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Election roundup: What will Wu women do?
By adamg on Mon, 11/04/2013 - 6:44am
David Paleologos, head of polling at Suffolk University, tells the Herald Asian women coming out to vote for Wu could be the deciding factor in the mayoral race, but nobody knows how they'll vote. If only somebody could poll them.
The New York Times tries to sum up our mayoral race, concludes many voters see it as a choice between the education guy and the union guy.
The Globe reports on the thousands of canvassers out there canvassing.
Oh, ouch: Joe Battenfeld says Connolly is looking a lot like Martha Coakley in her loss to Scott Brown.
Mike Ball objects to the Walsh campaign's "ham-fisted, buy-the-election mode," says it inspires no confidence in an independent Marty Walsh. Parent Imperfect wants to lean towards Walsh, but writes he has yet to show he will "really address the challenges facing public education in the city."
The Boston Bastard examines John Connolly's record on the city council this year and last.
The Globe talks to District 5 candidates Tim McCarthy and Jean-Claude Sanon and interviews District 8 candidates Mike Nichols and Joshua Zakim.
WFXT interviews people still voting even though they've moved out of Boston. Most just seem clueless, but they find one guy now living in Brockton who basically dares the coppers to try and stop him:
My identity is as a Bostonian. I spend more waking hours in the city of Boston than I do elsewhere. To tell me I can't vote, to me seems a little bit ridiculous.
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Comments
Voter Fraud
I'm not sure if Walsh knows any of the frauds that voted for him, but Connolly absolutely knows the Brockton guy, O'Mara.
Connolly dispatched him to the DotOut endorsement meeting 2 weeks ago to speak on his behalf.
BTW, Walsh won the endorsement on his own accord, not through blatant voter FRAUD.
Voter fraud
The Republicans might love this article, but voter ID laws would do nothing to fix this type of fraud.
The council race that could
The council race that could tip the scales in the mayor's race is not at-large or Wu. It's District 5. The match-up between Jean-Claude Sanon and Tim McCarthy could go either way. But Sanon's voters will go 3-1 for Marty Walsh, because the major Haitian leadership is with Walsh. Many of those Haitian voters might have sat out the mayoral final but Sanon is a big draw for them— he would be the first Haitian on the council. Senator Linda Forry and former Rep. Marie St Fleur are both pushing Walsh and Sanon hard on Haitian radio and TV. Sanon's votes could tip the scales in Ward 18 for Walsh, which is THE swing ward in the whole city this time around.
it's right here
http://www.dotout.org/
Candidate Boston City Councilor John Connolly, who was unable to attend, had Richard O'Mara, Cedar Grove Gardens owner and one of DotOUT's founders, speak on Connolly's qualifications for mayor.
''My identity is as a
WFXT interviews people still voting even though they've moved out of Boston. Most just seem clueless, but they find one guy now living in Brockton who basically dares the coppers to try and stop him:
''My identity is as a Bostonian. I spend more waking hours in the city of Boston than I do elsewhere. To tell me I can't vote, to me seems a little bit ridiculous.''
Are you kidding me ? Do you bring your trash to Boston too? Don't you understand residency and municipal services? Being awake , and being a resident are two entirely different things . Do you vote in Brockton too when it conveniences you ? Sheesh , i have never heard of anything so foolish.
O'Mara should be ashamed of himself
I'm really surprised about Richard O'Mara. He is either clueless or fraudulent. I don't know him, but I have shopped at Cedar Grove Gardens since it opened and now I'm wondering if I want to continue. I just lost a lot of respect for him. And as someone else pointed out, he was Connolly's surrogate at the DotOut endorsement meeting. The rules are clear and fair. Residents vote, non residents don't. So O'Mara thinks all the commuters that come to Boston every day should vote? Really Richard?
Why it's important Walsh wins and Connolly does not
David Jenkins:
I believe it is hugely important for our city that Marty Walsh becomes our next mayor and HUGELY important that John Connolly does NOT.
Boston is a people of color majority city. And it's a city where gross inequity persists. I wanted Felix G. Arroyo or John F Barros to win, of course I did. Both of them came from real organizing work and, I believe, both desire a similar kind of change to I want to see. They didn't win the prelim, and it sucks. And when the smoke cleared, we were left with a choice between two candidates that seem very similar -- Marty Walsh and John Connolly. They are not.
