Tom Menino

Hennigan, Flynn (Ray, that is) hit Menino for not attending a South Boston meeting on crime after that poor woman's death.

Menino stands on his record; Hennigan takes aim at his flaws.

At-large candidates debated in West Roxbury.

Tom Menino, who once said he would serve only two terms, might be looking toward 2009. At least, he hasn't ruled it out, not even after seeing those ambivalent poll numbers.

The Herald reports that election-law guy with the legal problems has quit. You can also read the Globe's catch-up piece.

No fluffy Globe pieces today on at-large candidates' preferred finger foods.

Chasing the Herald, the Globe reports today that the mayor is reducing the use of unmarked cars by city officials. Carpundit says the issue won't help the challenger in this year's mayoral race:

... Maura Hennigan, the hapless, wasting-her-time-and-ours mayoral challenger, went on record saying no city official should have an unmarked car. She sounds desperate. Next thing you know, a Herald expose will show that the Mayor regularly takes home city-owned ballpoint pens, and Hennigan will come out against theft of city property.

Catching up on the news (was down in Connecticut yesterday; it happens):

A Globe poll finds Menino will win in a landslide even though few people like the job he's doing. Sucks to be Hennigan, maybe not so much to be Flaherty or whoever runs in four years. Adrian Walker ponders these findings and comes to no real conclusion why people will vote for Hizzonah, except perhaps many people look around and see their neighborhoods are still in better shape than when Menino became mayor.

The Herald reports that a guy Menino appointed to help clean up election-law problems has some legal issues of his own.

For the second day in a row, Brian McGrory actually gets off his tuchus and does some real reporting, this time to check out Maura Hennigan's assertion that the path around Jamaica Pond is a rubble-strewn minefield. McGrory discovers it's not.

So the Boston PD suddenly won't release crime statistics and won't let people see precinct police logs (which are public records)? Call Jay a cynic, but:

... I have little doubt if the numbers had pointed in another direction, we would have learned about them a long time ago via megaphones loudly blaring the news from campaign trucks. ...

Still, he doubts the news will change next month's election results, given that most people already have a sense that crime is up and it still hasn't affected the campaign.

Article and audio clips of the McGrory-sponsored debate.

John calls it Yawnfest 2005.

The Unchosen One: I gotta tell ya, I really don't like either of these candidates. At all. Period.

Which is worse? That somebody tried to kill the city-council president last night or that somebody took a potshot at his SUV just for the hell of it?

The Unchosen One: This was probably not an assassination attempt, but doesn't that make it scarier?

... It means that there are people taking pot-shots at cars with absolutely no regard for who is driving. The only way to protect yourself is not to drive. Just a sad state of affairs that people are shooting at each other for no reason.

Bruce blames it on Boston's restrictions on gun ownership.

Here's hoping that the Brian McGrory who runs the private debate between Tom Menino and Maura Hennigan at Locke-Ober today is the tough take-no-prisoners Brian McGrory rather than the wussie elegy-to-my-summer-cottage Brian McGrory so that maybe we can hear hizzonah's thoughts on crime in Boston.

If you missed the WBZ "debate," you can download it in pieces.

Mass Marrier scored the debate high on the Irritate-o-Meter, like listening to Maura Chihuahua yapping at Tom Droopy Dawg. Ultimately, Hennigan lost by coming across as a desperate pol willing to play loose with the facts and unable to come up with a coherent program for change:

... She certainly seems to lack the debating ability and knowledge to prove Tom incompetent. Was she really the best competition available? ...

Jay thinks Hennigan stumbled in blaming Menino for Victoria Snelgrove's pepper-pellet death last fall:

... It comes across as a loose-cannon cheap shot. Though she won't win, she was doing quite well against a mayor who most people like but still want roughed up to keep him honest. The best way to keep him honest is to be honest -- and blaming him for a pepper gun that he probably didn't know existed is a stretch.

