Election Day 2009

In case you haven’t heard, today is Election Day. While not a presidential election year, there are still a lot of very important elections in many municipalities that can make a big difference. 30 cities in the Commonwealth have mayoral elections, including Boston, which is also electing city councilors today. Is Mayor Tom Menino going to hold on for yet another term, or will Michael Flaherty overcome the power of incumbency?

It will be an exciting day…don’t underestimate the importance of the smaller local elections.

Kerry Snubbed By Menino?

There has reportedly been bad blood recently between John Kerry and Mayor Menino, so whether or not there was a snub here, I can’t say.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino yesterday insisted his decision to skip the Democratic state convention two weeks ago was not a snub to Sen. John F. Kerry even as one of the mayor’s top operatives said his troops were not rallied to support Kerry there.

“I talked to John Kerry a week before the convention and he knew I wasn’t coming,” Menino said yesterday after an appearance in East Boston.

The Herald yesterday detailed a long-standing feud between the two high-profile pols and reported that Menino didn’t lift a finger to help even as Kerry sought convention backing for his re-election bid.

Kerry had been seeking to keep Democratic primary challenger Ed O’Reilly off the ballot, but O’Reilly got 22 percent of the vote – far more than the 15 percent he needed to force a September primary. It’s the first time Kerry will face a primary opponent since 1984.K

Kerry may easily win the primary, but I’d be insulted if I were him that O’Reilly easily got enough support to get on the ballot.

What’s In A Name? About $1 Million Per Year

Amongst his achievements are increased violence and murder, which in Boston could get a convention center named after you. Such is the case with South Boston Convention Center, which allegedly has been delaying the sale of its naming rights to accommodate the possible naming of the building after Mayor Thomas Menino.

The Massachusetts Convention Center Authority is delaying selling naming rights to its new South Boston facility so it can name the building after Mayor Tom Menino when he leaves office, a decision costing the state hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, state Republican leaders say.

“It is clear to people familiar with the situation that the convention center authority is very reluctant to put the naming rights out to bid because they want to eventually name the facility for Mayor Menino,” said Senate minority leader Richard Tisei, R-Wakefield. “There is no other reason. It is a lot of money to leave on the table.”

The naming rights could be sold for up to $1 million per year, said Dick Sherwood, president of Front Row Marketing Services, a Philadelphia firm that negotiates naming rights deals.

The executive director of the authority, a former top Menino aide, denies Tisei’s charge.

The solution is pretty clear to me, and it will solve all of this and please everyone: tell Mayor Menino to resign.

Menino vs. The Guns

As usual, Mayor Tom Menino’s war against guns is falling short of being an effective means of reducing gun violence. His latest idea, to suspend the drivers licenses of convicted gun offenders for 5 years.

With gun violence in Boston up sharply in recent years, one of Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s top legislative priorities this year would strip convicted gun offenders of their right to drive for up to five years.

Menino, however, wants to take away something that very few gun offenders have, according to a Globe analysis of more than 100 gun convictions last year and state Registry of Motor Vehicles records of those offenders.

Of the 119 gun offenders convicted in Suffolk County last year whose records were reviewed, 79 have already had their driver’s licenses revoked or suspended for other reasons, for offenses from selling drugs near schools to repeatedly failing to appear in court on traffic violations.

This idea is being seen as completely “missing the mark,” so the Boston Globe calls it.

To criminologists and others who assert Menino’s proposal is political and not pragmatic, such numbers are further evidence that passage of the mayor’s legislation would have little or no impact on the city’s efforts to curb gun violence.

One critic, Thomas Nolan , a Boston University criminologist who was a Boston policeman for 27 years, said the legislation is out of touch with the realities of street violence.

“These kids are living in a parallel universe from the rest of us,” Nolan said. “It’s basically applying a middle-class standard that would probably work on kids from the ‘burbs. . . . To these kids in their parallel universe, they don’t think about getting their license and driving the family car.”

Nolan added: “We have one of the strongest gun laws in the country and that doesn’t deter [offenders]. What makes people think that these people even apply for driver’s licenses or have them at all?”

Just as in the case of the Virginia Tech shootings (which no law could have prevented), trying to curb gun violence with legislation against offenders won’t work. You can’t create new laws for the unlawful.

Deval’s Token “GOPer”

During the campaign Deval Patrick claimed that as governor he would reach out to both Democrats and Republicans as governor. And now we’ve been given a preview of what his idea of bipartisanship is.

Gov.-elect Deval Patrick named a Republican and two high-powered Democratic business leaders to head a team that will help choose his cabinet secretaries and examine changes to state government.

The announcements were made yesterday after two days of meetings in which Patrick huddled with top strategists and advisers.

The leaders of the transition team will be Gloria Larson, former secretary of Economic Affairs under Gov. William Weld; Michael Angelini, a lawyer and chairman of the Hanover Insurance Co.; and Ron Homer, CEO of Access Capital Strategies.

Gloria Larson, as we’ve previously reported on Hub Politics, isn’t even a registered Republican… and even if she was, she’d be a pretty bad one considering she’s donated to the campaigns of Dianne Wilkerson, Robert Travaglini, Tom Reilly, Tom Menino, Jarrett Barrios, Martha Coakley, and Marie St. Fleur.

But that certainly won’t stop his supporters from citing this as “proof” that Deval Patrick is “reaching out to Republicans in the name of bipartisanship.”

Is this what we can expect from a Deval Patrick administration? Whenever he needs to give the appearance of being bipartisan, he’ll just call up his token “GOPer” Gloria Larson and ask her if she wants to be on another committee so he can ask the media to put out another story that he’s got a Republican on his team? Perhaps if Gloria Larson can’t make it he could call another stellar Republican like Lincoln Chafee, who won’t be too busy come January.