Marty Walsh is what he says he is. I know it from my own experience. When people fighting for equity ask Marty for something, he not only responds "yes," he responds with a "yes and..." I mean that when Marty sees something wrong, whether it's mass unemployment of youth of color or the child asthma epidemic, he's willing to fight for it. When we asked him to submit testimony for our diesel emissions reduction ordinance, he did it, and he also offered two higher stakes ways he would support. Marty will do what is asked, and he'll do more. And he'll do it whether it benefits his district primarily or not. He'll do it because it's right.
John Connolly is not what he says he is. I know it from my experience too. Of course his identity as a teacher, after a couple years at charter schools and over a decade representing corporate clients for a law firm, is a farce. So is his entire education mayor shtick. When he "exposed" BPS for expired lunches, all of us who had been fighting to improve school lunch knew it was a stunt, a frustrating stunt that didn't improve anything except his public persona. And when he called himself the "environmentalist councillor," I couldn't figure out why his staff wouldn't commit to stand for our diesel emissions reduction ordinance after half the city council already had. So far, the only thing I've seen him stand for is himself.
..We're faced with this choice:
One candidate reminds us of an old Boston order that makes us rightfully anxious -- that white working class background that has, in its frequent worst moments, built solidarity for a vicious exclusion. But when it comes down to it, Marty has consistently fought, and fought hard, for every person in this city, beyond those he immediately represents.
The second candidate sounds new, and refreshing, and his mailings to my house in Roxbury make me feel like he thinks I'm stupid and manipulable. The candidate who can say "institutional racism" on t.v. after missing years of opportunities to fight against it. The candidate, John Connolly, who says one very good thing and does one complete other. That's a new order we need to be afraid of right now.
You know what I'm sick of?
Candidates who are "one of us" and who think there's something wrong with being a lawyer, as opposed to pulling down a six-figure salary as a union president while also serving as an elected, fulltime state rep. I thought we got over that brand of Curleyesque anti-intellectualism when we voted Elizabeth Warren in.
No, this is not me coming out and endorsing Connolly. I don't really want to vote for Ernie Boch Jr.'s favorite Democrat and I'm a lot more worried about what happens to BPS schools in a Connolly administration than I would be with Walsh in office. But let's not pretend that Walsh is without faults or that he truly speaks for "all of us."
I couldn't agree more
I couldn't agree more:
Here's more about whether Walsh will speak for all of us.
Read it: Blue Mass Group: "Marty Walsh for Mayor—an Invitation to a New Era in Boston’s History"
Unifier?
Of course neither one of these guys is going to 'speak for all of us'. People can't agree about the Casey Overpass or school reform or charter schools or countless other things. Let's stop pretending there's a magical candidate who's going to unite us all and just focus on which candidate is going to best serve the city in the way that you as a voter thinks it needs to be led.
Walsh will speak for all of the people who voted for him. That's it. Neither candidate is going to win with a huge landslide so any claim to speak for a unified Boston is simply nonsense.
on the professions...
At least for me, John being a lawyer is not the issue.
I worked in law firms downtown for over a decade. The attorneys are all intelligent professionals. The majority are really great to work with, some are assholes like in any other profession. (But asshole lawyers use sharper words and a condescending tone.)
The thing about John being a lawyer is that he never talks about it. He spent 12 years practicing law after three years in law school,after 1 year teaching in Boston. There's nothing wrong with being a lawyer. There's something wrong with being a lawyer and representing yourself as a teacher and claiming it was your "life's work."
You are right to be concerned about Connolly's plans for BPS. If he gets his hands on the schools, he'll "transform" them and not for the better. It's slightly short of astonishing that he is still pitching classic corporate ed reform when the country has already figured out the game and rejecting it.
And yet, there is one thing Connolly has done that impresses me
It might only be a thing you'd really only get if you've suffered through the BPS lottery system, but the fact that, well before he announced he was running for mayor, he and his wife enrolled their daughter in a Level 4 (i.e., failing) school when they "lost" the lottery and she didn't get in any of the schools they wanted is something I suspect a lot of people would not have done.
They could've taken the easy way out and enrolled her in Holy Name or some other parochial or private school, but didn't. They stuck it out with BPS and became active parents and played whatever small role they did (and I suspect, given his day job, it was more than just a small role) in turning that school around.
