For a long shot, Hennigan's on target
Wayne Woodlief - Boston Herald
Thursday, June 20, 2005
Here's just how bargain-basement Maura Hennigan's mayoral campaign is: Manager Mitch Kates,
an out-of-town hire, is bunking at her mom and dad's house near Jamaica Pond and running the campaign out of a conference room at her
father and brother's insurance agency.
Hey, you have to pinch pennies when you have about $32,000 in your account and the mayor is sitting on more than a
million bucks.
Yet there is a current of unease out in Boston's neighborhoods, especially over schools, crime and affordable housing,
that gives the challenger heart and must give Thomas Menino heartburn, even if he is a big favorite to win a fourth term. I
witnessed that unease when I went door-knocking with Hennigan in Savin Hill one night this week, after a brief rain.
She had not been at Jane Maher's doorstep for two minutes before that resident declared, ``It's time for a change.''
She added, ``The Boston public schools were so terrible, I had 15 years of paying tuition'' for parochial education for her
children. ``And now that they're old enough to be on their own, they can't afford to move out. Rents are too high and they
sure can't afford a house.''
Sure, Hennigan rang doorbells at some homes whose occupants were polite but gave her such short shrift you could
guess they're either for the mayor or turned off on politics. And when no one was home, she left behind her ``Do you
believe?'' calling card, with its scene of Fenway Park (where the 2004 Sox made believers of us all) on one side and her
platform on the other.
But wherever she got a conversation going, she touched chords of concern. At the Savin Hill baseball diamond, a
woman who did not give her name said her son, a middle-schooler, told her textbooks were so scarce at his school that
he couldn't bring them home. ``I wanted to help him with his homework, and he couldn't bring his books home,'' she said,
incredulously. ``It's a disgrace.''
Amy, born in Vietnam, lives on King Street in another part of Dorchester, where recently two street toughs snatched
her child's bike, in plain daylight, right off her porch.
``We tried to stop them,'' Amy told Hennigan. But one of the thugs grabbed her daughter by the throat and pushed her
against the door. And when Amy tried to intervene, ``The other one told me, `Get out of my way, or I'll kick you down.' ''
Hennigan asked if she had reported the theft to the police. Amy answered, poignantly, ``No. Because we're Asian and
we're not big enough [important enough, she soon made clear] and nobody pays attention to us.''
No one should have to feel that way. And Hennigan sought to empower that mother by giving her the councilor's card
and cell phone number, promising to look into the effectiveness of police patrolling on King Street. She told Amy, ``If
anything like that ever happens again, call me right away.''
Some requests the candidate got were more basic. And blunt. ``I'm looking for a job,'' said a woman who took early
retirement from federal employment after her mother fell ill. Hennigan said, ``Well, when you have a new administration at
City Hall, you get to give everybody a new look, a chance to see if new people might be a good fit for some jobs.''
Hennigan stayed just this side of actually offering a job for a vote (which would be illegal). But when you're a long shot
gathering ``just one vote at a time'' against an army of payroll patriots at City Hall . . . well, maybe a wink and a nod are in
order.
Hennigan's last stop in Savin Hill was at a corner house with an owner watering her plants and a barking German
shepherd. Maura, who has two German shepherds of her own, Luna and Storm, shook the owner's hand and within
seconds had the dog licking her hand. And its owner said, ``I know who you are and you have my vote.''
In that moment, you could almost forget Menino's war chest. His rival had just earned the kind of reception that money
can't buy.
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