Solution: A strongly-worded resolution from a weak municipal legislative body!

Or so says the weak legislative body in question, Boston’s city council. Today, the council breaks from its normal weekly duties of passing resolutions congratulating old people on having birthdays, to debate a resolution (brought by Bill Linehan and Sal LaMattina) that seeks to defend our very way of life. Or, at least, the way of life of people who now have lots and lots of days off because, a long time ago, the British were dicks to us, and we didn’t like them for that.

Here, then, is the text of the only council resolution to ever be funnier than that one time Rob Consalvo congratulated a guy named “Snake” on his birthday: “Resolution supporting and uphold Bunker Hill day and Evacuation day as holidays so our citizens may reflect and remember the sacrifices of those who have gone before us.”

It would appear that no snappy punchline is necessary.

This afternoon, at 3, I get an email from Sam Yoon’s campaign letting me know about all the important legislative stuff he’s up to. He’s getting action and keeping Fire Department equipment safe! So just don’t believe anything you might read in the barbershop chair. OK? OK.

Spotted yesterday, in Brighton Center: A sign urging the good people of Boston to reelect Felix Arroyo to the City Council.

Nearly a year and a half after they declined to do so.

Yesterday, he whacked Hizzoner over Boston’s not-quite-frosty hiring freeze. And today, it’s free tax breaks for anybody who wants them.

This is what some people would refer to as “not going away quietly.” Far from it. And neither mayoral wannabe has even announced yet.

(Cross-posted, for the last time, from Boston Daily)

It’s been a hell of a year for scandal on Beacon Hill. Jim Marzilli went on a sexy rampage, there’s a grand jury investigating the Speaker’s former campaign treasurer, and the House Majority Leader might not be far behind.

The man who’s opposing him for control of the House probably used his committee to buy support. When one Rep didn’t fall in line, she was told she might get “really hurt.” Another couldn’t get hurt—he wasn’t anywhere near the State House when he was voting on stuff. And to top it all off, Rep from Worcester has a crooked mortgage and a young girlfriend who works for some insurance lobbyists. (Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly.)

None of that matters anymore. Because now, we’ve got Dianne Wilkerson to kick around.

As scandals go, this one’s a cake-topper. Wilkerson shook down some dude who was looking for a liquor license, so he went to the FBI. The FBI and the dude then let Wilkerson pocket a ton of their money. Then they arrested her.

The feds have flung subpoenas far and wide. They’ve opened a grand jury, and are seeking the documents to make their undercover investigation stand up. They’ll surely get around to asking the perpetual victim two questions: Who else paid her? And was anyone else was on the take?

The volume of recon (150-odd secret recordings) and cash pocketed ($23,500) in this case is impressive. As is the ubiquitous photo of the senator cramming filthy hundreds up her shirt. As is Wilkerson’s hilariously Aristotelian one-liner, accepting a bribe from an undercover Fed by saying, “I am a firm believer in the notion that you can do good and do well at the same time.”

And even better, there’s no complex money laundering scheme to try to follow. (Allegedly!) There’s no Gordian knot of lawyers and un-lobbyists to navigate.

There’s no guilt over mercilessly beating up the mentally ill, or the invariable question: “Do I actually care about this?” that arises whenever one reads sordid news from Worcester. There’s just… filth. A fetid, stank-ass, bottomless pile of filth. It’s glorious.

Unless you work on Beacon Hill and run for office every two years. Then it’s the worst crisis to rock the public sector in three decades.

The Beacon Hill press corps certainly appreciates the moment. They’re killing Wilkerson at every turn. The other electeds named in the Wilkerson affidavit—Therese Murray, Maureen Feeney, Michael Morrissey, and Chuck Turner—all vehemently deny being in on the scheme, but they’re being dragged along for the ride nonetheless, thanks to a flurry of FBI subpoenas.

As is Byron Rushing, who is widely believed to be the “House Representative Z,” the House member whom the affidavit alleged would be responsible for filing sketchy development legislation in the House, and receiving a $5,000 kickback for his troubles. The thing is, Wilkerson filed her bill on October 20. Rep Z never followed suit.

(Reached for comment by State House News on Tuesday, Rushing said, “I’m shocked and very sad for Dianne, and distressed for the Senate, for the institution, for all of us.” He was then asked whether Wilkerson had ever talked to him about Parcel 8, and he ended the interview, saying, “That’s it.”)

More on people not named Dianne Wilkerson later. The high theater yesterday was the Senate’s unprecedented call for Wilkerson’s resignation.

Hordes of reporters staked out Murray’s offices, where legislators met behind closed doors, debating Wilkerson’s fate. Court officers stood guard outside. There was a lot of waiting. A lot.

At one point, Jack Hart stuck his head into the hall, scouting whether the coast was clear. It most certainly was not. So he retreated inside, and the waiting continued. Brian Wallace cruised by a couple times to rubberneck at the surreal scene.

Just outside the room where Senators wrestled with the fallout from Wilkerson’s crimes, and below the phalanx of cameras and reporters, a group of elementary school kids scarfed down some lunch and ran laps around Nurses Hall. This is what democracy looks like, children.

The lawmakers eventually emerged from Murray’s office, and had to perform a hurried perp walk on their way to the Senate chambers. The president tersely declined to comment; Michael Morrissey (the famous Senator Y), flanked by Robert O’Leary and Robert Creedon, hurried through a brief statement, the gist of which was, “I’m not on the take, and didn’t know that my colleague was, either.” He wouldn’t speak with the press afterward.

Then there was a mad rush to the Senate gallery. The court officer on duty was kind enough to not enforce the chamber’s rigid dress code, though she did firmly remind a Globe columnist to remain seated. And then it was on.

The Senate stripped Wilkerson of all her committee posts. They referred her case to the Committee on Rules and Ethics, a move that could lead to her prompt expulsion. And, in the loudest voice vote we’ve heard in quite some time, they passed a unanimous resolution urging Wilkerson to resign.

