HOWIE CARR: Hub mayor’s one lucky pol
Marty Walsh has to be the luckiest man in Massachusetts politics.
Has the guy ever had a tough fight?
You know the old saying, “I’d rather be lucky than good.” Those are words the incumbent mayor of Boston lives by, or should anyway.
When Joe Louis was heavyweight champion, his opponents were so hopeless that they became collectively known as “The Bum of the Month Club.”
That club is now open under new management, at City Hall.
Some people collect stamps, or campaign buttons, or first editions. Marty collects defective candidates. Maybe someday he’ll build a museum for his collection of pols who’ve run against him. It will have to be a wax museum.
Go back to Marty’s first run for public office — state rep in Dorchester, in 1996. His opponent? None other than the woman Patches Kennedy would someday call Marsha Coakley — the Hillary Clinton of the Bay State.
Every great success by a white male politician in Massachusetts in recent years has been built on drawing the hapless Coakley as his foe — Scott Brown in 2010, Charlie Baker in 2014, and Marty Walsh way back when.
Then there was the mayor’s race of 2013. Marty wasn’t exactly running on his accomplishments at the State House, but he lucked out again.
Talk about bums of the month — in 2013 Marty was running against City Councilor Felix Arroyo, another hack who seemed to believe there was a law against campaigning before noon.
And then there was John Connolly, the Thurston Howell III of Boston politics. Connolly used his parents’ connections to put together a crew of courthouse hacks — the same gang who’d guided Flats Flaherty Jr. to electoral oblivion four years earlier. If the formula had failed in 2009, what made Connolly think it would work in 2013? The answer is, you can always tell a Harvard man, but you can’t tell him much ...
Then Connolly turned down a $500,000 contribution by an education PAC. At the same time Marty was vacuuming up millions from outfits like the International Brotherhood of Pinky Rings and Amalgamated Cement Overshoes Local 52 from the Bronx.
This year Marty draws Tito Jackson, who judging by his dynamic effort so far, thinks it’s against the law to campaign either before or after noon. Hard work may never have killed anyone, but Tito’s not taking any chances.
Did you see him after the preliminary election? Tito was practically giddy. He got 29 percent of the vote! He beat Robert Meaney Cappucci!
Marty, meanwhile, with more money than God, rolls up fewer than 35,000 votes in a city of more than 600,000 people. I thought he had more hacks on the city payroll than that. But what does it matter? He’s running against ... Tito.
All this is occurring in a city that has become almost as liberal as Cambridge. It’s amazing — for once the suburb has infected the city, not vice versa.
But Marty caught another big break.
He also gets to run his campaign not just against Tito, but against President Trump.
I still remember how that “feud,” such as it is, began. It was 2015, and I told candidate Trump on my radio show that Walsh was telling him to stay out of the city of Boston. Trump, who has his bum-of-the-month club, had never heard of Hizzoner.
“I think Walsh, whoever he may be, should absolutely apologize to Mr. Trump,” said Mr. Trump. “I don’t know him, but I think he’s a lousy mayor. I expect him to apologize to me and if he doesn’t, the voters should vote him the hell out of office!”
That’ll be the day. You can’t beat somebody with nobody. I’m sure the president has long since forgotten Marty, but the mayor remembers him — every time he wants to remind the city’s blow-in swells how wonderful he is.
So Marty wins another term, and come January, another statute gets wheeled into the Walsh Wax Museum. It’s almost time for your close up, Tito.