Michael Flaherty is the best candidate for Mayor of Boston and deserves your vote for three essential reasons.
First, he has created an effective coalition for change in Boston by allying with running mate Sam Yoon. We applaud the deft political vision that created a Mayoral running mate in a system that has no such position, to the surprise of almost everyone. His responsive and well-run campaign has shown similar resourcefulness in its exploitation of virtually every communications media open to it, from advertising and the traditional news media to blogs, Facebook, and email. It is quite amazing, for example, that 26 percent of respondents to a recent Globe poll said they have met the relatively young Flaherty. As one runs, often so one serves and the Flaherty campaign bodes well for the City of Boston.
Second, he has outlined a variety of specific reforms that can have a significant beneficial impact on the Hub. The whitepaper-packed issues page on his website would do a Presidential candidate proud, and puts several of the current crop of Senate candidates to shame. From implementation of technological solutions like CitiStat that will increase accountability, to a pledge to take on the Boston Redevelopment Authority, to familiarity with the public schools as the parent of three children in them, Flaherty has defined an impressive, realistic, and specific program of reform.
Third, after 16 years in office Tom Menino should find another way to serve Boston. The cavalier — criminal? — disdain of his top aide for our public records laws is just the latest evidence of an administration that has come to believe the city serves it, rather than the other way around (CW Unbound summarizes EmailGate here). A quick trip to New York shows how many creative opportunities to improve both quality of life and economic performance Boston has missed. From streets turned into parks for the summer to tree planting programs to automatic plea bargaining for traffic tickets, our southern neighbor is abuzz with urban experiments while Boston is still trying to figure out the mechanics of urban management. What can one really say about a Mayor who has spent money to install a voicemail system at City Hall, but refuses to allow its use during working hours?
Messrs Floon, may we introduce you to the BMG kiss o’ death.
Given our recent string of victories, and the continued implosion of the non-reality based political opposition, but we’ll see.
I enthusiastically applaud your endorsement.
I sent an email to the Flaherty campaign months back about his position on equality. I got a response, and not an auto response. A staffer emailed me personally, to let me know that they would send my email along and make sure I got an answer. About 24 hours later I got an email from Michael’s private email with a very thoughtful answer to my question. Both responses were late in the night and seemed genuine.
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p>After I got my answer from Michael, I emailed the staffer at the campaign to thank them and a short conversation about how diligent they were to respond to emails ensued. This was one of the responses I got.
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p>Lets just say I had a totally different experience a few weeks back when I had a jackhammer in action outside my house at midnight and called city hall. I was told I couldn’t get a case number because one has already been called in by one of my neighbors. Not helpful. I was also told that the work had to be done because I lived in a high traffic area (how much of Boston is high traffic vs. not, I asked?) and they could do the work anytime they wanted. He was rude and impersonal.
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p>I will be voting for the ticket because it represents a new way of doing business at OUR city hall.
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p>Thank you BMG.
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May I ask what you asked and what his response was? I understand these questions are personal, so if you are not willing to share, I’d completely understand.
that he was one of the first elected officials in the city and maybe the state to publicly call for full equality. I was asking if this was true and how you got to that position. He told me a story about his uncle who was killed leading a double life. I believe the story was posted here after our exchange. Either way, I was impressed because in 2001 or 2002 whenever that was, it wasn’t a popular position to take anywhere in Massachusetts. Michael showed a lot of courage to do what he thought was right.
and you will get a very different experience, especially if you call him at midnight!
I’d be a bit irritable too at that hour.
Actually, it is not clear whether the call was at midnight or the next day.
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p>In any case, the point is that if you want to ask Flaherty a question he doesn’t want to answer, you can expect to be stonewalled and not to get an honest answer.
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p>My fear is that voting for Flaherty is rubber stamping the firefighter’s contract demands and will launch Flaherty on the path to becoming the next back-room deal mayor. I think I would rather live with another four years of Menino and hope there is a better option in four years.
at 12am, because city workers were working on the street. I had to look up the number because it isn’t 311, why I don’t know. I emailed the Flaherty campaign late at night just because it was the only time I had free that night. You all can call me Katherine.