Morrissey had wanted her expelled immediately, though the body’s rules don’t permit that. Wilkerson had sent Murray a letter pledging to “respect whatever decision you make” at the caucus. Thursday’s resolution was Murray’s way of calling her bluff.

Of course, the embattled senator quickly backed away. Even as the Black Ministerial Alliance and the Ten Point Coalition prepared to toss her out into the street.

Still, democracy stops for no woman, no matter how many cameras wait outside. So, after dispatching with Wilkerson, the Senate voted to congratulate a church in Haverhill, the Coolidge Corner Theatre, and some lady who had recently turned 80. They also advanced a number of public works bills. There were long faces all around. Several lawmakers cast nervous glances up at the press gallery. An aide chomped at her nails. The body finally recessed. On with the circus.

Murray was mobbed when she finally engaged the press. She read a statement about cooperating with law enforcement and blah, blah, blah and then, thankfully, went off script. She indulged the softball question “Are you angry?” with, “Do I look angry? Yes, I am. I’m very angry.”

And, for good measure, she threw in, “I think if she values the integrity of the Senate, if she values her colleagues’ work, then she will go.” And that’s tame. The Senate President is said to be livid. Apoplectic. Pissed the F off.

It’s not an uncommon emotion. Creedon, standing on a stairway and watching several of his colleagues take turns teeing off on Wilkerson for the cameras, told us, “The last couple days, the mood in the whole place has been somber. People are shaking their heads. For me, it’s bookends to my 12 years here.”

He’d chaired the Ethics Committee investigation into Wilkerson’s tax evasion and subsequent house arrest. Now, here he was, one foot out the door, and Wilkerson before the Ethics Committee again. “What luck!” he cried as he walked away. “I thought the Irish were supposed to be lucky!”

Asked what the caucus was like, Stephen Brewer replied, “The mood was outrage. Not sadness. Outrage.” He added that the idea of a resolution seeking Wilkerson’s expulsion wasn’t the result of hours-long haggling. It was introduced “immediately.”

The anger is felt deepest among the lawmakers named in the FBI document. Some are shocked—shocked!—that government works this way. Sorry. Minus the bras full of crisp hundreds, this is how government works. Politicians beat up on other politicians to get what they want. Especially when it comes to their own neighborhoods.

“It’s nothing we haven’t seen a million times before,” says a Beacon Hill insider. “It’s her job to advocate for her constituency. But Morrissey, Murray and Feeney don’t know she’s getting paid.”

Murray and Morrissey and Feeney are caught up in this thing because Wilkerson played hardball on something she should’ve been expected to play hardball on, and they went along with it. And now they find out that Wilkerson didn’t just get paid for stringing along the Senate President and the city council. She hit them with cries of discrimination. Racism. And got paid for it.

That’s why everybody involved in this thing is so enraged. Wilkerson didn’t just sell out herself, her office, her colleagues and her constituents. She also used racial demagoguery to get the job done.

And now they’re all in danger. People who say they’ve done nothing wrong will have to swear to that fact before a federal grand jury. They’re in danger of unintentionally perjuring themselves. How easy is that?

The Hill and the Hall made a series of calls this week about an old liquor license fight between the city and Morrissey. We could’ve sworn it happened in 2006-2007. It was 2005-2006. That misunderstanding never made it to print, but at least Times v. Sullivan is more lenient that federal perjury law. Others aren’t so lucky. And the legal paper has just started flying.

“I’d be shocked if this was the only shoe that fell,” says former AG Scott Harshbarger. “Once you’ve subpoenaed, you don’t know what you’ll find. The FBI is going to be holding lots of documents that normally wouldn’t end up in the hands of the FBI.”

Harshbarger, for one, believes that Beacon Hill might not be hit as hard as City Hall. “Where there’s money and power, you investigate. Most of those intersections occur at the city level. They all got tainted, whether they were in on it or not.”

One last point: Wilkerson has tried to make hay out of Mike Sullivan’s timing here. She’s not incorrect that Sullivan, a Republican, is eying his future. But that doesn’t make him the villain here.

“Sullivan knows he’s out of a job in a couple months,” the Beacon Hill insider says. “He’s setting himself up for Senate. It’s nothing new. Weld did it, Rudy did it. Sullivan wants a Senate seat and she’s guilty as sin. The two are not mutually exclusive.”

And here’s why: Wilkerson finds fault in the fact that the Feds cuffed her the week before her election. But they had to arrest her now. They had her on tape (allegedly) talking about her thirst for cash. Talking about how she couldn’t get reelected with $250 donations. They thought she was taking fistfuls of cash, off the books, to illegally fund her reelection run. They couldn’t wait until next week.

By next week, it might’ve been too late.

Man. That’s a king-hell bummer to end this thing on. So let’s try wrapping it up with this.

Overheard in the halls of the State House this week: Paul McMurtry greeting a gaggle of little kids touring the state capitol. He asks them what sights they’ve seen so far. Then he asks, “Did you see the Speaker of the House? No? Well, if you see him, tell him I say hi!”

Last week’s Hill and the Hall detailed how Mike Ross was able to wrap up the City Council presidency so early. But it’s the other side to that discussion — the why — that should really shake up city politics.

Mayor Tom Menino rode the council presidency to Kevin White’s doorstep. And, balky limbs and dust bowls permitting, he’ll ride it beyond. Michael Flaherty used the presidency to become Menino’s heir apparent. His five-year run atop the rostrum raised his public profile and expand his fundraising base so successfully that the mayor’s people decided they had to destroy the monster they’d created.

This year’s council president race looked to be so competitive because observers thought the prize—a spot second in line behind Menino at a time when Hizzoner’s future was uncertain—was great enough that no councilor with an outside shot at the mayor’s office (roughly half of them) would ever put a potential rival inches away from the very thing they themselves coveted.

