Nothing new here, only politics as usual

23 March 2005

Help me with this "new" Boston thing.

In a state rep district in Dorchester that is over 60 percent nonwhite, five candidates run for office. Two are white; three are black. The black candidates receive over 60 percent of the vote.

Meanwhile, across town in Allston and Brighton, there's no worry about race-based voting - for the simple reason that all four Democratic candidates are white.

So how is it that these elections, both held last week, are being touted as yet more proof that Boston's voting patterns have fundamentally changed - that there is a "new" Boston afoot, one where we measure people, as Martin Luther King Jr. once hoped, by the "content of their character"?

The claim of a "new" Boston rests largely on the election of three nonwhites. In 1994, District Attorney Ralph Martin - an African-American - held onto his job against a challenge by white Gerard Malone. Latino Felix Arroyo managed, after a scare, to retain his City Council seat in 2003. And earlier this year, African- American Andrea Cabral readily fended off a challenge in her race for sheriff from white City Councilor Steve Murphy.

In all cases, the nonwhite candidates only won because they received a substantial number of white votes.

That's fine, but does this really add up to something dramatically new? All three winners were incumbents (two were appointed; Arroyo got his seat after another city councilor left), meaning each had an incumbent's advantages on fund-raising, name recognition and the natural inclination of voters for the status quo. Martin's win was over a decade ago. Arroyo's victory still leaves Boston with only one nonwhite at-large councilor. And Cabral's election was for one of those jobs so far down the ladder that few care about it.

But even if these offer some inkling of change, the most recent rep races muddy the picture.

The Dorchester contest was marred by an unabashed push for race- based voting. Black state Rep. Byron Rushing insisted in December, "The most important thing is to have a black person win." State Sen. Dianne Wilkerson, also African-American, was so concerned about vote splitting among the three black candidates that she launched a campaign to persuade the two weaker black candidates to drop out.

The winner, Haitian-American Linda Dorcena Forry, was an early favorite for the most old-fashioned of reasons: She was connected. Forry is married to Bill Forry, part of a long-time Dorchester family that owns the Dorchester Reporter and other newspapers. (Their interracial marriage may be the only real "new" Boston in this story.) On top of that, she had worked for nine years for former Rep. Charlotte Golar Richie, now head of the city's Department of Neighborhood Development. Forry also benefited from an all-out push by Mayor Thomas Menino.

Menino also backed Michael Moran, who narrowly won the Allston- Brighton contest. That race was remarkable for the sameness of the complexion and gender of the candidates. As one operative notes, their families all heralded from "a small set of islands in the North Atlantic." Moran would have won easily but for Naakh Vysoky, the Russian emigrestrongman, who delivered over 500 votes to another candidate.

And for good measure, Cabral, pumped up by her win, tested her strength by making a much-ballyhooed endorsement. Her pick, Joseph Walsh, finished dead last.

Both Forry and Moran have the potential to be strong reps. (Moran still faces two foes in April 12's general election.) But race- based voting in one district, a lack of diversity in another and power brokers all around don't sound much different from old Boston. New Boston may be coming, but it's not here yet.