Sunday Herald Wins Boston Mayoral Race

September 8, 2013

If you’re looking to dig into Boston’s mayoral scrum, today’s Boston Herald is the place to go.

The feisty local tabloid devotes three full pages to the preliminary race.

 

Screen Shot 2013-09-08 at 1.43.40 PM

 

Screen Shot 2013-09-08 at 1.44.08 PM

 

The City Hall bakeoff also gets a column from Suffolk University’s Herald embed John Nucci, along with half of Matt Stout’s Pols & Politics piece.

Crosstown, the Boston Globe has . . . well, a lot less. There’s this story on B2 (print headline):

Lee_conley2_metConley criticizes rivals on casino

Says councilors should back citywide vote

Suffolk County district attorney and Boston mayoral candidate Daniel F. Conley on Saturday doubled-down on his calls for a citywide vote on a proposed casino in East Boston and sharply criticized the city councilors running against him for not holding community hearings on the issue.

But despite his repeated calls for a citywide vote, council members continued to stand by their decision to allow East Boston residents exclusively to decide if their community becomes home to casino gambling.

 

The stately local broadsheet also features this opinion piece by Boston Review managing editor Simon Waxman.

wide-cityhall0908Can Boston break identity politics?

In Boston, identity politics have been such a powerful influence in local elections that candidates have literally changed their identities. Early in his career, future US House Speaker John McCormack rewrote his family history to better align it with those of the local political bosses and to erase any hint of Protestantism. Among other revisions, his Scottish-Canadian father and Boston-born Irish-American mother became Irish immigrants. He was inspired in part by John Way, a Yankee Democrat who repeatedly failed to win office despite running on a staunch pro-Irish-Catholic ticket.

In the 1960s and ’70s, Louise Day Hicks, William Bulger, and others updated identity politics in Boston. Hicks gained popularity as a defender of working-class white interests against desegregation and what she called “civil rights infiltrators.”

 

And, Waxman writes, “in 1983, the only time a black candidate made it to the final round of a Boston mayoral contest, an electorate sharply divided on racial lines handed Ray Flynn a landslide victory over Mel King.”

What does he want?

For Bostonians to rely less on racial identity in their voting decisions, and “for the candidates to set out individual agendas and give the voters more, and perhaps better, reasons to support them.”

When does he want it?

Now.

 

Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider

Boston Herald a Day Late, $500,000 Short on Mayoral Race

August 22, 2013

Preliminary indications are that our feisty local tabloid is taking a pass on the Boston mayoral race. The first competitive City Hall election in 20 years is apparently less important than the non-existent political career of a certain Scott Brown (R-Nowhere).

Monday it was Brown traipsing around Iowa that earned him Page One of the Herald.  (Q: What’s the difference between Scott Brown and the Iowa State Fair butter cow? A: The cow will participate in the 2016 Iowa presidential caucus.)

Today the big news is that Brown continues not to run for governor. So that’s front-page material too.

 

MA_BH

 

But while the Herald recites Make Way for Charlie, a real campaign has broken out in the Boston mayoral race, mostly around City Councilor (and current co-favorite) John Connolly.

From Monday’s Boston Globe:

 

Picture 7

 

Tuesday:

 

Picture 5

 

Wednesday:

 

Picture 8

 

So, to recap: Stand for Children, a national education non-profit, says it’s going to dump half a million bucks into the race. Initially no response in Monday’s Globe from the object of the kibitzer’s largesse. Rival candidates scream bloody murder. One proposes a People’s Pledge.  Connolly bites back at critics in Tuesday Globe, but still doesn’t say anything about the Stand for Children loot. Rivals scream louder. Wednesday, Connolly says he he won’t take the dough, but says People’s Pledges are just a gimmick – no wait – he signs the pledge.

Got that?

Meanwhile, the Herald isn’t reporting much of anything or even recycling Globe stuff the way it sometimes does. Thank goodness, though, for the Herald editorial page, which has noticed there’s a mayoral race.

 

Picture 3

 

The Herald agrees with what Connolly used to believe: “[The People’s Pledge] has become just another self-serving campaign gimmick.”

But fun to watch, yes? As long as someone’s covering it.

 

1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider

Globe Ignores Dan Conley’s ‘Don’t Buy Boston’ Ad Production

July 17, 2013

Now that the Bay State’s umpteenth U.S. Senate special election is done, the Boston news media can turn their attention to the first real mayoral race we’ve had here in Mayberry since 1993.

From Tuesday’s Boston Globe:

Conley set to launch television ads

Suffolk DA’s are 1st of Hub mayor’s race

conley-big-8947

Boston mayoral candidate Daniel F. Conley, leveraging his significant fund-raising advantage over 11 opponents, will launch the first television advertising campaign of the race Tuesday, part of a sustained blitz that will continue through the Sept. 24 preliminary election.

Conley’s campaign has paid for five ads, at least four of which will begin running Tuesday on local and cable television stations. The Conley campaign declined to say how much it is spending on the ad campaign, making it difficult to determine the frequency and prominence of the ads.

The Suffolk district attorney’s ads will be quickly followed Thursday by a commercial buy from Felix G. Arroyo. The first ad from the Latino city councilor will be in Spanish and will air only on Spanish-language media.

 

And then there’s this:

The ads were produced by Joe Slade White and Co., a media strategy firm that has worked on campaigns with other Democrats, including Joe Biden when he was running for reelection to the US Senate from Delaware. Conley’s campaign has paid the company $23,000 for its work, according to campaign expenditures filed with the Massachusetts Office of Campaign & Political Finance.