The potential was great enough that ambitious councilors would avoid elevating a potential rival at all costs. Why let somebody else pull the trick Flaherty had already pulled?

Ross is young and has broad citywide appeal. He’s the type of politician that any councilor should want to keep out of the public eye—assuming that those councilors see futures for themselves beyond the council’s awful concrete walls. But Ross is about to step closer to the mayor’s office than any of his colleagues, and he’s doing it with their help and unanimous support.

He can thank Maureen Feeney.

The two-year term limits Feeney placed on the presidency didn’t just change the timing of the vote-wrangling and arm-twisting that surrounds the position. It also caused a fundamental shift in councilors’ perceptions of the presidency as a zero-sum position.

The councilors wanted to dump Flaherty two years ago because they felt they were “Enabling him to become mayor,” one says. That’s no longer the case. “It felt different this year,” this person says. Most people figured, “never in a million years would the young guys pick another young guy to be the leader.”

Some of the younger faces on the council were different five yeas ago, but the dynamic is the same. The body then was largely split along generational lines with the young members, backing Flaherty, cooperating and running the show.

Steve Murphy called the arrangement “a house of cards.” He predicted that competing ambitions would eventually turn councilors against each other. “It’s all bound to come down,” he promised the Globe. And he was right.

Some, frustrated by a lack of advancement, left city politics. Others backed Feeney in a bid to take Flaherty down a notch. But then Feeney changed the rules of the game.

Term limits have weakened the political potential inherent in the council presidency, and that means that councilors aren’t giving away their own futures by backing an equally ambitious colleague. It’s a bit like SALT treaties for small-time politics. Nobody is gaining an extraordinary advantage, so everybody’s free to trust each other again.

Because now, all the new council president is guaranteed is two years of reaction quotes in the dailies, and then a swift return to the back bench.

Barack Obama warned supporters yesterday against getting cocky in the final weeks before Election Day. “We don’t take anything for granted,” David Axelrod told the Times.

Seems like a perfect time to begin speculating about what will happen when Obama wins, taps John Kerry for a spot in the State Department or Defense or anything else that’ll save the 2004 presidential loser from worrying about Uxbridge, and Massachusetts finally gets the bloody Senate race we’ve been drooling after for four years now. That wouldn’t jinx the whole thing for everybody, would it?

So, hypothetically and not at all lustily speaking, if Kerry moves up and out, who jumps in?

Attorney General Martha Coakley would seem to be a sure entrant. She’s smart, effective and very well liked by both sides of the Democratic party. But with just over $115,000 in her campaign account, she has less cash on hand than the head of the RMV. That’s a hurdle that needs to be addressed.

War chest-wise, Treasurer Tim Cahill is in better shape—for somebody still schlubbing around Beacon Hill. He’s sitting on top of $312,000, and he’s widely believed to be interested in moving up.

The question is whether he guns for Kerry’s seat, or Deval Patrick’s. We reported back in July that Cahill was feeling bearish about his chances in an open Senate race and might be hedging his bets, beating up on Patrick and waiting for the governor to flub any response to a possible economic collapse.

Well, the damn thing went and collapsed on us, and thus far, Patrick is still standing. Cahill’s strategy may change if the governor continues to refuse to fall on his face for everybody to see. A run for Senate would vaporize the war chest Cahill has worked so hard to amass, but the streets of this town are lined with the bodies of pols who didn’t take the first shot that came their way.

Still, Cahill and Coakley would be fighting any Senate race uphill. The state’s Congressional delegation mobilized for Kerry’s imminent departure once before. They didn’t get to slaughter each other then, so they’re sure to be ready this time around.

There are two fewer contenders now: Marty Meehan took his $4.8 million in campaign cash and decamped to UMass-Lowell, while Barney Frank has ridden the Democrats  majority in the House to a plum committee chairmanship, and all the perks that come with that office.

But that just means that the remaining Reps see the numbers breaking in their favor. Most are well armed for the fight.

Bill Delahunt has $1.28 million on hand. Steve Lynch has $1.3 million. John Tierney: $1.3 million. Richard Neal: $2.1 million. Ed Markey, the delegation’s dean, is sitting on $2.6 million.

Then there are the Congressmen in the poor house. John Olver only has $157,000 to his name. Jim McGovern isn’t too much better off, with $333,000. And Mike Capuano, though sitting on top of a district overflowing with good votes, has just $887,000. Just $887,000.

Yeah, this is the same state where Deval Patrick shocked the political establishment and proved that grassroots blah blah blah. Coakley and Cahill should still get busy getting busy. They may soon find that a couple hundred grand—or even a million or two—doesn’t buy what it used to.

tk

(Cross-posted from Boston Daily)

(Cross-posted from Boston Daily)

Mike Ross beat out Steve Murphy to win the Boston City Council presidency this week. The position comes with a nice big office, the chance to play mayor when the actual mayor blows town, and the honor of presiding over the city’s legislative body during both an economic meltdown and a contentious mayoral race. Congrats, friend.

But it’s only October. And the dreamboat Mission Hill pol already has this thing sewn up. These things usually don’t heat up until November, and don’t get settled until after a series of frantic, eggnog-fueled phone calls. It was a done deal before Hizzoner had a chance to have his say, even. What gives? How’d he pull it off?

Here’s how.

The two-year term limit that Council President Maureen Feeney put on the presidency had a major impact on councilors’ politicking calendars. Last year, Feeney was unopposed when she was reelected president – there was no sense in fighting her because she was doing her job well and will be out of the way in 2009. Everybody wrote off 2008 and focused on 2009. And when they did, the maneuvering to succeed her began exceedingly early.

“Term limits changed the dynamic,” says one City Hall insider. “These things usually go down to the wire.” Instead, everything went down in August and September. “There was no incumbent, and that opened up the gates early,” a second City Hall insider says. At least five councilors could have, conceivably, made a run at the position. Murphy and Ross emerged because they were most successful in cementing their votes early.

