E-Mail This Article to a Friend TALKING POLITICS Will Rush get the brush-off? By Adam Reilly

Will State Representative Mike Rush (D–West Roxbury) suffer a constituent backlash for his votes at last week’s constitutional convention? The freshman legislator (he won a special election to fill David Donnelly’s seat in 2002) backed the anti-gay-marriage amendment proposed by State Representative Phil Travis, as well as another offered by House Speaker Tom Finneran. Meanwhile, he voted against the compromise amendment proposed by Senate president Robert Travaglini and Senate minority leader Brian Lees, which would have banned gay marriage but established a right to civil unions.

Boston’s 23-member State House delegation has come under tremendous pressure from the Catholic Church to support an anti-gay-marriage amendment to the state constitution. State Representative Jeffrey Sanchez of Mission Hill, for instance, told the Phoenix last November that his parish priest had put his name in the church bulletin and urged parishioners to lobby Sanchez to vote for the amendment. That said, 16 members of the delegation, including State Senator Marian Walsh of West Roxbury, voted against the most odious of the three measures up for a vote last week: State Representative Phil Travis’s amendment to ban gay marriage with no promise to enact a civil-union provision.

Rush’s votes are understandable given that his district consists primarily of conservative-leaning and heavily Catholic West Roxbury. What’s less forgivable from a political standpoint, however, is the perception among many of his pro-gay-marriage constituents that Rush blew off their concerns. West Roxbury resident Jon Schum says he and his partner tried to contact Rush four times, including an in-person visit to his State House office, before finally receiving a phone call last week in which the representative apologized for his untimely response. "All we wanted to do was to have a conversation with him," Schum says. "We know his stance [against gay marriage]. I feel like we just got the brush-off."

Roslindale resident Joseph LaRusso says he made seven attempts to contact Rush to urge him to support gay marriage. Rush never responded. After joining two dozen other similarly disillusioned constituents who met with a Rush aide on February 9, LaRusso eventually received an apologetic letter from Rush in which the representative explained that he’d been inundated with communications from voters. LaRusso doesn’t buy the explanation, however. "The fact is, I originally called him on the day that the [Supreme Judicial Court] decision came down," LaRusso says. "Three months is certainly enough time for him to have responded."

Meanwhile, Rush found time last month to organize a contingent of West Roxbury residents who were paying a visit to the State House to lobby for the anti-gay-marriage amendment. According to the State House News Service, Rush introduced the group to House Speaker Tom Finneran and gushed proudly that his support for Finneran’s re-election as House Speaker was "the best vote I ever took."

The ConCon helped solidify Rush’s reputation as one of the Boston delegation’s most conservative members. As Finneran has shown, this is no inherent barrier to success — especially in the House. Coming across as aloof and uninterested can be a much greater liability, however. Rush may discover that his ConCon votes — and his reluctance to engage constituents who disagree with him on gay marriage — are a serious liability. It’s a tailor-made issue for any candidate tempted to challenge Rush this year in his bid for re-election.