Mike Freedberg blogs about state and city politics at Here And Sphere.
Mark your calendars: March 4 is a very big political day. Voters in Dorchester and Quincy will go to the polls to chose a state representative to replace Marty Walsh, who (you may have heard) is the new mayor of Boston. That same day, some voters in Charlestown and Chelsea will choose someone to replace Eugene O'Flaherty, who Walsh named to be the city's corporation counsel. I say "some voters" because this, unlike the Dorchester playoff, had, until recently, been a very, very quiet election. Hardly anyone in Chelsea has known about it, and, so it appears, less than a majority of "Townies" knows that two Tuesdays from now, they'll be asked to vote.
How quiet? Of the forty or so voters that Chelsea candidate Roy Avellaneda met, door knocking last Saturday in the city where he's in his fifth term on the Council, only two had known there was an election, and one of these was a Chelsea Fire Department gal — whose union has endorsed Dan Ryan of Charlestown. The quiet of this race seems not accidental but strategic. Dan Ryan, until recently a long-time aide to the area's powerful congressman, Mike Capuano, is seen as big favorite to win this race; and as the favorite, the last thing he wanted was to wake up Chelsea voters. After all, for the past 30 years this district has been represented by a Chelsea guy: first Richard Voke, then Eugene O'Flaherty, whose selection as Mayor Walsh's Corporation Counsel occasioned this vacancy. Not since Jimmy Collins (father of South Boston state Rep. Nick Collins) represented Charlestown in the early 1970s has "C-Town" had a voice at the State House. I know no one in Charlestown who wants this situation to continue. As for Walsh's opinion, my sources speculate that word of O'Flaherty's selection as Boston's corporation counsel was passed (quietly of course) to Ryan beforehand; and that Capuano was involved in slating Ryan.
He's favored for good reason. Besides the Capuano connection, Ryai has run for office before. In 2006, seeking an open Boston City Council seat, he won 94 percent of the Charlestown vote against rival Sal LaMattina, who barely won despite coming from much larger East Boston. (LaMattina still holds the council seat and has endorsed Ryan in this race.)
Thus the designs of Ryan and his friends upon the 2nd Suffolk would surely succeed, except that there's not one but two Townie candidates in the race. Also running is real estate broker Chris Remmes, who himself holds a power position in politics: chairman of the Ward 2 Democratic Committee. (All three candidates are Democrats, in a district overwhelmingly D since Al Smith's day.) Remmes is New Boston, looks the part and speaks it. He moved to Charlestown in 1992 — he was brought up in Milton — and has his own list, including "new Townie" donors, from whom he raised some $ 23,650 before the vacancy was even announced. He had, in fact, planned to run against "Gene-O" until Walsh surprised everybody.
Remmes is that rarest of political beaks in a district chiefly clannish: He's an "issues bird," running as a "proud progressive," which is why he was aiming to unseat O'Flaherty, one of the House's most conservative Democrats. Unfortunately for Remmes, he now faces, in Ryan, a Townie who seems to know almost everybody in Ward 2 and who holds positions on key state issues as forward as Remmes. The only issue on which they differ is a telling one. Ryan — like Walsh, whom he backed for mayor — favors a casino, though with mitigation. Remmes, like many high-minded reformers, does not favor casinos at all.
Thus Charlestown finds itself door-knocked by two very dissimilar voices; and both Remmes and Ryan are working hard to amass the 2,000 votes that all sides agree take the race. All sides also agree that the Charlestown vote will approximate 2,500; thus Ryan or Remmes will have to win Ward 2 big, or Chelsea will once again take the seat.
That's certainly how Roy Avellaneda and his viscerally combative election-day general, Michael Albano — son of long-ago Somerville state Sen. Sal Albano — see it. They want 2,000 votes to be cast in Chelsea, and they are determined to get it. At a recent campaign rally at Albano's aerie high on Chelsea Hill, he alarms the people: "If we don't win this seat this time there will never again be another Chelsea rep.! Because," — yowling — "they are going to redistrict and split Chelsea three ways! They're already planning it!"
Roy — as his bumper sticker calls him — then spoke of involvement: "If I wasn't running, I'd still be asking the questions I'm now raising. That's how involved I am in my community." A pause, then a shift to a message less us-versus-them: "We have two diverse communities, but both are environmentally impacted all along the rivers we both border."
Avellaneda would like to find a bridge — other than the Tobin — to link Chelsea and C-Town, but spans here seem hard to come by. Charlestown has almost no Hispanic population, Chelsea is Massachusetts' second most Hispanic city. Voke and O'Flaherty could win from Chelsea, which even in a regular election casts fewer votes than Charlestown, because both men were Irish. Avellaneda is not. Yet he has enjoyed enormous success as a real estate broker, speaks and carries himself like the businessman he is, and dares Ryan, whose favorite status obviously annoys. Angrily he says to me, "Ask Dan if he'll support driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants! He won't say that in Charlestown!"
So of course, the next night, at Ryan's well-attended meet and greet at the Navy Yard Bistro — smack in the middle of Chris Remmes's fellow New C-Towners — I ask Ryan exactly that. "Of course I support it," says he. "No reason to have an underground economy. Better to have them licensed and their cars insured. Protects everybody."
As for Albano's Chelsea now or never, Ryan says (with suffuse empathy), "I know what it's like to be on the other side of that issue. Not having a rep., we haven't had one for 40 years. Look, I know they want a more Latino district. As soon as I'm elected I'll set up a committee to redistrict in that direction."
How determined are Charlestown's politicals? Jack Kelly, a Townie who ran last year for City Council and won Ward 2 big, dropped out of the race rather than dividing its vote three ways, "because my community comes first." That's determination. So is Ryan's visible support by both Walsh people and John Connolly people, clans that during last year's mayoral election "hated one another," as a knowledgeable source tells me. Now they're hustling not to lose yet another election to Chelsea interests. They are hustling for "Danny" because he really is one of them; bartending at New Sully's, holding meet and greets at just about every pub in "The Town." He knows everybody in the room — not only the politicals.
Though political people aren't a majority even in Ward 2, they just might be almost everyone who votes in a race so quiet you hear not a peep of it once you've left the room. Or if you aren't on Ryan's detailed list of identified voters, including — so he tells me — 50 absentee votes from Townies wintering in Florida, organized in part by Jimmy Collins. Yes, that same Jimmy Collins who was C-Town's last elected State House voice.
UPDATE: On Tuesday, Roy Avellaneda made his move — via twitter — to wake up the Latino voters of his home city, voters whom, as he told me, "delivered Chelsea for Elizabeth Warren." It was for them, surely, that he spoke out: "I support the Federal Dream Act, the in-state tuition bill, and the Massachusetts Trust Act. Where do my competitors stand?"
As an issues play, it won't work. Progressive initiatives are Chris Remmes's stock in trade; and Ryan, close as he is to Capuano, who represents most of Boston's communities of color, welcomes this opportunity to show his diversity bona fides. But what Avellaneda is doing is waking up Chelsea Latinos from the slumber that Ryan was glad to see them enjoying.
He has ten days to get them awake to voting.
Meanwhile, Ryan answered Avellaneda's challenge with one of his own. The day after Avellaneda tweeted, Ryan announced endorsement by Suffolk County Sheriff Steve Tompkins — whose reach includes Chelsea — and by three Labor unions. Quiet isn't the only game he can play.
