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Howie’s Sunday Herald column

At-large hacks are on edge of their seats
By Howie Carr | Sunday, October 28, 2007 | http://www.bostonherald.com

The good news is, the Boston City Council did accomplish one thing this year: It canceled its preliminary at-large election, thereby saving the taxpayers $600,000.

The bad news is, they have not canceled the final election, Nov. 6, raising the question: What if they held an election and nobody voted?

Even if the Red Sox [team stats] weren’t closing in on a World Series title, no one would be paying attention to this fight, so with nine days left the nine candidates for four seats care about only one thing.

Who’s Mumbles with?

The mayor these days wields approximately the same type of power in Boston that Saddam Hussein did in pre-war Iraq. Whatever he says, goes. But Mumbles also resembles another former Mideast despot, King Herod. He’s always looking up at the stars, wondering if a new king - the next mayor - has been born, and can he kill him yet?

Back in ’99, Mumbles made the mistake of trying to take out Southie Council hack Peggy Davis Mullen with Mike Flaherty. But all Mumbles did was create an even worse problem for himself. Now Flaherty is talking about taking on Mumbles in ’09, raising more than $400,000 and generally making a nuisance of himself.

Baby Flats will most likely top the ticket, followed by Sam Yoon, who seems to be the PC flavor of the month. Yoon’s often MIA. He spends about as much time on the eighth floor of City Hall in the Dapper O’Neil hearing room as Dapper O’Neil now does, which is to say, not much.

Another incumbent councilor is Felix Arroyo. He could have been a contender, but he, too, seems to have taken his eye off the ball. At the end of last year, Felix was spending as much time at Council meetings in the Chris Iannella Chamber as Chris Iannella, which is to say, none. The difference is, Chris had a better excuse for his absence: He’s been dead 15 years.

That leaves the fourth incumbent, Steve Murphy. He has two things going for him as far as Mumbles is concerned: He’s not running for mayor and he’s from the mayor’s hometown of Tikrit . . . I mean Hyde Park. Murphy was with Gov. Deval Patrick early, and now Deval returns the favor, with a fund-raiser at Anthony’s this week.

The fifth man out last time, who has been praying all year for Murphy to accept a hack state job from Deval, is John “Don’t Call Me Zip” Connolly. If Murphy had fled, Connolly would have inherited his at-large seat. Connolly’s mother is a big-shot judge and his father, the former secretary of state, is on the Boston Licensing Board. This does not hurt fund raising.

Yes, there are other candidates. Martin Hogan finished 35,000 votes out of the money in 2005 and considered that a mandate from the electorate to run again. You need 500 certified signatures to get on the ballot. Hogan got 503, which was two fewer than the 505 turned in by David James Wyatt, a black Republican.

At the candidates’ nights, Wyatt likes to tell the crowds (make that handfuls of stragglers) how he canvassed for signatures in the city’s firehouses and was shocked, shocked to learn many of the jakes don’t live in Boston anymore. Apparently he missed the news that the residency issue was settled two or three contracts ago, the last time the union picketed Mumbles’ State of the City address.

The city has changed, obviously. Of Boston’s 254 precincts, it used to be that only 70 or so could be considered totally moonbat. But last year, in the Democratic primary for governor, Deval got more than 65 percent of the vote in 141 of the 254 precincts.

That’s astounding, until you consider that Spanish, not Italian, is now the second, or maybe first, language in East Boston. Ward 3, the North End, has become an Italian-restaurant theme park, and Ward 10, Mission Hill, is a keg party. The best way to carry Ward 21, Allston, would be to get an endorsement from Vladimir Putin.

There’s only one thing Boston’s voters, old and new, can agree on. Go Red Sox!