 

First of all, $23,000 for producing five ads? Those guys need management.

Second of all, Joe Slade White and Co. is carpetbagging in this race.

Home page:

 

Picture 2

 

That’s New York/Texas/DC in the lower bar for oldies like us.

Client list (click to expand):

 

Picture 3

 

Funny, Dan Conley doesn’t appear on this expanded client list either.

Then again, 23 grand doesn’t exactly put you on the radar screen.

Oddly enough, Tuesday’s Boston Herald reported this:

DSC_4981.JPGConley, Arroyo plan TV ad blitz

The air war in the mayor’s race has officially begun as Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley launches a series of TV ads today and City Councilor Felix G. 
Arroyo follows later this week with what may be the first Spanish-language-only ads in a Hub mayoral race.

Conley’s campaign is launching five new ads to begin airing on cable and local TV today. In one spot, created by a Portland, Ore., production company, he talks about “cracking down on illegal guns” and how he created a Suffolk County gun court that has a 90 percent conviction rate. Other ads focus on education and the city’s innovation economy.

 

(The web version of the piece calls it a “Buffalo, New York, production company” – no correction appended. The Herald doesn’t do corrections.)

Buffalo – Portland, Ore. (not even Maine?) – whatever. The ads were not produced in Boston.

Surprisingly, neither local daily made a big deal of it.

But the hardreading staff is.

3 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider

Being Ed Davis

June 28, 2013

Police Commissioner Ed Davis has officially become a litmus test in Boston’s mayoral race.

It started with this piece in Wednesday’s Boston Herald:

STON1329.JPGConley promises to retain top cop

Puts feud with Davis behind him

Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley yesterday vowed to keep Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis if elected mayor, as a rift between the two men appears to have ended.

“Commissioner Davis and I have had a very close working relationship for many years now. We are in constant communication anytime there are issues involving the public safety in Boston,” Conley told the Herald.

In the past, the DA and Davis have clashed over jurisdictional issues and strategies for dealing with Boston’s homicide rate.

 

That triggered this piece in Thursday’s Boston Globe (which credited the Herald for raising the subject):

Boghosian_11menino3_METHalf of hopefuls for mayor would retain Davis

Following the Boston Marathon bombings in April, Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis was praised for his steady presence during the ordeal and regaled with an honorary degree. His name was even bandied about as a possible candidate for mayor.

Davis decided to sit it out, but his name has remained part of the race, with questions arising about whether he would keep his post under a new leader at City Hall.

Half of the 12 mayoral candidates contacted by the Globe Wednesday said they would ask him to stay on. Five would not commit to keeping him. One did not respond to the question.

 

(Interesting foreground/background contrast in the photos, yeah?)

Related Globe piece on the mayoral candidate breakdown:

Yes: Felix Arroyo, John Barros, Bill Walczak, Robert Consalvo, Martin Walsh, Dan Conley.

Still deciding: Charles Clemons Jr., John Connolly, Charlotte Golar Richie, Michael Ross, David James Wyatt.

Did not respond: Charles Yancey.

Yet to comment: Ed Davis.

Stay tuned.

1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider

Herald a Lively Index to the Globe (Mayoral Hopefuls’ Income Edition)

June 12, 2013

From our Compare and Contrast in Clear Idiomatic English desk

Coincidentally (or not) both local dailies have salary surveys of the Boston mayoral candidates today, with – wait for it – mostly different numbers.

Start with the Boston Herald:

AN3V9806.JPGBIG BUCKS BACKING BIDS

Herald review shows top earners in mayor’s race

Dorchester health care executive Bill Walczak is the wealthiest among the top tier of mayoral candidates, reporting a staggering $450,000 salary, while state Rep. Martin J. Walsh and City Councilor Michael P. Ross each reported earning more than $200,000, and two others hauled in a quarter-million dollars with their spouses, a Herald review of candidates’ tax returns found.

Walczak, co-founder of the Codman Square Health Center, and his Boston schoolteacher wife, Linda, reported earning a combined $526,000 in 2011, according to a tax return supplied by the Walczak campaign.

 

Like that “staggering”? That’s the Herald all over.

The feisty local tabloid also listed the incomes of former state representative Charlotte Golar Richie, Boston School Committeeman  John Barros, Boston City Councilors Felix Arroyo, Rob Consalvo, and John Connolly, and Suffolk District Attorney Dan Conley.

Crosstown at the Boston Globe, the story looked like this:

Income of Boston mayoral hopefuls varies

Many looking to succeed Menino now earn more than city’s median income

There are no Mitt Romneys in the bunch, no nine-digit personal fortunes, no eye-popping investments. But roughly half of the candidates hoping to succeed Thomas M. Menino as mayor of Boston earn more than double the city’s annual median household income of almost $52,000.

Four of the aspirants would face pay cuts if they move into the fifth-floor office that belongs to the mayor, a job that pays $175,000 a year.

As campaigns clash this summer over affordable housing and the plight of the middle class, tax returns can provide a glimpse of each candidate’s socioeconomic status. The Globe requested 2012 state and federal tax returns for all 15 people running for mayor and found that income varied from roughly $59,000 to $700,000. One candidate gave almost $19,000 to charity; another donated a few hundred dollars, the returns showed.

 

The stately local broadsheet also included this helpful chart.

 

Picture 5

 

Notice not just the different numbers, but the Globe’s inclusion of Robert Cappucci, “a former School Committee member and retired Boston police officer who collects a pension,” and its listing of tax rates and charitable donations – both quite telling.

Notice also who failed to provide tax returns, most conspicuously Councilor Charles Yancey.

Follow-up, anyone?

Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider