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2009 elections

By adamg - 9/24/09 - 9:38 am

The Globe reports Flaherty's getting feisty and implying he'll never cut any ribbons as mayor.

The also-rans: Yoon adjusts to life as a lame duck. Still no endorsement from him; the Herald reports Flaherty will shmooze him over coffee). Yoon's four-year-old daughter, Naomi, tried to console her dad. The South End News reports Kevin McCrea is relaxed and planning a weekend getaway to Maine.

The Herald reports a gleeful Chuck Turner sees his victory Tuesday as proof voters want him to fight those federal corruption charges. The South End News quotes him as predicting a 60-40 win over Henriquez in November.

By adamg - 9/23/09 - 10:30 pm

The two candidates for mayor exchanged some pleasantries tonight:

Tom: Congrats, Mike. Mike: Thanks, Tom!
By adamg - 9/23/09 - 1:54 pm
50% or more

Map showing which wards Menino and Flaherty led in and whether they got more or less than 50% of the vote there. Yoon and McCrea did not win any wards. NOTE: Although precinct lines are shown, the map is based on wardwide numbers.

Complete ward numbers.

Chris Lovett posts some numbers: Flaherty mostly carried South Boston, along with some precincts in Charlestown and Dorchester. Yoon carried nine precincts, in the West End, Fenway, Back Bay, JP and Allston, but as Lovett also notes, Back Bay and Allston had some of the lowest overall turnouts in the city.

Matt O'Malley takes the ward view, notes Menino took 19 or the city's 22 wards.

By adamg - 9/23/09 - 11:38 am

Search CIO interviews City of Boston CIO Bill Oates about the whole e-mail flap and what his office is doing about it:

... We now have put a safety net in place by enabling journaling in our Exchange environment, which creates a copy of every message that comes in or leaves the city mail environment, and this copy is saved separately from the email that would actually go into a user's inbox. In addition, we back up our systems every night. ...

By adamg - 9/23/09 - 9:41 am

Alicia Priselac posts a photo of the mess outside the South Boston BPL branch this morning.

By adamg - 9/23/09 - 8:23 am

GoodHalf of Boston voters who showed up at the polls said yesterday that "good" is good enough. Can Michael Flaherty overcome that?

Possibly the most important thing for Flaherty is something he can't control: Will Donovan Slack at the Globe keep digging into City Hall? Can she find more than the e-mail flap? What about 16 years' worth of BRA development deals? Ooh, what about the Roxbury mosque - a fun little project that involves both the BRA and missing e-mail?

Because while Flaherty was chanting "We can't wait!" last night, 51% of the people who voted yesterday were saying "Yes we can wait!"

By adamg - 9/22/09 - 8:02 pm
Menino Flaherty

In today's preliminary election, Mayor Thomas Menino topped a self-imposed 50% margin - if just barely - and he now enters the campaign against Michael Flaherty with a far larger bank account.

By adamg - 9/22/09 - 7:37 pm

Michael Pahre posts a copy of a "sample" ballot distributed by the friends of local ward boss Naakh Vysoky.

By adamg - 9/22/09 - 3:04 pm

UPDATE: Putting 2 and 2 together and getting 5? There was a fire drill today at Center Plaza. But the Boston Fire Department tells the Herald there were no firefighters involved. And as you'll see in the comments, people who work in the building say they were told ahead of time about the drill by building management. So my apologies to firefighters for jumping the gun after seeing this tweet.

Boston firefighters decided today would be a good day to test the fire preparations at 2 Center Plaza, which happens to be the location of Tom Menino's campaign headquarters.

Menino campaign spokesman Nick Martin says 50 to 60 campaign staffers - in addition to workers in nearby offices - had to evacuate when firefighters pulled the alarms around 2 p.m.

Martin said workers were kept outside for about half an hour. He added that many took cell phones with them so they could try to do some work.

Firefighters Local 718 was an early supporter of Michael Flaherty. They've feuded with Menino for years over a lack of contract and, more recently, mandatory drug and alcohol testing.

By adamg - 9/22/09 - 7:59 am

Boston residents: Did you vote yet? What are you seeing out there? Report in.

By adamg - 9/21/09 - 9:56 pm

Michael Pahre tweets:

Robo-call for Rob Fortes for Councilor-At-Large... with Mitt Romney speaking. Does Fortes think fewest votes wins in Boston?

By adamg - 9/21/09 - 5:17 pm

Local 718 and the Boston Police Patrolman's Association say they're backing Andrew Kenneally for one of the four at-large city council seats open in tomorrow's preliminary (which will narrow the field of candidates from 15 to 8 for the November final election).

Patrolman's Association President Thomas Nee points to the fact that Kenneally has family members in both departments, worked to keep West Roxbury kids off drugs and, as an aide to City Councilor Michael Flaherty, "labored to pass key legislation to get 'cop killer' guns off our streets."

Kenneally had earlier been endorsed by the union representing EMTs.

By adamg - 9/19/09 - 10:24 pm

Flaherty’s critique of Menino is less sweeping, but more credible, than those of his fellow challengers.

But, also, he's Menino back to the future! Globies say vote for Flaherty because he's like Menino was in 1993.

By adamg - 9/19/09 - 7:54 am

Connolly, Murphy, Pressley, Ezedi, Jackson, Arroyo, Fortes, Nguyen.

Fortes is kind of interesting: You wouldn't think the Globe would endorse a Republican calling for school vouchers over somebody like Kenneally.

By adamg - 9/19/09 - 7:43 am

John Keith takes a look at the latest campaign finance reports for mayoral and at-large city council candidates (and posts the numbers). Among other things, Tom Menino spent $500,000 in just 15 days on his re-election campaign.

By adamg - 9/18/09 - 3:46 pm

Tomorrow, 25,000 phones across Boston will ring and people will pick up to hear Sam Yoon pleading with them to not hang up, because this is really Sam, live and in person, and please stay on the line for the city's largest ever teleconference: "They can ask questions or adjust their setting through the phone's keypad," Yoon's campaign assures us.

By thirstybear39 - 9/18/09 - 12:19 pm

Check out the end of this Herald article which tells how Mayor Menino and his friends joked about the e-mail scandal at a Councilor Tobin event last night. Note: the mayor was skipping an East Boston event to attend this toast.

http://tiny.cc/b9l8m

The mayor turned down the East Boston event and instead attended a ritzy gala on Newbury Street, where he was given an achievement award. Later that night he went to a 40th birthday party fund-raiser for Councilor John Tobin at a West Roxbury Elks Club.

By david_yamada - 9/18/09 - 10:24 am

Who would've thought that e-mail issues would rev up the home stretch to the preliminary election!?

Any thoughts/predictions/prognostications on what will happen on Tuesday?

By adamg - 9/17/09 - 10:37 pm

But unlike Menino chief of staff Michael Kineavy, Mark Ciommo says his problem is he has too much e-mail in his inbox.

Alex Selvig, battling again with Ciommo for the Allston/Brighton district council seat (this time along with Abigail Furey and Ben Narodick) said at a candidate's forum tonight he's made a formal request to Ciommo for all e-mail he's sent to or received from Kineavy. Selvig says he's particularly interested in any communications related to the BRA.

Ciommo said he plans to treat Selvig's request like a formal public-records request and that he will hand over copies of any e-mail. But that will take some time, he said. "I have currently over 8,500 e-mails in my computer. It is an arduous task." He said he's asked his staff to find all the relevant e-mail messages, even though that will take "many hours of staff time, which unfortunately will take my staff away from constituent work."

Selvig then asked if there were any computer engineers in the audience. When a couple of people raised their hands, he asked how long it should take to search 8,500 messages for any mentions of "Kineavy." About 30 seconds, one said.

"I have dozens of folders with files in each folder that need to be reviewed accurately," Ciommo said. "I'm going to be thorough and accurate when responding to a legal question."

Selvig then asked the audience again about how long it should take to search messages in several dozen folders on "Kineavy." About 30 seconds was the reply again.

More notes from the Allston/Brighton candidates' forum.

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