Greg Glennon a No-Show in Allston-Brighton Candidates Forum

Greg Glennon, candidate for the Allston-Brighton District 9 City Council seat, was a no-show for the Candidates Forum Monday night at the Brighton Elks Lodge -- and nobody could figure out why. Abigail Furey, organizer and listed contact for the event, received no notification of his cancellation. Several of the other candidates said that Glennon has often been late to other joint events, so they didn't seem surprised.

The irony of the situation couldn't be more striking: a question at the forum was waiting for Glennon and two other candidates who had not attended any meetings of the BRA's Allston-Brighton institutional task forces in 2007 before deciding to run for the City Council.** Two of those three candidates -- including Glennon -- also failed to submit public comments in response to Harvard's request for a MEPA phase one waiver and science complex DPIR filed with the BRA. ***

It's hard to under-emphasize this point: in a neighborhood under seige by institutional expansion, attending public meetings and submitting public comments on regulatory filings are the bread-and-butter work of the A-B District City Councilor.

A-B District 9 City Council candidate Greg Glennon is now not only a no-show on institutional expansion -- he's AWOL at a candidates forum with a question about his no-shows.

Is he laying low, thinking that he would do better not facing the questions and the public? As I noted in a post several days ago, Patrick Galvin, brother and campaign manager to Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin, recently put a Glennon sign up on his front lawn. Secretary Galvin had only one opponent in 2006 -- Green-Rainbow candidate Jill Stein -- and refused to debate her at all. Well, actually, for the record, he allowed CBS4's John Keller to query Galvin and Stein for 16 minutes in a hallway in the Boston Athenaeum, which made a number of bloggers unhappy, to say the least. So if one or more Galvins are supporting Glennon in front or behind the scenes, then their apparent contempt for debates could be one explanation for Glennon AWOL Monday night. If so, I suspect they've not only given Glennon bad campaign advice, but they've handed him to gun to shoot his own foot.

EDIT (9/18, noon): Glennon has not yet responded to a request for comment on his no-show. Another journalist also reports the same.

EDIT (9/18, 1pm): A press release out of the Rosie Hanlon campaign about James Jenner's decision to withdraw from the race states that "organizers later learned that [Glennon] was attending a campaign fundraiser." Actually, we hadn't heard... although a different, unnamed source has since hinted it was a fundraiser downtown. Maybe it will help him pay for better phone surveys. But there was a rumor circulating at the Elks Lodge right after the debate that Secretary Galvin had told Glennon not to show. In retrospect, just a rumor wafting out from the bar.


** According to documents provided by the BRA through a request under the state's Public Records Law. The documents consist of audience and task force sign-in sheets for meetings of the Harvard Allston, Boston College, and St. Elizabeth's Medical Center Task Forces between January 1 and April 30, 2007, i.e., before Councilor Jerry McDermott announced in early May that he would not seek relection.

*** The other two candidates (who showed up!) who received the same question during the forum gave honest and reasonable answers. Their names, and their responses, will be provided in the audiotape and transcript of the forum; I think it inappropriate to name them at this time without also providing their response.