Ross might’ve been elected president two years ago, had things broken his way. Six councilors offered to throw their support behind Feeney in 2006. Her own vote would’ve made seven, and won her the office. Instead, she went to Michael Flaherty, who’d been president since 2002, and asked him to stand down the year after. He reportedly agreed. But the next year, he again tried to cobble together the votes to hang on to the presidency. That bid failed, and Feeney won. To the end, Ross stood by Flaherty’s side. In the days before the vote, Flaherty’s remaining supporters began discussing a plan to put Ross forward, in place of the Southie councilor. But it was too late. Feeney already had her votes in place. “Flaherty was doing everything to hold it,” the first insider says, “and it cost Ross the chance to step in as an alternative.”

This time, Flaherty was with Ross. The two are good friends, and Flaherty was Ross’s first backer. Ross also picked up the council’s other prospective mayoral candidate, Sam Yoon, early on. Both would-be candidates worried how Murphy’s ties to the administration might affect their lives on the council, and ambitions. “Yoon’s looking to not get screwed, and Flaherty’s looking for revenge,” the first insider explains. “Flaherty blames Murphy for taking presidency from him.”

In early August, a core of older councilors – Feeney, Bill Linehan, and Sal LaMattina – began coalescing around Murphy. He’s the longest-serving councilor not to have headed the body, and he ran a smooth budget process this year. A Hyde Park resident, he’s generally seen as a Menino loyalist, though he has also bucked the administration – notably, this year, he got the BRA to submit to a Council budget hearing. His detractors seldom mention it, but Murphy is so close to Menino that he can match the mayor, decibel for decibel, and live to talk about it. Let alone remain in Hizzoner’s good graces. Even so, it was the perception that “Murphy will just take care of the administration,” that he “would be cutting deals to protect himself and hammering Yoon and Flaherty,” that helped drive support to Ross.

The Council went on extended vacation for nearly the entire month of August. So when they returned to work in September, things had changed significantly. John Tobin, once thought to be a candidate for president himself, was lining up behind Ross. As was John Connolly, who’s close to Tobin, and, uh, not that close to Murphy. Rob Consalvo, another viable candidate, sided with his Hyde Park neighbor. So in early September, the two factions were deadlocked, with five votes apiece. The thing was over two weeks later.

Chuck Turner broke the deadlock. Ross went to him two days before Murphy did, and he committed. “Nobody else had approached me,” Turner says, adding that he’s been impressed by Ross’s work on the councils Ways and Means and Government Operations committees. “He’s been able to work with every councilor, and he’s been helpful to me. What you need is somebody who’s going to be even-handed. And he has operated in that fashion.”

“That leaves [Mark] Ciommo and [Charles] Yancey,” says a third City Hall insider. “And Yancey’s going to ask for the moon.” “There was the feeling that you can’t trust Yancey,” the first insider adds. “A fear he could dance around,” fishing for a better deal. Ross’s supporters were well aware that Yancey once profited by lining up votes for himself for president, so his colleagues couldn’t break Jim Kelly’s coalition.

Still, Ciommo looked like an unlikely person to give Ross his majority. He won election with the support of Menino, Murphy, and Murphy’s former staffer, State Rep. Mike Moran. Murphy’s camp certainly didn’t anticipate Ciommo siding with Ross. “He’s a mayor’s guy, and there’s the generational thing,” the first insider says. But, again, Ross got to him before Murphy did.

When the Hill and the Hall spoke to Ciommo, he talked about the two coming together around common neighborhood issues, like institutional expansion. He also said he was “proud” to support the council’s first Jewish president. David Bernstein reported Thursday that Ciommo and Ross came together “with help from leaders of Brighton’s Russian Jewish population,” and several people inside City Hall echoed that position. One says that Serge Bologov, who controls the community’s 300-vote bloc, “Helped broker the deal.”

“We’re facing the same issues in our neighborhoods,” Ross says. “We have common friends. Our business is very relationship-based. Common friends go a long way. They were helpful. But he made a difficult decision.”

It was only after Ross had his majority that the real vote-wrangling began. “We had seven, and to me, we could do better as a body,” he says. He had seven votes, and wanted eight or nine or ten. He wound up getting thirteen.

Ciommo committed to Ross last Friday. Word leaked over to the administration. They felt blindsided. “They were bullshit that this happened without them knowing,” the first insider says. Ross’s backers thought it critical that they put together a coalition without the administration’s help, that they walk into a contentious election year and a budget in shambles without owing anybody anything. Otherwise, one said, “The body, and each one of us, would be caught in the crossfire.” “This all came as a surprise as to the administration,” a fourth City Hall insider adds. “They like to be in the mix, and they were clearly taken out of that mix.” That person adds that the mayor “would’ve gotten involved whether Murphy asked him to or not.” Rumors began circulating that the mayor was ratcheting up pressure on Ciommo, viewed as the weakest Ross vote. And for them, it was personal. “The administration thought that, since Yoon and Flaherty were on his team, it was being driven by them,” a Ross supporter says. “It’s not. Look at Flaherty – he’s lobbing bombs with Maureen Feeney as president.”

Then, suddenly, nobody felt like getting bloody. The two sides came together. Ross approached Murphy about merging their campaigns. They spoke Tuesday night, and came to an agreement during Wednesday’s Council meeting, on the Council floor. Their desks are next to each other, anyways. They brought Feeney in on the discussions, and a deal was finalized ten minutes before Wednesday’s surprise press release went out. Some councilors actually learned about the deal from reading the release.

