City Beat
Paul Feeney, Boston City Paper
Friday, July 30, 2005
Recently a Boston daily seemed to be ridiculing Maura Hennigan in a story that
mocked her campaign treasury account of $9,000 compared to the million or so in
Tom Menino’s. What they didn’t know was Maura had a secret financial weapon.
She owns valuable properties in the City of Boston which she plans to re-mortgage
giving her more than an adequate sum to run a winning campaign.
It’s like a guy who scores a touchdown and does a dance in the end-zone, some
acrobatic flips, wiggling and jiggling,etc while his team is defeated
overwhelmingly by the opponent. He’s rubbing it in and that can come back
to haunt him, Remember that commercial, “It’s not nice to fool Mother
Nature.”
Maura Hennigan made a good move when she purchased a beautiful brick
home on West Cottage Street near Dudley Street in North Dorchester, I
would estimate the value of that home and the additional lot of land next
door in the vicinity of at least $800,000. Simple three-deckers in this
neighborhood easily sell in the above $500,000 range. At the time it was
an investment in her future and now it could lead to her being the future
mayor of Boston. Only time will tell. There’s only about 100 days left to
the November election. Mayor Menino is up against a rough campaigner and
a woman who has been in the public eye for 25 years and the only one who
has served on every configuration of the Boston City Council in that time.
She has strong, solid support throughout the City of Boston and with many
influential constituencies.
And don’t be surprised if her own investment in her campaign is followed
by huge contributions from police and fire officers who want to abolish the
residency law as well as women’s groups. It doesn’t pay to mock your opponent.
It’s a tactic that can backfire. In this case the mockery came in the form
of a story in the daily paper.
Hennigan took the media on a bus tour of the City on Thursday and it was
an opportunity for the media to talk directly to her and ask all the
questions about the viability of her campaign. It was the announcement
at the end, about re-mortgaging her investment properties that made the
front page of the daily paper on Friday, July 29th.
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