Robert David Sullivan 2

Boston City Council race: 4 were elected, but 5 had strong bases

Matt O'Malley has his typically smart rundown on the ward-by-ward results for the Boston City Council race on Tuesday. He notes that the candidates elected to the four at-large seats all had parts of the city where they topped the ticket:

• John Connolly in Charlestown, East Boston, downtown, the Back Bay, and West Roxbury
• Steve Murphy in South Boston, East Dorchester, Hyde Park, Allston, and Brighton
• Felix Arroyo in the South End and Jamaica Plain
• Ayanna Pressley in the Fenway and the Codman Square section of Dorchester

The fifth-place candidate also had bragging rights: Tito Jackson won three of the city's 22 wards, in Roxbury and in next-door sections of Dorchester. O'Malley suggests that Jackson might be a formidable opponent to Roxbury district councilor Chuck Turner in the future. His seventh- or eighth placing showing in Charlestown, South Boston, and the downtown area shows that he has some work to do if he wants to run again citywide.

Surprisingly, the only candidate not to finish last lower than fifth place in any ward was Arroyo, who was only third overall. (Connolly and Murphy each finished sixth in wards that included parts of Roxbury.) That may say something about Arroyo's broad geographic appeal, but it's also notable that there was a steep dropoff from second to third place in Charlestown, South Boston, West Roxbury, and Brighton, where incumbents Connolly and Murphy were far ahead of everyone else. Apparently, the field of newcomers didn't hold that much appeal in these traditionally conservative neighborhoods. 

Warning sign for the "Menino in 2021" campaign

The Berkshire Eagle reports on the upset at the opposite end of the state:

After an historic 26-year reign, John Barrett III -- the state's longest serving mayor -- has lost his title. And voters in North Adams -- some of whom have known no other mayor in their lifetimes -- will have a new corner officeholder when he takes the oath in January: Mayor Richard Alcombright.

Barrett, in pursuit of his 14th two-year term, lost to Alcombright, the city councilor who mounted an aggressive, popular campaign that struck a chord of change with city voters.

Last-minute bets in the Boston mayoral race

The Phoenix's David Bernstein notes that Boston Mayor Tom Menino is doing very well among late contributors:

I was fascinated to see that Tom Menino just had a banner fortnight of fundraising, reporting $160,000 in campaign contributions between October 1 and 15 — the bulk of it coming, by my count, from 269 people ponying up the legal maximum of $500. Fascinated, because I'm thinking: if you're going to pay fealty to the mayor, why wait this long to do it? Doesn't it kind of make you look like you were waiting, maybe hoping for a Flaherty win, until the September preliminary convinced you that you'd better play ball with now and future mayor Menino?

Hmmmmmm....

Bernstein notes that many of the procrastinators are in the construction industry. It must have taken them this long to ponder their "pro" and "con" columns with respect to a fifth Menino term.

Boston's mayor race "toughest" to call in the US?

Ballot Box's Josh Goodman divides all of this year's big-city mayoral races into the competitive and foregone conclusion categories, but he finds Boston's to be the most unpredictable:

The toughest case is Boston. There's a reason that Thomas Menino is sometimes called "mayor for life." He's been mayor for 16 years, winning reelection easily three times. In the most recent poll of which I'm aware, he scored a 73% approval rating.

On the other hand, he has well-funded challengers. The e-mail investigation into Menino's administration might or might not be a big deal, but it has at the very least produced some unflattering press for the mayor right before the election.

The all-candidate primary will take place next Tuesday. My guess? Menino wins easily. However, this is one that I'm at least going to keep watching.

An email's as good as a phone call when nagging City Hall

The Web has not yet made everyone high-functioning citizens, according to "The Internet and Civic Engagement," a report released yesterday by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Affluent and well-educated Americans are still the most likely to get involved in political campaigns and charitable groups, though the authors say this pattern may yet change, thanks to blogs and social networking sites.

The report also includes this evidence that the benefits of talking to a "real person" in government may be overrated:

One surprising finding in the August 2008 survey is that individuals who email a government official are just as likely to get a response to their query—and, more importantly, to be satisfied with the response they receive—as those who get in touch with their elected officials in person, by phone, or by letter. Among those who contacted a government official via email, 64% say they received a response to their query and 63% were satisfied with the response they received. These are nearly identical to the 67% response rate and 66% satisfaction rate for those who contacted a government official by phone, fax or email. [NOTE: Based on the data in the report, I believe that last phrase should be "by phone, fax, letter, or in person."]

It is possible for a big-city incumbent mayor to lose

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels proved last week that a big-city mayor can not only lose an election, but can come in third in a primary. That may come as some comfort to this year's challengers to Boston Mayor Tom Menino, but the Ballot Box's Josh Goodman offers some explanations for the Nickels defeat, and none of them have obvious parallels to the Boston race.

According to Goodman, the Nickels administration badly handled a major snowstorm last winter, and it angered residents by trying to impose a 20 cent fee (or fine) on plastic and paper grocery bags. Then there was Seattle's mini version of the Big Dig:

Perhaps Nickels' biggest controversy, however, was over the Alaskan Way Viaduct, an elevated roadway that was damaged in a 2001 earthquake. After years of debate, in January Nickels and other local and officials agreed to replace the viaduct with a tunnel, even though Seattle voters had rejected that option two years earlier.

Yoon to visit Southie's St. Patrick's parade without preconditions

Ethan Jacobs of Bay Windows reports that two Boston mayoral candidates, Sam Yoon and Michael Flaherty, will march in South Boston's St. Patrick's parade this Sunday, despite the fact that parade organizers continue to ban gay and lesbian groups from marching. (Incumbent Mayor Tom Menino hasn't marched in the parade since the courts upheld the exclusion of gay groups in 1995, and challenger Kevin McCrea is also boycotting the event.)

It's hard to see this as a good political move for Yoon. Unless he has a secret plan to sweep more conservative neighborhoods like South Boston (against Menino and Flaherty?), he'd have to do well in liberal strongholds such as the South End and Jamaica Plain to even survive the preliminary election. But Yoon, who opposes the ban on gay groups, explains his participation by seeming to cast himself as another Barack Obama, willing to open up negotiations with Cuba and other hostile nations. (I guess that means Menino is George W. Bush.) 

Yoon said Menino, who mingles with revelers along the sidelines of the parade route and attends other St. Patrick’s Day festivities, makes no major sacrifice to his LGBT constituents by boycotting the parade itself.

"I think it costs him very little politically. It’s very inexpensive to take that position, and how has he been hurt politically in South Boston by taking that position? I would suggest that he hasn’t," said Yoon. "I have. I’ve had to walk past [parade organizer] Wacko Hurley and his son pretty much at the very end of the parade and have them shake my hand with that letter [protesting the ban on gay groups] in mind."