The Lovable Loser
She got killed at
the polls, but Maura Hennigan still gave Boston
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If 17,000 people had cast their votes differently, Maura Hennigan would be
topping this list. As they didn't, and as she failed in her bid to be
Because, simply, Hennigan had courage.
She took on a three-term mayor no others dared challenge -- a measure not
only of her guts but also of everyone else's timidity. She did so at
considerable personal risk. A 24-year veteran of the City Council (she was
first elected at the tender age of 29), running for mayor meant she was out of
a job. By her account, she sank $725,000 of her own funds into the effort. And unlike some campaigns, which can become steppingstones
to future opportunities, Hennigan knows that in a city as small and tightly
controlled as
Yet for someone who is unemployed, financially
strapped, and without any obvious future, Hennigan, in a post-election
interview, seems remarkably calm, even happy. "I don't regret it at
all," she says, and one senses this is not just rationalization. The loss
hardly came as a shock. Scion of a well-known political family (both her father
and grandfather were prominent local pols), someone as experienced as she knew
the odds were long. Yet running against Menino epitomized her deepest notions
of what politics should be about: giving people a
voice. "This is what I've done all my life," she says. While she
never pretends that she's satisfied with the outcome, she is satisfied she did
the right thing.
And she clearly mattered. Democracies don't exist unless people run for office. Merely by putting her name on the ballot, Hennigan gave the election meaning. But it was her aggressive, unflinching, and sometimes caustic campaign -- backed by the money she put in -- that woke up a somnolent Menino and forced voters to look more closely at the record he's built rather than just assume he's been good for the city. He would have preferred to ignore her (and he certainly tried his best), but her critiques on everything from crime to a biolab in the South End to poor city services rang true and forced him to respond. He promised new policing strategies, new safety procedures, and even new blood at City Hall. More broadly, Hennigan's run made it acceptable once again to question and dissent, a healthy thing even for a city that still ended up deciding to stick with its incumbent.
Thomas M. Keane Jr. is a partner in a private equity fund and former 