The Globe reports at-large Councilor Stephen Murphy wants a six-month moratorium on medallion transfers while and the rest of the council consider the city's new tax regs, which require cabs to be hybrids by 2015 and which require cab owners to ensure their vehicles - and drivers - are actually clean.

Look what we got in the mail today:

Of course, as I've blathered, if Connolly loses because of this, it'll be because he attacked Murphy anonymously, not because what he said about Murphy was in any way untrue.

Election's tomorrow, natch.

UPDATE: Connolly just lost my vote. His campaign admits sending out the Murphy piece.

Over the past two days, we've gotten a pair of mailings related to Tuesday's city council elections. One is from John Connolly and basically explains how wonderful he is and why he should be an at-large city councilor. The other is an anonymous mailing telling us how awful incumbent at-large councilor Stephen Murphy is.

What's interesting is the physical similarities between the two mailings. Both are the same size and use the same cardstock. Both make extensive use of dropshadow. The computer-generated mailing "labels" are identical (and in our case, both addressed to "The Gaffin Household"). And then there's the thing I find most interesting: That the cut-outs used to attribute something to the Boston Globe have the same exact scissor-like borders:

The Globe "cut-out" from the John Connolly mailing:

The Globe "cut-out" from the anti-Murphy mailing:

Now, this doesn't prove that the Connolly campaign had anything to do with the anti-Murphy mailing. There probably aren't a ton of union print shops (both mailings have the same union bug) that do political printing and it could be a case of two separate groups using the same shop by coincidence. And the Herald cut-outs on each flier have different borders. It sure would be interesting to find out who at 31 Milk St. (the address listed on the Murphy thing) published it.

And for me, ironically, the anti-Murphy mailing does spell out why I wasn't planning to vote for him: He seems terminally bored as a city councilor and keeps trying (and failing) to get other jobs. But if we do find out that another candidate is behind this gutless (because it's anonymous) mailing, he'll lose my vote as well.

Stephen Murphy will be asking the state Legislature to let Boston skip a preliminary at-large election this year and simply put all nine candidates on the November ballot, Wayne Braverman reports. The move would save the city the $500,000 it would cost to eliminate one of the nine candidates.