Mayor's popularity is simple to digest

25 August 2004

One is tempted to see Boston Mayor Thomas Menino's bout with Crohn's disease as a metaphor of his administration, much as Lyndon Johnson's gall bladder scar was an allegory for Vietnam. Yet while Crohn's poses real challenges to Menino the man - it is incurable, potentially debilitating (although not presently so) and requiring careful management - Menino the politician has never been in better shape.

Sure, it will be hard to resist the jabs about every problem causing the mayor a bit of indigestion and the smirks about political rivals being a pain in the gut, but Menino's fundamentals look strong. He is popular. His staff is energized and full of fresh faces (or, more precisely, full of old faces in fresh places). And in this most political of all cities, he faces virtually no opposition. There is little doubt Menino will run for a fourth term next year. There is also little doubt he will win.

The numbers make the case. A Boston Globe poll released two days ago showed Menino with a favorability rating among Bostonians of 70 percent - only 17 percent, in fact, were unfavorable. Moreover, 57 percent said he was doing a good to excellent job as mayor.

One could understand results like these during the 1990s, when the economy was booming, crime was falling and city coffers were full. Yet the last few years have been enormously difficult for Menino. The recession and subsequent cutbacks in state aid have posed tough budgetary challenges. For over a year, he has been enmeshed in bitter disputes with the city's labor unions and the target of a vitriolic campaign by the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association. Instead of a big celebration, the just-concluded Democratic National Convention devolved into a grim, security-laden affair. And most recently, a wave of street violence in early August left innocents dead or wounded and residents newly fearful.

You would think all of this would hurt. Instead, Menino's numbers remain sky-high.

Some of this is the same kind of Teflon effect that benefited Ronald Reagan when he was president. The peripatetic Menino, seemingly present whenever two or more are gathered at a neighborhood event, has built up an enormous reservoir of good will. As a result, the tendency is not to blame Menino for problems but rather to sympathize with the plight in which he finds himself. Thus state aid reductions weren't of Menino's making and voters excused the city's cuts as inevitable. Similarly, residents blamed the convention's security mess on terrorists or overreaching Secret Service officials and not on City Hall.

The most striking example of this has to do with crime. The Globe poll found a majority believed Boston to be less safe than it was a year ago. And whom did voters fault? The pollsters listed five possibilities: Menino, the police commissioner, cops, parents or a neighborhood's environment. Of those, Menino was the one they blamed the least. A majority flat-out said he had no responsibility for the increase in violent crime. Of the remainder, most said he had only "a little."

That's slipperier Teflon than even Reagan enjoyed.

There's another factor as well. In his battle with the police union, Menino demonstrated a degree of courage and mettle that changed his image in important and positive ways. The mayor's standoff with the cops had created the strong possibility that picketing officers would disrupt the Democratic National Convention and play out badly on the national stage. Directly and indirectly, Democratic officials urged him to capitulate. Their message was clear: Pay off the cops and make the problem go away. Better a hit to the city's budget than risk a national election.

Menino refused to go along. In the end, of course, the dispute ended after Gov. Mitt Romney forced it into binding arbitration. Still, Menino - sometimes perceived as easy to push around or too willing to yield - had made his point: He had his principles, he knew how to draw a line in the sand and he couldn't be bullied. Many of Menino's closest political advisers believe that far from hurting him, the mayor's drawn-out battle with the BPPA won him the reputation as someone who would go to great lengths to defend the city's interests.

And what does Menino now do with all this popularity? There is a sense that he is trying to start fresh, to shake off the cobwebs that had drifted over his administration. Not only is new senior staff in place, but another round of mid-level appointments is expected soon. There is talk of new programs and innovative approaches to some old problems. Yet all of that is still vague, a work still in process. Sure, it's great to be well liked. But the next term is probably Menino's last. He needs to figure out how to turn popularity into legacy.