Murphy’s camp believes they might’ve been able to win a protracted fight. They thought their five votes were solid, while a couple of Ross’s backers could be pushed. Ciommo, for one, could’ve been in for a long autumn of vague threats and late-night phone calls. By settling things now, the first insider says, “There’s no civil war.” It’s that concern that ultimately trumped any one councilor’s ambition. “It’s going to be a challenging year anyway,” the second insider says. “To start it off recovering from bitter politicking…”

“I’ve been through this so many times,” Murphy tells us. “It’s so acrimonious, so divisive, so personally troublesome. Everybody would’ve been under pressure. For what? Who needs that? There are things more important than dragging people over a cliff.”

“A battle would look bad for us,” says another insider. “It becomes perverse theatre. People getting calls on Christmas Eve.”

“It was important not get caught in the politics of work, but in substance,” Turner adds. “As a council, we’re showing that we’re not here to play personal politics. People can’t afford politicians to behave the way they have behaved.”

“For the sake of the body, it was important that we all get together,” Ross says. “I like Steve’s people a lot. I like Steve. Three months to go is a long period of time. Why not work with everyone, and pull everyone together?”

The future president, for one, lauds his predecessor for fostering the atmosphere where such a deal could take place. It’s a stark departure from the bitter atmosphere that once shrouded the council. “We’ve had two years where divisiveness wasn’t present, and everyone worked well together,” he says. “She raised the bar for cooperation, for non-acrimony. It’s difficult to keep the workflow going with all the background noise going on. I reached out, I made my case, and he listened and came back and did what’s best for the body. It was harder for him than it was for me. We’ve had a good two years, and we should keep that going.” Feeney spoke Thursday of being “proud” of the détente.

There’s one intriguing theory that surfaced while piecing together this timeline. It went like this: Murphy wasn’t really the administration’s favorite. “Maybe he thought he was legitimate, but they knew that he’d hit the ceiling,” says the theorist. The plan was to peel off a vote from Ross, have Yancey tie up the vote, and send it to a second ballot. Then, another candidate – LaMattina or Consalvo, maybe – would suddenly emerge as a compromise candidate, with the administration’s blessing. 2002, all over again. It’s fascinating. And we’ll likely never know whether or not it’s true.

(Cross-posted from Boston Daily)

This city is dying for a great political race. What we’re getting instead is a race about race. And it’s going to be filthy.

Dianne Wilkerson is scrambling to retain her Senate seat. She lost last week’s Democratic primary to Sonia Chang-Diaz, and responded in familiar fashion: Surrounded by adoring supporters, she spoke defiantly, blamed her misfortunes on outside forces, and vowed to fight on.

Three years ago, the AG was suing her for campaign finance violations; she countered with a farcically exploitative rally in a Mattapan church. The setting was different this time around – a Grove Hall lodge – but the message no less subtle. When Dianne Wilkerson is in a corner, her troubles cease being her own. They’re shared by anybody whose skin looks like hers.

If Tuesday’s rally was any indication, here’s Wilkerson’s strategy for November: Divide an already divided district, cast Chang-Diaz as a white (white enough) interloper, and hope that Barack Obama pulls more votes in Roxbury than he does in JP.

Tuesday’s rhetoric had aggressive racial overtones. Wilkerson’s staff cried fraud and disenfranchisement and Florida. Bob Marshall put Chang-Diaz among “the wine-and-brie crowd.” Chuck Turner said Wilkerson’s seat was “rooted in the politics of the black community.” Asked to clarify her contention that “This is the first time in a long time we will not have a senator who is a person of color,” METCO executive director Jean McGuire told the Dorchester Reporter, “There are white Hispanics and black Hispanics,” adding, “She is not a person of color.”

The politics of hope it ain’t. Small wonder the mayor wants nothing to do with this thing.

Mayor Menino, of course, has troubles of his own to worry about. Michael Flaherty, he can handle on his own. But next year’s mayoral race might’ve just gotten a lot messier.

On Thursday, the Globe reported that invitations to a California fundraiser cast at-large city councilor Sam Yoon as being on a “quest to become the first Asian-American mayor of Boston.”

The Hill and the Hall got on the phone and practically begged Yoon spokesman Curtis Ellis to rule his guy out of the mayor’s race. What we got was firm noncommittal.

While forcefully emphasizing that, “Absolutely, in no way were these invitations approved or designed by Sam,” Ellis said, “He has not made a decision about running. He’s thinking about it. What councilor hasn’t thought about it? He has not made a decision, and he’s not going to make a decision.” That’s a lot of words right there, and “No” wasn’t one of them.

The news caught many people inside City Hall off guard. But not all of them. These people, they can see it in Yoon’s eyes, in the way he’s been walking around City Hall lately. He thinks he can pull this thing off. Deval Patrick did it. Obama’s doing it. Why not him, too?

“It’s on,” says one person inside the Hall. “There’s no sense announcing now. You have to wait until you can get some exposure in the papers. But the cat’s out of the bag. I think he’s in.”

Asked if Yoon might be flirting with the mayor’s office one term too soon, another City Hall insider replied, “He views these things differently than conventional political wisdom. That’s appealing to some people. It definitely makes things a lot more interesting than they were the day before yesterday.”

Interesting, because three candidates means a preliminary election in September. It means a much longer campaign calendar. It means a splintered base, and more bruising exposure, for the mayor. And, with two challengers presumably in the race, it’s exponentially more likely that we’ll see other people jump into the race, too.

“The floodgates are gonna open,” the first City Hall insider predicts. “It’s going to be a nightmare” for the mayor’s people. Bruce Wall could jump in and start banging heads. Or somebody from the private sector. Or somebody from inside the State House. As the political sage Kevin Garnett says, now, anything’s possible.

The undercard to this battle might actually be worth watching, too. The council race has been sleepy thus far, but two potential at-large openings on the City Council “creates a highly competitive race, and draws in a ton of candidates,” the second City Hall insider says. The smart money has both those spots going to candidates of color. “I suspect there’ll be some candidates who might not have been considering themselves candidates until yesterday.”

