Mayor’s Double-Teamed
September 17, 2009
By: Wayne Woodleif
City Councilors Michael Flaherty and Sam Yoon know one thing for sure: Only one of them will be left after Tuesday’s preliminary election to challenge 16-year incumbent Mayor Tom Menino on Nov. 3.
Not that either man thinks Menino is a shoo-in for the final. Both camps claim that in an in-house poll – scoffed at by Menino’s troops – 67 percent of voters said they’d consider (key word: consider) voting for somebody other than Menino, and 50 percent said Boston is moving in the wrong direction.
Yet even with E-mailgate, Menino’s get-out-the-vote organization is deep and strong, and ready to go in a race that’s taken a back seat to the U.S. Senate succession campaign and is forecast to be a light turnout.
So Yoon and Flaherty calculate that whichever of them runs second is going to need the other’s supporters for the final. That’s why you don’t hear Flaherty or Yoon bashing each other even as they whack the mayor daily. It’s why the two of them, in separate vans on the way to a forum in Charlestown Tuesday, pulled over for a friendly roadside chat.
They differ on some things. Flaherty isn’t proposing any changes in the mayor’s authority. But Yoon is the first candidate for mayor in decades (if ever) to run on giving himself less power if elected.
He told me, “The mayor – not just this mayor – simply has too much power,” including the power to appoint the School Committee, dominate the City Council, put his stamp on any development, etc.
“The first thing I’d do as mayor is ask City Council to pass term limits – two four-year terms – for the mayor. We ought to be able to do that within two weeks.” He said with a two-thirds vote, the council could avoid having to ask the Legislature to approve the charter change, adding, “probably two-thirds of council would want to be mayor in eight years.”
The contrasting styles of Menino, Flaherty, Yoon and Kevin McCrea were on display at the Charlestown Business Association’s forum at Max and Dylan’s restaurant:
Menino literally and verbally shrugged off E-mailgate, his shoulders rising dismissively as he told me before the forum, “I’m not campaignin’ on slander and smears. I’m runnin’ on facts.” Then, in his just plain Tom way, standing amidst the tables, he cited some of those “facts”: Crime rate down 40 percent, Boston now America’s third-greenest city, and special adademies helping struggling students lower a 24-percent dropout rate.
Yoon, warmer and funnier than he’s been in TV debates, said his “is a Boston story,” since he is an immigrant in a city of immigrants, brought to Boston as a child from Korea to obtain a better education. He said he would attempt to have some members of the School Committee elected to increase public input.
Flaherty’s pitch was vivid and down to Earth. “I’ve talked to the waitresses and the bartenders. I know how the Menino meals tax is going to hurt them economically.” He urged better computerizied tracking and faster action on street woes, such as filling potholes and removing snow.
Developer McCrea is the bombthrower, accusing the administration of corruption, waste and backroom secrecy. But he flashed some humor too. Alaska’s upgraded computer system allows its citizens to keep up with governmental activities and view all sorts of official documents, he said, quipping to laughter, “Obviously, we’re not as high-tech or wired together in Boston.”
Oops. With that one he didn’t even need to mention E-mailgate.
