E-Mail This Article to a Friend En garde, old guard (continued)

SPEND A FEW minutes with Avi Green, and it’s difficult — as patronizing as it sounds — not to feel a bit of sympathy for his opponent. With his florid complexion, severely cut white hair, and standard-issue State House garb, Toomey looks like a sort of relic — the quintessential Irish pol. Green, in contrast, is a sharp-dressing metrosexual blessed with chiseled features and an intense gaze. And while Toomey’s hushed, rapid speech often verges on a mumble, Green is articulate and poised — the benefits, perhaps, of his education at Columbia University and Harvard’s Kennedy School, or his experience managing Jarrett Barrios’s first campaign for state rep in 1988, or his stint working for Barrios’s partner Doug Hattaway, the high-powered Democratic political consultant.

To hear Green tell it, he and Toomey probably don’t belong in the same party. In addition to criticizing Toomey on gun control, Green claims his opponent was complicit in the social-services cutbacks of recent budget cycles, pans his 1999 vote against indexing the minimum wage to inflation, and condemns his position on abortion. (Toomey — who is Catholic — says he’s committed to state-sponsored contraceptive programs, but that abortion should be restricted to cases of rape or incest or when a mother’s life is in danger. He’s also opposed buffer zones for protesters at abortion clinics.)

By playing up his roots in the district, Toomey is playing "identity politics" with the campaign, Green claims. When the subject comes up, Green jokes dismissively: "Yes — ‘He played ball in these fields. ’" Then he gets serious. "I’ve lived here for seven years, my fiancée’s from here, I love this place, and I’d like to stay," Green says. "If you’re someone who’s an import — and a huge number of people in our community are — you have to approach the community with a little bit of humbleness. I need to be open to really listening to the new people, the old people, the new immigrants, everyone in the community. None of these three groups have an exclusive right to government."

Green also whacks Toomey for doing double duty as a state rep and Cambridge city councilor — an arrangement he says pays almost $120,000 annually, forces Toomey to campaign every year, and marginalizes the Somerville part of the district. (Toomey responds, not unreasonably, that he’s been repeatedly elected to both positions.)

And Toomey’s assertion of independence from Finneran? Greatly exaggerated, Green tells me. "I’m really glad that Tim Toomey voted the way he did on gay marriage," he says. "But that came after a year and a half of heavy pressure, including me announcing that I was going to run against him starting in August of last year and after Paul Lachelier [a Green-Rainbow Party candidate who ran against Toomey in 2002] had scored 37 percent against him." Green notes that Toomey is a Finneran chairman who has voted with the Speaker almost 98 percent of the time and backed the gutting of the voter-approved Clean Elections Law.

Green vows to do things differently. "If I’m elected, the first vote I’ll take will be a vote in opposition to Speaker Finneran," he says. "That’s a vote to make the Democrats in the State House vote and act like Democrats again. It’s not just a vote for a fair economy and a woman’s right to choose and for same-sex equality; it’s also a vote toward electing a Democratic governor. Because as long as Finneran is the Speaker of the House, he’s a liability.... He’s an embarrassment."

BOLD WORDS. But if many gay-marriage backers have their way, Green won’t get a chance to take on Finneran. While Green’s been endorsed by local gay groups like the Cambridge Lavender Alliance and OutSomerville, Toomey has the support of the heavyweights: the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, MassEquality, the Freedom To Marry Coalition of Massachusetts, Congressman Barney Frank, and State Representative Liz Malia.

Green suggests that Toomey’s supporters are making a mistake. "I think a lot of those Beacon Hill groups are pursuing a Beacon Hill strategy," he says. "But this is a long struggle, and it’s not enough for us to just have reluctant voices in the state legislature or reluctant votes that turn our way sometimes. We need people out there changing people’s minds."

Perhaps. Or maybe it’s more critical for gay-marriage backers to show that pols like Toomey, whose pro-gay-marriage votes were unexpected given his generally conservative bent, will be rewarded for sticking their necks out. If MassEquality and Freedom To Marry had endorsed Green — or if they fail to give Toomey a win on Election Day — other legislators might think twice before taking a similar risk.

"Nobody should read our endorsement of Tim Toomey as being critical of Avi Green," says Josh Friedes of Freedom To Marry. "It is, however, imperative that legislators know that the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender civil-rights community will stand behind legislators who stand up for equality. Voters should never lose sight of their vision, but should also remember there is always a time for pragmatism."

For his part, Toomey says he’s counting on pro-gay-marriage forces to help him down the stretch. "It would be not in their best interest if someone who supported them lost," he observes. "And it would send a message to other more-moderate Democrats, and even Republicans — it would make them nervous. If one of only 10 legislators who voted consistently [against an anti-gay-marriage amendment to the Massachusetts constitution] would end up losing, that would send a message to other reps that, hey, this might be an issue we want to stay away from."

Will the Old Cambridge and Somerville — a/k/a "Slumerville," the city of immigrants and laborers, not the Somerville of artisanal bakeries and obscenely expensive condominiums — band together to put Toomey over the top? The fact is, Toomey’s old-school constituencies are fading away. John Randall, who sang Toomey’s praises at Pugliese’s, moved to Wilmington a few years ago, and the apartments over the bar just went condo. Many of Cambridge and Somerville’s new residents — Haitians, Brazilians, Cape Verdeans, Salvadorans — may not be eligible to vote; if they are, they likely have zero allegiance to the incumbent. After visiting Pugliese’s, Toomey stopped by Isaac’s Barber Shop, a bustling destination for local Haitians. The proprietor, Joseph Isaac Guenty, greeted him with a friendly smile, but the rest of the men inside stared blankly as Toomey waved hello and goodbye. Their thoughts seemed clear: who is this guy, and why is he in our barbershop?

Yet Green doesn’t have the New Cambridge and Somerville locked up either. Door-knocking near Union Square on Sunday evening, Green got a warm welcome from a gaggle of twentysomething barbecuers, who asked him in for a veggie burger and sangria. A few houses later, he was greeted by a fetching woman clad only in A BEACHES OF CAPE COD T-shirt. Green promptly delivered his spiel: the election’s in 10 days; he’s a progressive Democrat who will stand up to Finneran and bring the Green Line to Union Square; Toomey’s an anti-abortion, pro-death-penalty double-dipper who’s neglecting his Somerville constituents. The two bantered for a minute. Then Green moved on. When he was out of earshot, the woman made it clear she was no fan of Toomey’s: "Honestly, my take is, he’s been there awhile, and I think he’s getting lazy." But while she lauded the "chutzpah" of Green’s candidacy, the woman wasn’t totally sold. She said only that she "might" vote for Green, that she would give it "strong consideration." If Green is going to vanquish Toomey next week, he’ll need to turn that Maybe into a Yes.

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