My wife and I were very lucky with the lottery - we got the "good" school we wanted. I don't know what we would have done if we'd been locked out of all the schools we wanted and had to make a choice like the Connollys. We did briefly discuss moving out of town, but fortunately for us, never had to seriously consider that.
Drove me to Connolly
I stayed as dispassionate as I could during this. Because I blog on politics and run a weekly podcast on which I interview pols, I keep to my position of not donating time or money to those I am likely to have on. Yet after months of big lies and little lies about Connolly, I ended up endorsing him on a blog.
This is not my first day using the internet or reading comments here or at BlueMassGroup, the latter of which has the worst of the anti-Connolly disingenuousness.
I've largely enjoyed the preliminary and final mayoral, the former in large part because of its surprising civility. I had quite a few of the candidates on Left Ahead, attended many kickoffs and stump-speech events, researched their websites and position papers, and read as much as I could find online and in print. By the bye, you can hear my last goes with Walsh here and with Connolly here.
Honestly, these false slurs against Connolly reminded me of the fake-Indian attacks on Elizabeth Warren in the Herald. It takes almost no effort to see that Connolly never once claimed to be a career teacher or that it was his life's work. Asserting either is a red herring. In fact, the what about two and one-half years at Ropes and 12 or more years total in some form of legal practice is a gimmick.
That's the nature of trolling. Demand a poster or commenter do a lot of work to produce all the information, with links to documents, in the exact form you want. Then nitpick the hell out of small parts of it. Finally claim total victory and vindication.
No thanks, and I don't have even tenuous ties to Connolly's campaign. He said it plain. He understands and feels enough about education from his scant two years teaching Jesuit middle school in NYC and 1 year in a charter school here, plus being a parent of kids in and headed to BPS, and double plus running the Council education committee for fours year — all combined into passion and plans.
This crazy talk about hanging him with Ropes, if you pardon the dreadful pun, serves up nothing but flash and powder. As he said on his Left Ahead show, if you have policy differences, deal with those. I would add, don't make up crap. Deal with substance. He has lots of policy planks you can discuss.
Mike
P.S. There...I finally got trolled out enough to comment.
Right On, Adam!
"Lawyer" and "union" have become this campaign's slur words like "professor" and "Harvard" were in the Warren/Brown race. Uninspired pandering, I'd say.
Even Walsh admitted that he regretted not working as hard as he could have during his school years. Maybe if he had, he'd be a lawyer or another kind of white-collar professional now, too. Plenty of working-class kids, in his generation, did.
As a Harvard College graduate...
... and an attorney, I haven't been the least bit bothered by Walsh's approach. Walsh never pretended that being a labor leader was not an important part of his background -- while Connolly tried to finesse the fact that his primary occupation had been "lawyer".
Connolly screwed up by not providing a compelling narrative (from the start of his campaign) as to how and why his work as a lawyer had contributed to his ability to be an effective mayor for the people of Boston. If he could NOT make such a case (and I certainly expect he _could_ have done so), trying to "hide" behind two years of work as a teacher's aide and one year of work as a teacher was never going to work -- it simply invited _any_ opponent to call attention to the work he was (seemingly) hoping folks wouldn't particularly notice. It is Connolly's unforced error in trying to minimize his actual career that is (in part) responsible for his current predicament.
I see no reason to demonize either candidate -- and would hope that whichever one wins -- we will have an entusiastic and well-meaning new mayor, who will make some needed changes but preserve the best of Mayor Menino's accomplishments.
Walsh not hiding his background, but
I was listening to him on the radio today. His emphasis is on being a State Rep, which he was and did some courageous things while doing it. However, since the war was declared on organized labor in Boston, he only mentions being a union bigwig when asked about it.
Once again, Connolly being a lawyer is not a bad thing. He's allowed the Walsh camp to smear him by not saying just that. He couldn't, since his spiel is being an educator. Admitting to being a lawyer (and probably a lawyer that does, with all do respect, boring things) would knock the narrative.
The sad thing is, my bias aside, both candidates could have done a better job at pointing out why they would be the best for Boston going forward. Both also ran, in my eyes, surprisingly positive campaigns. These "outside group" TV ads are sickeningly positive.
Just remember people (and Michael, I know you will) VOTE!!!
Our household contains...
