. That means that when it comes to cutting, the Speaker may actually have it in for education reform. Finneran may see some of his overall power diminish on Beacon Hill, though he’s likely retain a solid grip on the House. But state government under Romney may suit Finneran just fine.

So instead of having a "Gang of Three," as Romney charged, 2003 may just see a "Gang of Two."

Seth Gitell can be reached at sgitell[a]phx.com