New Questions About One Anonymous Mailing Attacking Councilor Murphy

The anonymous mailings attacking Councilor Stephen Murphy continue to be in the news today as the subject of a story in the Boston Globe. This makes the fifth news cycle for the mailings, a public relations mess.

While Connolly's campaign has admitted to sending out two of the mailings, the Globe reports that there are three additional mailings around town, and that Connolly has declared he is not responsible for any of them.

As a result, one of those other three mailings may be subject to declaration as an expenditure under state campaign finance law, yet nobody has declared it to date.


Anonyous Mailings Sent Around Boston

Residents city-wide began receiving two anonymous mailings last Thursday attacking Councilor Stephen Murphy in the City Councilor-At-Large race. The Boston Herald (here and here) and online bloggers (here and here at Brighton Centered) established links between the anonymous mailings and challenger John Connolly. In a statement released Saturday, Connolly's campaign admitted they sent both mailings, although they did not apologize for either the content or the anonymous nature of them.

The Globe story writes:

In an interview yesterday, Connolly defended the mailings on legal grounds, saying that state law permits anonymous campaign literature against another candidate.

"In retrospect I should have put my name on it, and I wish I did," he said. He did not explain the change of heart and did not apologize, nor would he accept responsibility for other anti-Murphy mailings that were sent around the city late last week.

...

Three other anonymous mailings about the race have been sent out in recent days, one attacking Murphy in South Boston and the other two urging voters in West Roxbury to elect a councilor from the neighborhood. No one has accepted responsibility for those.

Connolly stated his defense, on legal grounds, of the city-wide anonymous mailings attacking Councilor Murphy. As long as his campaign is taking responsibility for them, the mailings will eventually appear on his campaign finance reports when he declares them as expenditures. Nothing illegal there: free speech in campaigns is perfectly illegal, and basically everything in those two flyers appears accurate. (In the Globe piece, Councilor Murphy split some hairs: "There's a difference between lobbying for a state job and ones being offered," Murphy said. "His stuff is false on that regard.")

Of the other three mailings sent out -- two in West Roxbury advocating for bullet voting for a local candidate (but not naming one), the other in South Boston attacking Murphy, according to the Globe -- no one has yet admitted to sending them out.


One Other Mailing May Be Subject to State Campaign Finance Disclosure Law

One of those three mailings -- sent to South Boston and attacking Councilor Murphy by name, according to the Globe -- is now the issue, because failure for anyone to come forward and therefore declare it on campaign finance reports might violate state campaign finance law.

Expenditures in Boston municipal political campaigns are governed by Massachusetts law and overseen by the Office of Campaign and Political Finance (OCPF). In their FAQ, OCPF offers guidance. Basically, if the Connolly campaign took responsibility for the Parkway and SBA mailings, there would be no issue -- the expenditures for the mailings would be detailed on the Connolly committee's regular campaign finance filings.

According to the Herald's Howie Carr, two of the additional three mailings have "return addresses to two nonexistent groups, 'the Parkway Coalition' and 'the South Boston Association.' " The Parkway mailing apparently has the same "bulk mailing permit out of North Reading as the Connolly committee," according to Stephen Murphy as quoted by Carr. Both appear to encourage voters to use their bullet vote in the Councilor-At-Large race, but at least one appears not to mention Connolly by name.

The West Roxbury mailings encouraging bullet voting do not mention any candidate by name, and therefore are classified as "issue ads" or "independent expenditures" which do not have to be reported by any candidate or committee under state law. If, however, they are made with "the cooperation of, in consultation or in concert with, or at the request of any candidate or campaign (or their agents)," then these mailings would have to be reported under state law. As long as Connolly continues to claim that he had nothing to do with them, and assuming that his statement is factually accurate, then no law appears to have been broken.

But the Globe notes that the other anonymous mailing, sent to South Boston residents, attacks Councilor Murphy by name. It may not therefore constitute an "independent expenditure," because it mentions a specific candidate related to an election. The key wording as to the applicability of the law lies in whether they have the "purpose of expressly advocating the election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate"; if they do, then they must be reported under campaign finance laws.

One of the anonymous mailings Connolly has admitted to sending out contains the following line:

On November 6th, tell Steve Murphy that if he doesn't want the job he has, you'll elect someone who does.

If the South Boston mailing, which nobody has claimed responsibility for, includes language like that advocating the defeat of Councilor Murphy, then it would likely be subject to full disclosure under the state's campaign finance laws. If no one makes the disclosure, then OCPF might need to investigate further.

Attorney Connolly stated in the Globe piece that "state law permits anonymous campaign literature against another candidate." Correct, as long as the expenditure related to the anonymous campaign literature naming a candidate is fully declared.

