Sam Yoon's long haul

Bernstein makes a lot of good points, but one important point is underplayed, and another is dodged.

Underplayed: It's a two-stage race.

The first is to grab the no. 2 spot in the preliminary. It means Yoon is running in part vs. Menino, in that he's trying to win over previous Menino voters who may be ambivalent about granting yet another term to the Mayor. But he also must run hard against Flaherty, without (as Bernstein notes) alienating the Flaherty voters whose support he needs in the November.

Ironically, if Yoon miraculously is leading the entire pack in the preliminary, I'm not sure that's the best place for him to be. The frontrunner always takes the hardest hits, and in Boston those hits can be mighty hard. He'll be scrutinized plenty by pulling a strong second. And being second "with momentum" isn't a bad place for a challenger to be heading into the general election.

Dodged: There's the issue of race

Bernstein's description of Yoon's public persona to date, while not wholly inaccurate, nevertheless also straddles uncomfortably certain stereotypes about Asians and Asian men in particular. So, you've got this unstated backstory that Yoon is elected to the council as a bright, committed, likeable, but not overly threatening young man who is now expected to take out the sharp and long knives and play political hardball.

The question of whether he can or should morph into that kind of candidate overlaps with how he will be perceived by voters who still aren't used to seeing Asians on the ballot.

In addition, in "majority minority" Boston, it's not a given that Yoon will automatically get a huge outpouring of support from African American and Latino voters. Not too long ago, the lumping together of "Black, Latino, and Asian" was a given. But there's a shift occurring, and Asians are starting to take on a social/cultural role very similar to Jews in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, and there are emerging (and largely unacknowledged) tensions between the so-called racial minority communities.

The Black and Latino activists may see Yoon as "one of them" based on his organizing background, but I don't think it's a slam dunk (yet, at least) that he's got the rank-and-file.

That said, if Yoon runs a smart initial campaign, and no other viable candidates of color enter the race, he -- not Flaherty -- becomes the primary challenger to Menino.

Just my two (er, maybe five) cents.