All of which should make for an intrigue-filled year on the fifth floor of City Hall, as the administration squeezes its enemies from the inside. Flaherty’s already “toxic in the building,” the first insider says. “Everybody’s afraid to talk to him.” And forget about getting anything done. Right now, if the Southie councilor called in a pothole, DPW would go out and dig a bigger one right next to it.

There’s another question that needs to be asked: Who wants to be mayor right now, anyways?

New York magazine recently speculated that Wall Street’s implosion, and the government budget crises it will unleash, could resurrect “the bad old days of the seventies” and break Michael Bloomberg. Things in Boston will be even bloodier.

New York can at least fall back on meals and rooms taxes. Boston is handcuffed by home rule. It can’t raise money on its own. So it’s dependent on a shrinking, over-stressed property tax base and local aid from the state. And you can kiss the latter goodbye. Growth in the state budget has been driven by capital gains – by surges on Wall Street – not by any meaningful economic growth. As the stock market goes, so goes the budget. The legislature has been skating by for years, preferring to fund politically popular programs and earmarks and borrow against higher tax collections, rather than close the state’s structural budget deficit. That tactic won’t work this year. And it’s Boston – the largest recipient of state aid – that’ll pay.

And while revenue is dwindling, costs – driven by health care and labor contracts – continue to swell. Menino has thus far managed to plug holes with one-time cash infusions and creative borrowing. But whoever’s mayor for the next four years will, in all likelihood, have the honor of slashing the city’s budget, and presiding over school closings and labor unrest. If basic city services like trash pickup, pothole-filling and parks maintenance don’t crumble altogether, it’ll be a victory.

At least one political observer believes that these concerns will shape Menino’s thinking next year. “The economy weighs heavily on whether he runs again,” this person says. “He gives every appearance of running. But he’s had, for the most part, a good ride on the economy. With this downturn, and shitty contracts he’s given out – is it time to say, Hey, I’ve had enough of this?”

There’s a flipside to that thinking. A race dominated by the economy would force challengers to tilt at the mayor’s strengths. Yes, several people inside City Hall believe his political operation is weak and exhausted and, frankly, sick of jumping for Hizzoner whenever he comes calling. But anyone challenging Menino next year will be fighting him on his own ground: Few pols in the country, let alone in this town, have been as aggressive as Menino has in defending homeowners from the current market’s ills. That’ll be a high hurdle for anybody to clear.

(Cross-posted from Boston Daily)

And you thought John Tomase had it bad.

On Wednesday morning, the Herald splashed with a terrifying scoop: The City Council was “mulling a scheme to keep their business secret from the taxpayers who elected them, creating a cone of silence that would make the Hub the only city in the commonwealth exempt from the state’s Open Meeting Law.” The story cited an eighty-page internal report up for discussion that morning.

The report was indeed dealt with. But, as the council’s rules committee gathered to digest the document, they also addressed another issue, at great length: The evils of the Herald.

“This is a dose of reality that no good deed goes unpunished,” council president Maureen Feeney said, as several of the assembled councilors shot icy looks at Herald’s reporter, who was present to follow up on his scoop. “Instead of being recognized for our efforts to be more transparent, to see how we can function better, we’re villainized and accused of hideous things. On a personal note, I was offended. I take my integrity very seriously. My goal for my political career was to leave with the same level of integrity I entered it with, and when people take your sincere efforts and turn them against you, shame.”

And there was more. Much, much more. (The Herald might not get a cooperative quote out of the council for a long time, but to its credit, it reported the various assaults on itself.)

“The press is positioning this body to look like villains,” Steve Murphy added. “They’re trying to stampede the public. I was completely outraged this morning.” The story, he said, “is false, outrageous, and disgraceful. The news media has decided that this is where we’re going. Thank God we don’t elect them.” He added, for clarity, “We won’t be stampeded by an out of control local media.”

Decrying the paper’s “inflammatory headline,” Feeney argued that the report, composed by a council staffer and in the works for well over a year, tried to address what the councilors can and can’t legally say to each other in an era when they’re facing perpetual Open Meeting Law lawsuits. “Our focus has been, how do we continue our efforts to be transparent? It’s been turned on us, to where we’re asking how we sidestep transparency. We try to do the work of they people. Nobody here took an oath to circumvent the process. We are the process. And we’re all looking for reassurance that we’re not putting this body in harm’s way.”

For transparency advocates, the report will read a bit like the Yoo torture memo – a stack of sane-sounding legal arguments that wind up justifying an unjustifiable end. Half of it deals with the Open Meeting Law, which, it concludes, unjustifiably and unconstitutionally bars councilors from huddling behind closed doors to discuss city business. “Speaking with a select group of colleagues or even a lobbyist with business before a legislative body, is what elective officials do and are expected to do,” the report argues. Preventing them from doing so, it says, assaults their rights to speech, assembly, and political association. For added effect, it claims that the Continental Congress and the Declaration of Independence would’ve run afoul of the law today.

And for that reason – because the Founding Fathers wanted it so – the council should be allowed to huddle with the BRA behind closed doors. It recommends three possible changes to the law, all of which could very well guarantee the public’s full right to witness the perfunctory approval of legislation that has been settled far away from the public view. It works for House Ways and Means, after all.

On its face, the Open Meeting Law seems clear: Lawmakers can have dinner together, but a majority of them can’t gather (as the Legislature, which exempted itself from the law, does) to hammer out their business behind closed doors. Having been found guilty of doing this a while ago, on Wednesday, the councilors complained that the courts had effectively barred them from talking to each other about constituent issues or asking each other to sign on to legislation.