That is one thing I really don’t understand about Menino: why is he so reluctant to introduce 311?
I want to set the record straight and be very clear. This is about respect for public employees.
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p>During my first 100 days in office I will settle and sign a contract with the Boston Fire Department. This contract will include mandatory random drug and alcohol testing and will give them no more than 14% over 5 years. I will get this done because I will negotiate in good faith and across the table, not through the press.
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p>I am not interested in making this personal. That has too often been a problem in the past. I do not like and do not condone the elements of the firefighters’ ad campaign that impugn the Mayor personally. There are legitimate differences to be debated, but there is never an excuse to get personal.
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p>In my first 100 days I plan to bring real performance review to the City of Boston. The management decisions I make will not rest upon whom I like or dislike, or which unions support me and which ones do not. The management decisions I make will be based on data that is clear, timely, and conclusive.
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p>I will root out fraud and pension abuse not only in the Fire Department, but also across all departments in the City of Boston.
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p>Michael Flaherty
Candidate for Mayor of Boston
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p>for this reason and others. What we didn’t know is if you gave away the bank. Now we know you didn’t.
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p>I know you’ve talked about cleaning up patronage style governance. I hope you and Yoon make that an early priority. It would set the tone for the rest of your administration.
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p>Tying raise percentages to inflation plus might allow you to insulate the city against cost growth and workers against inflation.
To be honest, the reason the record is not straight is because you have been ducking this question for months. Until today, you have refused to answer direct questions about whether you would hold the Firefighter’s union to the 14% that Menino offered them. You have refused to criticize the bad behavior of the union, and you have refused to put any blame on firefighters who have defrauded the City by lying about disabilities or taking bogus sick time. This was quite deliberate on your part and cannot be blamed on Menino or the media.
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p>I like your answer (although I am highly skeptical that you could actually get a contract in 100 days without giving into the union’s demands), but for me it is too late. If you had the courage to say this a couple of months ago you would most probably have my vote now.
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p>In any case, if I were you, I would broadcast this statement much more widely.
What I like most about Michael’s allying with Sam as a running mate is that it indicates a willingness to share the limelight and trust someone else. Not to mention a melding and alliance of a long-established ethnic / political group with a much newer one.
My endorsement will likely go the same way, for similar reasons.
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p>However, I do have to quibble with the “deft political vision.” If they had united from the start, that would be the case. But they united after the primary, and only after they both saw that they needed to consolidate ALL the opposition to have a chance at all.
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p>I’m all for innovative, original thinking, but there is no deputy mayor. Let’s think outside the box, but the city charter is not the box. The running mate move was a gimmick, and it played like a gimmick.
a deputy mayor in the past and could be one in the future…
Barring a change to the city charter, which Flaherty has not proposed, a deputy mayor has no power but what the mayor delegates to him and can be fired at any time. He portrays Yoon as his “running mate” but Yoon’s name will not be on the ticket, and Flaherty is not legally bound to employ Yoon in his administration for a single day.
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p>There have been deputy mayors in the past but no mayoral candidate in Boston has ever tried the concept of a mayoral running mate before now. It is indeed an inventive way to attract Yoon’s supporters, and I am sure it helps his campaign, but it still feels like a gimmick.
Though I’m not sure it helps. I think it diminishes both of them. It disrespects the primary process.
Is it really any different than Hillary coming out for Obama and taking on the position of Secretary of State? Did Obama and Clinton somehow “[disrespect] the primary process?” I really don’t think so.
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p>Plus, there is no Boston Mayoral primary. It’s called a preliminary =p
It’s actually quite different from that. Hillary supported the nominee of her party, then joined his Cabinet after he was elected.
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p>I will admit that “disrespecting the primary process” is putting too fine a point on it. But how do you separate this from old-fashioned “He promised me a job if I support him” politics? For the record, I do NOT think that is the case here, I think it was genuinely innovative. But that doesn’t mean it was a good idea.