The OCPF website lists no registered committee named the "South Boston Association," or anything like it. (Nor is the "Parkway Coalition" listed, although, as noted above their mailing advocating bullet-voting is not at issue.) No one appears to have declared this particular expenditure. Will the SBA file papers with the OCPF declaring themselves a committee under state campaign finance law? We'll be watching.


Analysis

The failure of the Connolly campaign to get out in front of the anonymous mailings on the first day indicates horrendously bad public relations work on the part of the John Connolly campaign. They only admitted on Saturday to having sent out the two city-wide mailings; if they are also behind the other three neighborhood-specific ones, they should have admitted so early on to limit the damage. We are now in the fifth news cycle for this story, which could have died out after one or two if it were handled properly.

Connolly's defense of the mailings on legal grounds misses the point: weren't they something that was just-plain wrong to send out anonymously? If so, apologize for sending them out anonymously in a carefully-crafted statement that doesn't apologize for the content of them. It would be easy for attorney Connolly to draft such text. Furthermore, rather than parsing legal arguments about the mailings, wouldn't the public be better served by full and open disclosure?

In the Globe story, Connolly did not take responsibility for the anonymous mailings sent to West Roxbury advocating bullet votes. Yet one of them appears to have the same bulk mailing permit as other Connolly campaign literature, according to Councilor Murphy. If I were a betting man in one of Governor Deval Patrick's casinos, I would bet on the Connolly campaign's involvement with that mailing. It ain't illegal to advocate for bullet votes anonymously, so what's the downside to accepting responsibility for it?

The deeper problem, however, is that Connolly is now on record with the Boston Globe as not taking responsibility for the South Boston mailing attacking Councilor Murphy. Whomever is responsible for that one mailing -- be it Connolly or somebody else like the "South Boston Association" -- would be well advised to come forward with their involvement, and make sure that all state campaign finance laws are followed. Otherwise, an investigation by OCPF might be in order.

Journalism, Journalists, and Bloggers

The cacophony continues about whether or not bloggers are journalists, and whether or not they practice journalism. This particular case not only offers a good opportunity to ask generally what is the relationship between blogging and journalism, but to explain how Brighton Centered itself fits into the picture. So we'll start at NECN and BMG, depart to a length trio about Brighton Centered, and then join back in the recapitulation and development of the principal themes.


Beat the Press and NECN Beating Up Bloggers

The latest incident throwing a wrench into the debate occurred a week-and-a-half ago when several writers for the BlueMassGroup blog, who were about to watch a debate among the candidates for the 5th Congressional District, were asked to leave the audience at the NECN studios. Their exclusion was at the request of the handlers for Republican candidate Jim Ogonowski. The reason given was that the BMGers are partisans in the election, having endorsed Ogonowski's opponent, Democrat Niki Tsongas, and actively participated in raising contributions for Tsongas's candidacy through links on their website.

The BMGers left the studios without incident (everyone involved appears to have behaved well publicly), but raised the issue later -- online, of course, but also through the MainStream Media. (See BMG discussions here, here, and here.) The topic was taken up by the pundits on WGBH's "Beat the Press" edition of Greater Boston on Friday, October 12th (video available), who came down on both sides of the issue. Dan Kennedy, of Northeastern University, said that the bloggers should have been able to stay since the BMG bloggers "practice journalism" -- even if they are not professional journalists in a traditional definition -- while John Carroll of Boston University said that those particular bloggers may have been rightfully excluded, because they stepped over the journalistic line by participating in fundraising activities.

Phil Balboni, president of NECN, drew a stark line separating bloggers from journalists when he stated, in a taped interview, that:

Bloggers are not journalists. Not in my definition. You know, the objectivity, the accuracy, the completeness, the balance, and so on and so forth. A story has to have integrity. Bloggers have -- they may or may not wish to subscribe to those standards.

I find that Balboni's statement is self-contradictory: "bloggers may or may not wish to subscribe to those standards" means that those who do are therefore journalists. But that contradicts his point that "bloggers are not journalists," unless he can demonstrate that there exists no blogger on Earth who follows those journalistic standards. Methinks Balboni failed to source his own material; furthermore, I predict that he is probably ignorant about the the blogging corps because he has read little of their writing. To their credit, Beat the Press then countered Balboni's assertion by providing contradictory opinions, i.e., more than one example of a blogger who qualifies as a journalist in their mind. Practicing journalism score card: Beat the Press 1, NECN President Balboni 0.


Does Brighton Centered Practice Journalism?

Let's not just be general about bloggers, let's look at one blog in particular: Brighton Centered. In my view, blogs that deal with local issues, politics, and so on, most closely parallel local newspapers. There are a series of functions that any MSM newspaper will typically contain, and news-related blogs are no different:

1. Community event listings
   
2. News reporting
3. Opinion (aka "Op/Ed" or columns)
4. Editorials
5. Advertising

What You Will and Will Not Find at Brighton Centered. Here at Brighton Centered, I have made a clear and conscious decision to do #1-3, not to do #4, and not to bother with #5 (because I can't imagine I would make enough money to justify the time spent trying to do so).

