An election accident waiting to happen

5 January 2001

New Year's Day, 10 minutes before the Boston City Council's election for president was to begin, South Boston Councilor James Kelly huddled in his office with five councilors who supported him.

Since 1994 he had been president. To win an unprecedented eighth term, he needed seven votes. He only had six.

Desperate for just one vote to put him over the top, he had weeks earlier met with Hyde Park Councilor Dan Conley and offered him a stunning deal.

Kelly knew Conley had his eye on the Suffolk County district attorney's job. If Conley voted for him - just once - Kelly promised he would deliver South Boston's votes to Conley when he ran and would convince unions to back Conley in his race. Furthermore, Kelly, on good terms with Gov. Paul Cellucci, offered to call the governor and persuade him to appoint Conley DA if incumbent Ralph Martin were to leave office.

Conley, who first voted for Kelly in 1994 but had since led the opposition to him, mulled it over a few days and then turned Kelly down. "For me, it was a matter of putting principle before ambition," Conley said.

Kelly then met with Allston-Brighton Councilor Brian Honan, also known to be interested in becoming DA He made exactly the same offer.

Honan turned Kelly down as well.

Conley and Honan were part of a group of seven united in its opposition to Kelly. Yet no clear alternative had emerged. The two were both sounding out other councilors about the presidency, as were East Boston's Paul Scapicchio and Dorchester's Charles Yancey.

Meanwhile, even those who had committed to Kelly were getting worried. Dorchester's Maureen Feeney and at-large Councilors Mickey Roache and Michael Flaherty had been making plans to secure votes should Kelly's efforts fall short. Feeney, in particular, was able to secure votes from other councilors if she decided to run.

On the Saturday before the election, Conley, Honan, Beacon Hill's Michael Ross and Scapicchio met for lunch to settle on a candidate. (Jamaica Plain Councilor Maura Hennigan was invited but didn't go because she was ill.) They decided to back Honan. They even divvied up the spoils.

But, in what was clearly a grave miscalculation, Yancey and Roxbury's Chuck Turner were not invited to the lunch. The implicit assumption, it seems, was that the only two African-Americans on the council would have no choice but to go along with the decisions made by the others.

Indeed, Turner subsequently committed to Honan. Yancey did not.

Still, Honan wasn't worried. Yancey was a perennial candidate for president who had never seriously tried to build the coalitions needed to win. And because the council votes publicly and alphabetically for president, Yancey would be the last to vote. With six already cast for Kelly and six for Honan, Honan figured Yancey had no choice.

As Kelly and his supporters sat in his office, they tried to come up with a plan.

The morning of the election, union leaders, at Kelly's request, swarmed through City Hall, buttonholing councilors and pushing for a Kelly vote. Councilors who didn't back Kelly were told they would never get a union dollar or a union vote.

The efforts were unsuccessful.

Kelly also had spent the morning trying to persuade Yancey to support him and be part of a new kind of Kelly coalition. Yancey refused - he knew voting for Kelly would be political suicide - but he did agree that he would vote for himself, not Honan, on the first ballot. That gave Kelly his opening.

Kelly and his supporters were furious at the campaign that had been waged by the anti-Kelly councilors. Confident of victory, some of Honan's supporters had taunted Kelly's followers, vowing revenge once the presidency was theirs.

Moreover, if Honan won, it seemed likely that he could build a strong coalition that would allow him to remain president for several years. That meant that Kelly and his hard-core allies would be on the outs for a long, long time.

But if Kelly were to swing his votes over to Yancey, he solved all those problems. Plus he would put in place a councilor who, like Kelly, was frequently at odds with the administration.

Kelly sent word to union leaders that he had a plan. As the election proceeded and Kelly's allies voted for Yancey, there were cheers and laughs from the union crowd sitting in the gallery. They understood what was going on. On the floor, the anti-Kelly councilors were bewildered.

By the time it was Turner's vote, six votes had been cast for Yancey and five for Honan. Despite having promised his vote to Honan, Turner switched, voting for Yancey.

The election left many of the councilors feeling angry and bruised. One councilor calls it "cynical" and "bizarre." "Everyone is crushed," says another. A third laments, "We all lost."

In fact, that's not true.

The SINE QUA NONof this year's battle was the unseating of Kelly. For many councilors, he had been an embarrassment, a relic of the past. They thought he had dragged the council down, bringing it to such lows that they almost dreaded coming into work each day. Even Kelly's supporters knew he had overstayed his welcome.

The anti-Kelly councilors achieved their goal; Kelly now is gone. As one of the anti-Kelly councilors, observes, "They voted for Yancey, but we put him in."

The common belief is that Yancey will be a one-term president. Next year's race, councilors expect, will be wide open.

That may be true. Still, Yancey, a creature of the left elected president by the right, is in a unique position. Elected by accident, he has no strong coalition behind him. He also has the luxury of having made no promises.

In a sense, Yancey becoming president was like someone winning the lottery without even having bought a ticket. And just like a newly minted millionaire, he now has to figure out what to do with all that money.