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p>He came out and said he’d hire him ahead of time… If people don’t like that, they can vote for someone else, which is immensely different than typical “‘He promised me a job if I support him’ politics.”
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p>As for the Hillary example, I guess I can see that, though party politics is less important in city politics. That’s why there’s a preliminary — the general election isn’t a fight between the top candidates of each party, just the top two candidates over all. I sort of look at Yoon and Flaherty joining together as the anti-Menino party in this case, just as surely as Hillary and Obama were in the Democratic party. At the end of the day, a party is just an alliance from which to organize together — Yoon and Flaherty kind of/sort of created their own, temporary, local party to combine forces and, with a little luck, take down Menino. So I do think my comparison works overall, though I admit you did have a point and it’s not perfect.
Montreal elects their mayor on November 1st, and has urban political parties. The parties consist not only of mayoral, but also city council candidates unified on platforms and strategies….even co-ordinated campaign signs. This year it’s Vision-Montreal (“This year, we must re-start Montreal will Team Harel”) versus Union Montreal (“With Tremblay, Montreal moves forward!”)
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p>They cross-cut broader party lines, often survive individual candidates, and it’s a great way to know who believes what.
Sometimes Vice Presidents are more powerful than the President, like Dick Cheney. More often, they have no real power and little soft power. I’d have a hard time believing Flaherty wouldn’t make use of Yoon’s many good ideas, and I doubt Yoon would have signed up for the job if it were a possibility. However, I don’t think that there would have been a difference either way if the concept of Deputy Mayor were old and established, or this new-fangled thing. Either way, the power of the Deputy is going to be largely dependent on their effectiveness and relationship with the actual mayor. Furthermore, whether the Deputy mayor is a real position that Yoon takes, or Yoon just acts as a partner and takes on an important position from which he could lead from, it doesn’t change the fact that either Flaherty or Yoon could choose to end that relationship at pretty much any time. Last I checked, just about anyone can quit their job and most appointed positions can be let go for little reason at all. I don’t see how this is any different than what would have happened if there was always a Deputy Mayor.
Other factors roughly equal, I am voting for Flaherty and not Menino despite the many good things Menino has done for this city for reasons including the fact that Menino administration personnel, including senior policy personnel, stonewalled the Sec of State during his public records investigation into matters related to two federal cases of corruption, and the fact that Menino’s senior policy person has taken a leave of absence related to this scandal. One reservation I have is a concern that Flaherty will not end patronage style governing. That said, it’ll be good for the city to have a new pair of eyes looking at the state of our finances from the inside and how we spend money.
and it is particularly relevant as I consider donating to the BMG PAC.
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p>I seem to remember you guys explaining this before — the three of you have to come to a consensus?
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p>ITIOFD I’m a proud “green supporter for Tom Menino
then yes, we’re all signed on. As for the PAC, yes, it’s what the three of us can agree on.
by consensus only, among three people. I guess that’s the one governance structure that works with such a small voting block.
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p>Our Ward 15 Committee, after months of discussion finally decided that we needed to get a quorum of 2/3 of the Members( 17 I think)and then a 2/3 vote from Members present and voting. Of course to be a Member you have to be a registered Democratic voter in Boston. And we endorsed Menino, who as this Globe article pointed out is an “aging politician” at least 6 times, is not ready to “hang up the gloves yet“
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They’re not ideologically or politically the same. Plus, they understand that PAC decisions will be more contentious than endorsements and, I’m sure, will take that into account. I’m sure they’d be happy to hear from people on who they think is worthy of donations, but I’d hope people can understand that there will inevitably be disagreements. Even despite those disagreements, though, people should donate, because if the BMG PAC is successful, it brings that much more power to the progressive, local netroots, because of the concentration of the donations. There is something about money in politics that adds a certain credibilty that free media, netroots tools and even access to volunteers don’t provide. You can’t cash a volunteer, but you can cash a check, even if that volunteer is ultimately more important to the effort.