The committee sent the report to the AG, the city’s lawyers, the Mass. Municipal Association, and the state clerks’ association. There’s at least one great irony there – when the council was sued for illegal meetings with the BRA, the city’s lawyers argued that the violations weren’t violations because, effectively, the city council doesn’t have any power. Any action will get a full public hearing – a guarantee that Sam Yoon insisted be put in writing, and one that ultimately was, after several minutes of debate in which the councilors chased each other’s tails around in circles. Yoon later tied abysmally low turnout in the last council election to “the perception that we take action behind closed doors,” saying, “Ultimately, this is an issue that has to do with the council and the public, not with our interpretation of the law. It’s about that relationship.”

That’s much too even-keeled a note to end on. So, Chuck Turner, take it away: “After years of being kicked around by the mayor and the courts, I don’t give a damn. You can print that. I don’t give a damn what the mayor says. We’re going to stand up and say we have a right to have power in this city. The rights of this council have not been defended by the courts and the mayor. This report lays that out clearly. It’s an affront to democracy. The papers beat us up no matter what we do. I’m incensed by the fact that we’re treated like we’re nothing. Now we finally have the material to fight back. I don’t give a damn what you all think.”

That last bit was punctuated by, you guessed it, a hard stare at the Herald’s scribe.

OCPF pre-primary campaign finance reports for Reps, Senators and assorted wannabes just came online. For reporters, it’s like Christmas and Hanukkah and Christmukkah all rolled into one! So let’s see what everybody’s been up to these past nine months.

First up: Senate President Therese Murray. She hasn’t had a serious challenger since 2004, when she faced down some droplet of Mitt Romney’s sweat that grew up into a real live boy. Nevertheless, she’s raised north of $300,000 in the past year. $250,000 of it went right back out the door in the form of powerfully terrifying communications services (a total of $27,200 to Regan Communications), office furniture ($3,517.80 worth from Jordan’s), consulting ($24,000 to Plymouth-based Creative Strategies), wicked good times ($10,208 for a holiday party), transport ($5283 in vehicle lease payments), and, obviously enough, flags ($2,424.20 worth of them, actually). There was also a $200 “charitable donation” to the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council in August, and $1,141.50 in “professional fees” to Cosgrove, Eisenberg and Kiley. One of the firm’s principals, Tom Kiley, is former Senate President Robert Travaglini’s business partner and longtime friend.

Murray now has $243,971.02 in the bank.

Murray’s Senate Colleague, Dianne Wilkerson, could certainly use that type of bankroll. She has just $5,233 in the bank after blowing through $156,647 this year. (After those numbers went public, a “Wilkerson campaign source” told State House News that the senator had just raised an additional $40,000.) Nearly half of Wilkerson’s expenses went to consulting and staffing, and another $11,600 for her awesome new website. For that kind of money, it had better be awesome. And able to vote 1500 times on Tuesday.

By contrast, Wilkerson’s challenger, Sonia Chang-Diaz, ended August with $51,000 in the bank, after raising $132,585 and spending $81,575 in 2008. One wonders how much those numbers – and the polling data Chang-Diaz’s campaign released last month – had to do with Bay Windows jumping ship this week.

For what it’s worth, Chang-Diaz has spent less than half what Wilkerson has on consulting and staffing. And her office furniture? She bought $50 worth, and it came from Craigslist.

The election season’s other great exercise in the politics of bloodsport, the 34th Middlesex State Rep race, also yields some interesting finance data.

Carl Sciortino, who began the year with just $7,620 in his account, has raised an impressive $91,623 this year, and has $40,372 of it left. Among the campaign’s more hilarious expenditures: On June 6, the incumbent himself dropped $10 on a map of Medford. And the source of that hilarity: In this week’s Somerville News, Sciortino’s Speaker-thumping challenger, Bob Trane, suggests that “Carl Sciortino really should invest in a map of the 34th district.” Way ahead of you, Bob!

Trane has $6,215 remaining – slightly less than he began 2008 with. He has burnt through every penny he’s raised this year. And, as he’ll tell anybody who’ll listen – and a few who won’t – it came from inside the district. Unlike some people. Hmpf.

Although signs don’t vote, Trane has a ton of them out there. Word from the left side of the left side of the aisle is that Sciortino’s field ops will impress on Tuesday (who’s bothering to vote in this primary, anyway?), but the Herald’s Wayne Woodlief says this one’s already over.

House Ways and Means chair Bob DeLeo and Majority Leader John Rogers have been sizing each other up for most of the year now. Let’s do the same.

DeLeo took in $229,339 this year, and he has $354,039 in the bank. That amount dwarfs Rogers’s $78,654. The Majority Leader has raised, and then spent, $56,000 this year. These differences could matter, if votes really are for sale.

One item on DeLeo’s tab stands out, and it’s not the $7,300 “office dinner” at Grill 23 during the height of the summer’s leadership battle. It’s the $78 meal he had two days later, at Comella’s in Wellesley, billed as “Lunch W/ Rep Petrollati.” SIC!

John Buonomo is dead (politically). Long live John Buonomo!

Or, alternately, long live whoever’s been pulling a John Buonomo – to the tune of twelve large – over in the Suffolk County register’s office. This stuff just doesn’t end.

How badass is it that Woody Kaplan lists occupation as “provocateur” on his campaign finance records? (Answer: Wicked)

Thanks to vicious deadlines and us being dumb and all, the Hill and the Hall neglected to mention last week that Richard Scirocco, the alleged Somerville domestic batterer who mounted a caustic, possibly death-threat-filled, and astoundingly unsuccessful bid to unseat Mayor Joe Curtatone last fall, was recently arrested. With a bunch of cocaine. And a double-edged knife. Natch.

Troopers busted Scirocco and a 21-year old man in Revere on cocaine distribution charges two weeks ago, after noticing the pol’s truck speeding and committing various marked lanes violations. The kicker? Scirocco, who once complained that media coverage of the various restraining orders the four mothers of his children had taken out against him was “completely the reason I lost” to Curtatone, got busted holding his coke package in a school zone. That’s usually a no-no for former Little League presidents.