... five regular voters (though I will be happy when some finally move out on their own).
The Marty Walsh trolls have
The Marty Walsh trolls have hijacked the UHub comment boards! Doesn't he have enough dirty out of city money to just run banner ads on Uhub?
troll indeed
Notice we're talking about the candidates and you're smearing them?
Connolly's hedge fund benefactors DFER bought him over $1/2 million in tv advertising this week alone. That's "dirty out out of city" money, which makes John Connolly a Class A hypocrite for calling out Walsh's outside money like his shit don't stink. It does, and stinks bad.
Key difference
DFER's been around for awhile. So has that other group, the one Connolly told to back off before the preliminary. You can look up the sort of people who give money to them (and, yes, see that they are the sort of people looking to corporatize public education in a way that hasn't really been done in Boston with our existing, locally-run charter schools). So you know what you're getting.
Contrast that with that woman in Roslindale who doesn't vote who all of a sudden has half a mill to drop on ads for Walsh? Now, I bet you we'll find out in January that it's all union PACs. But we don't know and she won't say. What's she hiding? Why is she afraid of what would happen if voters did find out?
Bingo
Also, DFER is a specific issue oriented group. You might not like them and that's fine. However, it's night and day to the dark money BS that's behind the Walsh campaign. Ask the next GOTV Walsh person you see which hotel they are staying in while they are in town.
If Walsh wins, I don't think that the election was 'bought' because he's worked hard and picked up many key endorsements, but let's also not pretend the extra millions of dollars he's imported to Boston having helped fund GOTV staff, ads, fliers, etc... It all has an impact. It's going to be a very close race.
Super PACs
Adam, David Benstein asked DFER IEPAC to disclose their donors and they declined.
Both candidates benefit from Super PAC spending and neither candidate has *any* control over it ... because the US Supreme Court, the Roberts Court, worked really hard to turn over three major precedents to declare corporations people and money speech.
I've never seen labor as a nefarious influence. Like Senator Warren I recognize America's middle class as a product of organizing labor and negotiating for fair wages and safe work conditions. Yes, like any human endeavor unions have excesses and corruption in the ranks of leadership but that does not discount the importance of their role in upward mobility for millions of poor americans. I also reject that idea that Walsh intends to use the office of mayor for the narrow purposes of labor. He seems imminently fair in considering the interest of all parties. See the wildcat bus strike and the BPS contract.
My take on the One Boston SuperPAC is that they are some wealthy people who wanted to spend money on a positive ad but not the ads being run by other PACs in favor of Marty, did so behind the face of a local person. I assume the message of their ad matches their interest in the race but who knows.
FYI, the polls are clear. Boston voters think Walsh will do a better job for the middle class and poor; Connolly will better represent the wealthy.
"Some wealthy people who wanted to spend money on a positive ad"
And that's different from what you accuse DFER of doing how?
SuperPACS have the right.
DFER has the right. One Boston has the right. I don't like the laws but we have them.
Connolly rails against the outside money while he benefits from it. Connolly beats his opponent with it (like a red-headed step child) and acts like he is not benefiting. It's epic hypocrisy.
Walsh does not oppose the outside money as long as the message is positive.
Connolly's outside money represents an agenda I thoroughly oppose because privatizing schools wont improve them and at the same time it gives away the public's control over public education, while we pay for it with our real estate taxes. The folks putting up the money are Wall St types who want big returns investing in charter schools. It's another gambit to fleece taxpayers. I don't see that agenda on the other side.
OK, I do have a problem with outside money, positive or not
And some friends Walsh has when he asks them, as strongly as he can without stepping over the SuperPAC line, to stop smearing his friend John Connolly, and they don't.
" I don't see that agenda on the other side."
I didn't vote for either one in the preliminary because of my concerns over charters schools. But setting aside, for a moment, the issue of who is funding whom, how is Walsh's support of lifting the cap on charter schools different than Connolly's? Has he said how, if the cap is raised, he would keep the sort of New York bankers some of us are worried about from getting their fingers around public-school dollars? Could you even legally do that?
Adam, mass mailings can take many days to be processed...
... and delivered. In the case of the second mass mailing on behalf of Walsh, it is highly likely that the stuff had already gone out _before_ Walsh said he didn't want such mailings to continue.
On charters: Why one and not the other.