This is a very important set of distinctions to make: I endorse no position or candidate for elected office (an "editorial" or "endorsement") like BMG did, while I consider it a key element of this blog to provide thoughtful opinion and analysis of the news and community issues. If I see a stupid proposal I am free to call it that -- while providing details supporting the point -- but I do not need to endorse a position or a person who proposed (or opposed) that stupid idea.

The problem with the blogging corps is that we are all too often a single person who tries to do all of #1-3 and maybe also #4. Newspapers, on the other hand, simply have more than one person working for them and can therefore cleanly separate the news desk from the columnists and the editorial board. It is often quite difficult to separate the news from the opinion... but more on that in a moment.


Does Brighton Centered Practice Journalism? I believe the answer is yes. There is probably little question in readers' minds that I have strived to perform a public service here by providing such a wide-range of information on candidates for elected office; a reader can find plenty examples of such journalism currently by looking at the top-right column of this blog. Postings here regularly fit neatly into categories #1, 2, and 3 above.

Some blogs are simply opportunities for the writer to collect, rewrite, or comment on news reported elsewhere. Does Brighton Centered do its own reporting [#2 above]? Once again, the answer is a clear yes. Reporting has included: campaign finance reports (and thereby correcting inaccurate reporting found in the Boston Globe), neighborhood meetings (e.g., BC Task Force), election-day problems and get-out-the-vote-efforts, IP addresses, candidate interviews, dying trees, unblocked-and-then-reblocked Wiltshire Road, local angle on EPA lead-paint allegations, phone surveys, a Ward 21 endorsement, correcting misinformation about bicycle paths in the Boston Globe, community policing in Brighton, a rabid raccoon, past contributions to political campaigns, structurally deficient bridges in Allston-Brighton, candidate opposition to BC's proposal to build Brighton Dorms, withdrawal of two and then another candidate from the race, flooding and a fire along the Charles, etc., ... I'm tiring out from all this linking, so I'll just let you read the last six months of posts.

More to the point: do news-related posts such as these follow standard practices of journalism? Mostly yes, but I am always open to criticism and education on this point. The specific item on which I might be considered to most often depart from "standard journalistic practice" is getting on getting comments from subjects of news stories. The code of ethics states that a journalist should always "diligently seek out subjects of news stories to give them the opportunity to respond to allegations of wrongdoing." I rarely carry outright accusations of wrongdoing -- and, when I do, I am very conscious about offering the opportunity to respond -- but there are many more cases in the gray area where I don't always seek out a response. While it may not always appear to be the case (!), I do significant fact-checking behind the scenes, much as is expected by a MSM journalist, and follow the standards on when information can be reported as fact or as assertion. If I were a full-time journalist, I would have far more time to track down more sources... but I've got a real job that pays the bills. Such are the trade-offs of the citizen journalist beat.


Separating News From Opinion on a Blog. One way of separating news (#2) from opinion (#3) would be to label the top of every post as either one or the other. Unfortunately, that is often a harsh remedy which divides up a story in an unnatural way -- fully separating the information itself from the analysis of it. Nonetheless, I have used this approach frequently, for example when covering the City Council candidate forums with news quotations and transcript as opposed to analysis, or when providing precinct-level election results and then analyzing them.

Another way to separate news from opinion is by using section headers that offer a fairly clear distinction. Examples of this are in my reporting on campaign finance (for District 9 Councilor and Councilor-At-Large), casino gambling, BC's possibly new -- possibly old -- student behavior policy, and CRI beginning construction of a new boathouse.

A more subtle method to separate news from opinion comes from simple language usage: moving from the active or passive voice to the first person. See the section in this post (above) labelled, "Beat the Press and NECN Beating Up Bloggers," where the last paragraph provides my analysis of NECN President Balboni's remarks and the preceding paragraphs report on other people's positions. Since most of the readers here are well-read and understand the subtleties of language, I believe they can appreciate and follow the simple change of voice, which is a clear way of separating factual news from opinion. This use of language is commonly found in my technical scientific writing, where the factually-supported, strong voice "experiment X causes result Y" can be immediately followed by the (first-person plural) assertion that "we consider the experimental approach to be systematically biased."


Reader Comments. Opinion and commentary also enter into Brighton Centered through another route: comments by readers to the post. Here, I have made some clear decisions that define the nature of the comments allowed. Brighton Centered's reader comments are moderated and require the user to have a Google/Blogger account -- no anonymous reader comments are allowed.

