Fri column ping
Challenge Menino? Good luck with that
By Howie Carr | Friday, October 19, 2012 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
Photo
Photo by Faith Ninivaggi
Dream on, all you wannabe mayors. Mumbles Menino is mayor for life, literally.
Not to be too morbid, but the next mayor of Boston is going to be whoever the president of the City Council is when Mumbles assumes room temperature.
There was a story in this paper yesterday about a “mysterious dark horse candidate” against Mumbles next year, or was it in 2017? All the local white-guy pols quoted in the story made crystal clear that they had no intention of ever running against Hizzoner, because they know if they ever cross him, even by mistake, Mumbles will make sure they get a rocket in their pocket.
You know the old joke about Irish Alzheimer’s — you forget everything but the grudges. Well, it’s crossed ethnic lines, because Mumbles has come down with a full-blown case of it.
Just for one example, do you think Mumbles is backing Granny Warren because he likes her? Hell, no. He still likes Scott Brown a lot better. But Scott, not being a city boy, misread the tea leaves and made a fatal error — he had the former mayor, Ray Flynn, make a TV spot for him.
So somehow that made it personal for Mumbles. If Raybo was with Brown, by God, Mumbles would be with the fake Indian. For the record, Raybo hasn’t been mayor since 1993.
You may not know that Mumbles is currently out of the country. He left Saturday on a 16-day trip to Italy. But you’d never know it from the newspapers. Monday he was demanding $15 million to cover the city’s increased expenses chasing down drug dealers after the state drug lab scandal. Yesterday, “he” was pushing Trojan not to hand out free sex toys on City Hall Plaza.
Last year one reporter wrote one of these stories when Mumbles was in, I think, Alaska. He mentioned in passing that the acting mayor was the president of the City Council. For such lese majeste, the reporter got the cold shoulder from City Hall for two months. There’s only one mayor in Boston, by God, and it ain’t Steve Murphy, even for a day.
Mumbles has $608,000 in the bank right now. His fundraising machine is just that, a machine. He touches everything in the city but the third rail. Here are his numbers for the past four months:
September — $24,875; August — $28,725; July — $42,400; June — $28,220.
Plus, Mumbles will do anything to stay ahead of the political curve. Remember Chick-fil-A? He made himself a national laughingstock, but the only thing Mumbles cared about was pandering to that 20 or 25 percent of the “New Bostonians” who are gay.
Freddie Langone used to say being president of the City Council is like being an admiral in the Swiss Navy. Someday it’s going to pay off. But probably not anytime soon.
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