In terms of charter expansion the two things I hold onto are that;
I don't know if that's how it will work out, but it is why I will give my vote to Walsh not Connolly.
Charter schools
So even though Marty Walsh won't say what his intentions are but he's generally ok with charters, you're pretty sure he can be convinced to do what someone else wants and then go back on his campaign position of being in favor of charters?
I don't think Connolly is the creature of the DFER and I've heard him lay out his vision of how charter schools can work with BPS without destroying BPS. All expansion has to be approved, meaning city hall can pressure the charter schools to open in underserved communities or address inclusion issues. No-one is talking about opening a K-8 in West Roxbury sucking money away from the poor parts of town- there's no need to freak out.
But wait!
Walsh is in favor of charter schools, just like Connolly?
It's touching that you are worried about your taxes being spent to educate kids at the Brooke charter school (largely poor, almost entirely minority population with good results) but are totally fine with labor unions soaking up tax dollars. Own a pizza place or a small plumbing business- pay your taxes! Have a public sector union job- why you're a middle class success!
Our current union contracts have benefits which are unfunded to the tune of $17k per household- there are real, long term structural issues which need to be fixed. Class warfare won't solve them and pretending Wall St is somehow the problem is a distraction.
Unfunded MANDATES
If they were benefits (health insurance, overtime, Quinn, vacation, holiday, sick leave) and they were unfunded, the City would be screwed NOW.
The "benefits" to which you refer would be retirement. City workers, assuming they are career "hacks," have no Social Security to look forward to when they retire. Of course, then there are health benefits for retirees. The $17,000 per household would be for current workers when they retire. Also, that is the law, not contractual. Right now, a grand total of 0% of your taxes go to City of Boston retirees (excepting, perhaps, health insurance.) However, a percentage of my wages do go to them.
Look, I am all in favor of reforming municipal and state retirement (as you can guess, this is, or will be, an issue for me), but it is no different than the Social Security and Medicare issues the nation is facing. Up the retirement age and up the contribution (or as you would say in the case of Social Security, raise taxes.)
You know public employees pay taxes, too, right?
Not my point
I think public sector employees should absolutely be paid their owed benefits.
The issue I have is that there a lot of retirees coming soon and they need to be paid. We can't ignore this obligation and should in parallel to fixing this issue figure out how to prevent it from being a future issue. If we have obligations, the funding should be part of the budget, not just a promise that future taxpayers will have to deal with it. Health care benefits and pension benefits are real costs, just like operating the schools or buying a fire truck. My concern is that a strong union voice in city hall will make these issues worse, not better by offering increases without also planning how to fund them whether it's healthcare or pensions. The can cannot be kicked down the road forever. The next mayor needs to deal with it.
Agreed, but
They are law, not contractual benefits. Nothing in my contract says how much I pay in to retirement, as opposed to health care, which is explicitly spelled out and has been bargained over the year with Menino (well, Dunlap, but who knows who he is).
Like I say, government pensions need to be reformed, just like Social Security. The crazy thing in the nineties and early aughts was that they were offering early retirement incentives like every 4 years. Eventually the trustees smartened up, to the dismay of older workers.
The easy thing to do would be to raise the retirement age. Should I be "set" at 60? Hell, not. But right now I can, and if I were a teacher or cop I could go earlier. Should I pay a greater percentage? I would say no, but if I could see Social Security contributors getting hit, it would be fair to all.
Neither Walsh nor Connolly will touch this. It's just like Social Security. Like you note, though, delay now and hurt later.
"Pretending Wall St is the
"Pretending Wall St is the problem is a distraction." Wow you sure are a moron. Get ye to the suburbs, Royal
Walsh's campaign has had
Walsh's campaign has had plenty of keyboard warriors to launch personal attacks and mud slinging on here and other news sites. I have seen very little personal and mean spirited non issue oriented comments thrown at Walsh compared to Connolly. One side is running the fully Alinksy playbook and the other seems to be stumbling through a campaign.
"wu" women?
Huh? Did you just use "wu" as a stand-in for "asian-american?"
Wu Women?
Like, Bama Blacks?
You should fix that. Assuming you're Whitey White..
Did you read past the headline?
I'm guessing not, because otherwise you would've seen the whole point was that a pollster raised the question of how Asian-American women coming out to vote for Wu would vote in the mayoral election.