For good or ill, the black and Latino vote will probably put Menino over the top, as I discussed here and here.
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p>After the preliminary, I checked the returns from every precinct in the City, cross-referenced by Census data on race. Neither Flaherty, nor Yoon had any traction in any majority-Latino, or Asian precincts; Yoon did manage to win in five majority-black precincts, out of fifty-six such precincts in Boston.
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p>Flaherty’s white support was limited to South Boston, Charlestown, and two of the three Neponset precincts.
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p>While the Globe/UNH poll didn’t have the geographical focus I would have liked, an apples-to-apples comparison of data, collected in May from the same pollster showed that Menino’s black and Latino support correlated with his Preliminary numbers, as did his Citywide support.
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p>Insofar as the combined ticket is concerned, one might add Yoon votes in Back Bay, Jamaica Plain, and the odd neighborhood in the South End and Roslindale. The make-or-break neighborhood for a Floon victory would be West Roxbury. My back-of-the envelope indicates that neighborhood going for the Mayor.
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p>There’s still a week to go, but I don’t see any real change in that dynamic.
I like to think the endorsement was made because The Editors think it’s the right choice, irrespective of the candidates’ polling numbers.
there’s a reason why we have these elections instead of declaring victory based off conventional wisdom. There are a lot of people dissatisfied with Menino’s leadership at present; if Flaherty and Yoon can keep their voters together and drive up a big turnout within the population dissatisfied with the status quo, they win. It’s obviously an uphill battle, but an important one — and one with a reasonable chance of happening (49% of the preliminary vote was essentially ‘not Menino.’)
In the last several weeks, I have had the privilege to campaign alongside my former opponent Sam Yoon, and the two of us would like to thank Blue Mass Group for their endorsement of our campaign. As the opinion leaders of Boston, I have valued the open forum that Blue Mass Group provides for candidates and constituents in our city.
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p>It’s time. Years ago when I began my kitchen table conversations, I saw just how badly Boston needs a fresh perspective and new leadership. My campaign is gaining momentum, and with 8 days left the tide is turning. In order to achieve real progress in Boston, we cannot wait 4 more years or rely on yesterday’s approach. 100 out of 143 schools in Boston are failing, and 24,000 children have dropped out of those schools. Over 1,000 people on our streets have been murdered, and Mayor Menino has had 16 years to solve these problems. In conjunction, the culture of his administration that has been exposed in the past weeks has clearly demonstrated his lack of leadership.
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p>Your endorsement today adds to the many voices that have come together in the past months to bring new leadership to Boston. Together, we will transform city government and make Boston accountable to its residents once again. Thank you, and I hope that you will join me on November 3rd.
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p>Michael Flaherty
Candidate for Mayor of Boston
Just saying the tide is turning and repeating the same attacks over and over, doesn’t make it so. BTW, any commnts about the nasty ad your supporters, the fireman’s union has been running this past week? A good move would be to publicly disapprove of the tone, if you could without upsetting them.
I don’t see any attacks and he does in fact give an opinion on the ads.
Did I read that correctly?
is 14% over 5 years. Looks to me to be a cost of living increase or lower each year.
Why not cut out the middleman and appoint the head of the Fire Department union to run the City of Boston? The salary savings for the position of Mayor and whatever the heck Sam Yoon will be doing will help pay for the new contract.
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p>[And, if the contract comes in at 14% over 5 years I will sincerely and deeply apologize…not that 14% over 5 years is such a good deal when the City is laying off staff as a direct consequence of declining revenue. The real answer: close fire stations, keep EMT separate and cut out the truly stupid, antiquated and union-driven work rules…and increases that roughly match inflation for the final three years of a five year contract].
If you want to discuss the mayoral, city council, and senatorial races and the black community–and possibly have your question read on television–tune in to a live episode of “Basic Black” on WGBH 2 on Thursday night at 7:30 p.m. You can also watch the show live at http://www.wgbh.org/basicblack, where you can participate in a live chat.