Earlier:
The WGBH debate.

Neither rain nor, um, more rain, will stay Menino campaign workers from standing in Cleary Square with campaign signs today.

Bruce blames Tom Menino for the death of Jean Lampron, because Menino supports limits on gun ownership and Bruce somehow knows that Lampron would been packing if not for Menino.

The Unchosen One doesn't see any particular reason to vote for Maura Hennigan, but says that's partly due to Tom Menino's refusal to hold more than two sorta-debates:

... As long as Menino avoids direct confrontation he should be able to win re-election. However, this is NOT the way to run for office. The purpose of government is to serve the people and in order to choose the right person the public needs an opportunity to view the candidates side-by-side. Any politician that fails in that is not forthcoming enough to hold public office.

From BostonHerald.com:

...the two candidates will field students' questions Oct. 12 at Boston University. Ground rules set up at the insistence of the Menino campaign won't allow him and Hennigan to appear on the stage together, said Northeastern student and Boston Intercollegiate Government chairwoman Meghan Loraditch. Former Gov.Michael Dukakis will moderate. 

... 

 The second forum will be an hour-long appearance on Paul Sullivan's WBZ 1030 AM talk show on Friday, Oct. 14, at 8 p.m. 

Details of the BU forum on 10/12 are here.

The West Roxbury and Roslindale Transcript asked mayoral, at-large city council and district-6 (JP and West Roxbury) city council candidates how they feel about the BRA, specifically: "Do you feel any reform is needed in how the BRA operates? If so, what changes should be made?"

Adam went to see the Comcast on-demand video of the recent debate between Tom Menino and Maura Hennigan only to discover Comcast only kept it up for only 48 hours:

I don't understand why it's not just online - it seems to that political debates are the ideal sort of non-copyright-sensitive content that ought to be freely available on the Internet.

So, anybody know if the debate is online? If not, anybody have a videotape they could lend Adam so he could translate it to digital and post it?

Nancy watched the debate between Tom Menino and Maura Hennigan last night and reports she was stunned when Menino told one questioner that the answer to his dirty street was to work with his neighbors to petition the city for a cleanup. "That's just inexcusable!" she says. He's the mayor - he should have just taken down the guy's street and had the DPW schedule a cleanup, she says. That, coupled with what she considered his poor answers to other questions, means she'll be filling in an oval next to Hennigan's name in November.

Chris watches the debate between Menino and Hennigan and comes away more impressed with the challenger than he had been:

... So far she has been caught in the same dynamic that Peggy Davis-Mullen faced a few years back: upstart female challenger, underfunded and unable to get traction, and largely ignored by a news media rightly seeing her as a dark horse and by a citizenry who more or less liked Menino. The mayor, after all, has been skilled at straddling a wide coalition. But after watching Hennigan in tonight's debate, I wonder: do we have a mayor's race this year?

Oh, OK: The headline on this cab outside South Station refers to this page-1 Globe story, which regular Universal Hub readers knew about last week.

Trying to see if Tom Menino has a campaign Web site up yet (apparently not), I stumbled across these domains: meninomumbles.com, mumblesmouthmeninoformayor05.com and mumblesmeninoformayor.com (not linked because there's no there there). What's interesting is who the registered owner is (keep in mind that domain records can be forged):

Organisation Name.... The Menino Committee
Organisation Address. 10 Milk Street
Organisation Address. Suite 454
Organisation Address. Boston
Organisation Address. 02108
Organisation Address. MA
Organisation Address. UNITED STATES

Update: www.formayormenino.com is up and running.

Bruce reads about an armed robbery less than a mile from his home in Roslindale and concludes it's Tom Menino's fault:

... Wake up and smell the donuts, Tom. The innocent people of your city are under attack, and have been rendered powerless to do anything about it - all in strict accordance with your despicable, feel-good, do-nothing, liberal la-la land, citizen disarmament policies. Way to go, jackass. ...