Paul McMurtry the most powerful man in the House right now. That fact is due largely to the legislature’s disinclination to work at any pace that could be characterized as “speedy,” or even “workmanlike,” or even “mildly determined.”

The House and Senate left a whole mess of bills untended to when their formal sessions expired this month. Most of the remaining mess of bills are routine local matters that can still be pushed through to the governor – so long as there are no objections from any of the legislators who bother to show up to work on any given day. But if just one guy decides to throw the brakes on a bill, everything is F’d for everybody.

Paul McMurtry is that one guy.

He’s been derailing House sessions for two weeks now, and shows no signs of slowing down. He won’t relent until Angelo Scaccia blinks first. Scaccia won’t. So nothing gets done. And the two Reps’ colleagues are starting to get pissed.

On Thursday, the Globe detailed the McMurtry-Scaccia flap for the portion of the political world that doesn’t subscribe to State House News. McMurtry needs to get approval for a local bill granting a liquor license to a grocery store in his Westwood district. Scaccia, who reps Hyde Park, has longstanding ties to a competing supermarket, as well as to that supermarket’s former-legislator-turned-lobbyist. And so, at the behest of his grocery buddies, he has vowed to block McMurtry’s bill; McMurtry has retaliated by blocking virtually all other House business.

On Monday, the House met for just 32 minutes (enough time to entertain the Lebanese tourist minister) before McMurtry halted democracy. Thursday, business only lasted seven minutes. Court officers lazed around the chamber, surfing the internet and reading box scores from the Herald aloud. They snapped to attention long enough to say the Pledge of Allegiance (punctuated, naturally, with a hushed but determined “Play ball!”), but, thanks to the boozy grocery store death vendetta, McMurtry rose to doubt the presence of a quorum, and they were allowed to quickly return to making money for doing hardly anything at all.

These developments have left Antonio Cabral in a mood that could easily be described as “not too wicked pleased.” He’s got bills to move, and they’re not moving. Hence, the displeasure. He tried to cut McMurtry off when the Westwood Rep rose to halt Thursday’s session, and when that failed, he proceeded to get all angry and stuff. Afterwards, the press was ushered out of the House gallery, while the eight or so legislators present remained inside, talking and trying to hug it out. After a while, they emerged an announced that those efforts had, in fact, failed. The inaction shall continue.

Afterwards, Scaccia told State House News that he’s not blocking the Westwood bill because of any rotten lobbyist action. Rather, he said, “What I’m doing is being very loyal to them for what they have done for my community.” How does this standoff end? “Something has to give somewhere, and it ain’t going to be me.”

Paul Donato, who’s been in charge of this circus while everybody else in the state was out of the state, said after Thursday’s session that a rumored compromise between Scaccia and McMurtry had collapsed, and “We’re going to be dealing with this for some time.”

Donato suggested the only way out of this pissing contest might involve raising the cap on grocery stores with beer and wine licenses. That way, McMurtry’s store could get a license, and so could Scaccia’s. “I’m not sure how the problem can be solved without coming up with a method for licensing supermarkets beyond the three the law allows,” he said. “It would have to be one agreement that everyone in the legislature is comfortable with, but there seems to be an alternative there that could be used as a compromise.”

Easy enough, right? All the legislature has to do now is get unanimous consent for the change – and hope that the lobbyists and interest groups who poured $13 million into a bruising fight over this very matter two years ago, uh, look the other way or something.

Lost in this cacophony of grunting was the fact that Beacon Hill looked like Left Behind come to life this past week. Who knew that Jesus would only come for the Democrats? The loneliest place in the world: The bar at the 21st Amendment.

The McMurtry-Scaccia swordfight is symptomatic of a larger political dysfunction in the state. Home rule statutes mean that before municipal officials can sneeze, they have to ask the legislature for permission. And then they have to wait. And wait. And every so often, routine requests get caught up in these larger, decidedly nasty conflicts.

One recent example: Back in 2006, Boston wanted to let more restaurants sell booze. But the bill granting more licenses to the city got caught up in a long, drawn-out fight with Senator Michael Morrissey over boating fees and name-calling. And freedom!

“Integral facets of city government are controlled by the Commonwealth, and they’re not always receptive to us,” argues City Council President Maureen Feeney. “Sometimes, our larger, more challenging issues are almost trivial to them. The average person assumes that the city has control over what happens in the city. That’s not necessarily the case. It’s very limiting. It makes the process so challenging – we spend years trying to get something done that we should be able to do through an ordinance. We can’t control the way things happen. Instead, we have to go hat in hand to the legislature, over and over. And no disrespect to the legislature. That’s just the way the state constitution is.”

The liquor license fight wasn’t even the most ludicrous Feeney has been part of. For the past four sessions, the mayor and the council have been trying to lower the speed limits on some cut-through streets, but the legislature hasn’t played along. And don’t even think about trying to raise a half-cent meals tax – something the country’s other major cities can do on their own.

Feeney calls the current State House flap a “teachable moment, an opportunity to shine a light” on the vagaries of home rule. “We’re still a step-child to government,” she says. “It’s a waste of time, energy and focus, and we’re just trying to operate the city in a responsible way.”

This past week, it hasn’t been Council President Feeney. With Mayor Menino at the DNC, it’s been Acting Mayor Feeney. So what’s it been like to run the show?

“We haven’t picked out any new curtains for the mayor’s office,” she assures us. “We like it on this side of the building.” She also invoked the words of the late city councilor Pat McDonough, who said, “Acting mayors do more acting than they do mayoring.” Feeney and Menino conferred last Friday, before he flew west, but they haven’t had to confer since then. Nothing like the Blizzard of ‘78, which stranded Mayor Kevin White in Florida, and left Council President/Acting Mayor Larry DiCara to run Boston in his absence. “Somebody had to stay and shut off the lights at the end of the day,” she says, “but it’s been pretty ordinary. Pretty quiet. The fact that the city’s still standing speaks for itself.”