Why? News posts touching Boston College sports in any way -- even when purely factual and containing no opinion or commentary -- routinely result in a torrent of offensive, poorly-written, and totally off-topic responses from readers who are devoted fans of BC sports. (A tiny minority of such fans, I'm sure.) Such reader comments accuse me of bias, hatred of BC sports, etc., even when the posts themselves (and Brighton Centered altogether) contain no such statement; such accusations are not just ignorant, since they have no factual basis, but they would massively clutter up this blog were it to be un-moderated and/or allow anonymous comments.

I have also regularly rejected partisan reader comments on elections-related posts that are of a non-partisan nature. I consider it inappropriate to have reader comments like, "What a stupid answer by Candidate X," attached to a post which is the candidates response to a questionnaire he returned to me. There are places on a blog for reader comments -- but a post containing non-partisan, raw information about a candidate is not such a place.


Does BlueMassGroup Practice Journalism? Is It Even a Blog?

BlueMassGroup is an interesting, albeit odd, online community. It does not squarely follow the format of a blog or a newsgroup; instead, it is a merger of the two, with all of the warts that brings. Blog posts by core members of BMG are typically followed by a wide-ranging discussion of the topic by lots of readers. While it has many lengthy posts, the BMG nonetheless often becomes comment-heavy, not poster-content heavy, which often gives it more of the feel of an active newsgroup than a tightly-controlled blog.


BMG Ejection. The criticism levelled at BMG by John Carroll on Beat the Press was direct and relevant. Newspapers may endorse a candidate but do not participate in fund-raising activities for him/her, so BMG has stepped over a reasonable line drawn by newspapers over the years. As a result, BMGs activity can be argued, with merit, as partisan on the issue of the 5th Congressional District race.

Assuming that NECN had a written document describing how the debate would be run (including who would be in the audience), and had sent this document to the candidates well in advance of the event, then I think that the BMGers probably would not have qualified for press credentials to the event. But NECN appears to have granted press credentials in advance to the BMGers, so we can only conclude that there was no written policy banning journalists who participate in fund-raising activities for one or more candidates. (Or that NECN didn't follow their own rules.)

That said, I don't know why the *&#$ NECN would ban the BMGers from the audience at the studio debate. I have moderated two candidate forums in the last month, and will moderate another debate this week, that have had audiences full of partisans supporting one candidate or another. A professionally-run event simply has to set ground rules for audience behavior (such as no signs, applause, or talking); trust me, the audience will follow the rules and behave with decorum if you ask them. By all accounts, the BMGers were well-behaved and courteous. When NECN President Balboni ejected the BMGers from the audience, he was providing zero confidence in the ability of his own moderator, Jim Braude, to run the event professionally and keep a lid on the audience. I think Balboni's behavior is sad and warrants an apology directly to Braude. If BMGers received press credentials to the event according to NECN's written policy on the debate format, then they should have been allowed in. If Ogonowski's people objected, then he should have walked out the door. His decision, his loss.


BMG, Op/Eds, and Editorials. Some at BMG are correct to state the parallel between their writing and the Op/Ed opinion columns typically found in newspapers. My understanding, however, is that newspapers typically forbid Op/Ed columns from endorsing a specific candidate: "[New York] Times columnists are not allowed to endorse candidates," wrote Thomas Friedman recently. News journalists usually steer clear of endorsements as well as fund-raising activity. Dan Rather of CBS, for example, was criticized in 2001 for participating in a private campaign fund-raiser, although he later stated that he was given inaccurate advance information about the event.

BMG has enough contributing members that they could easily form a small "editorial board" to decide upon endorsements, while leaving the other writers to express Op/Ed opinions and report on the political news. It would be a worthy exercise to examine the BMG archives to see if they follow any such procedure, and also if such a process is fully transparent to the reader. I am an occasional reader of their site, so I lack a full understanding of their process, but I would hazard a guess that their endorsement process is not fully transparent to the casual reader of their site (like me). Now is their opportunity to define a process for making endorsements which is structured, transparent, and clearly defines the roles of various, specific individuals in contributing to that process. If they do so, then they will be able to justify why certain individual BMGers contributing to their site are free from allegations of editorial bias. The MSM has already invented that wheel by separating editorials from news; BMG would be well-advised not to ignore that invention.

2009 Glennon Award for Least Responsive Candidate in an Election Campaign

Two years ago, I wrote about how Gregory Glennon, candidate for Allston-Brighton District 9 City Councilor, was so thoroughly unresponsive to attempted contacts by various neighborhood residents (including myself). It was difficult to arrange a candidates forum and debate that year, because he didn't respond to repeated requests about scheduling, related issues, and media requests for comment.

After I wrote that post, even more people contacted me to tell me that I was 100% on target in that criticism, providing their own stories of emails and phone calls that dropped into the netherworld. His non-responsiveness was peculiar, given that Glennon had said during the campaign: "I will always be available. Every phone call will get returned, every email, every letter."

This year, we have a winner of the 2009 Gregory Glennon Award for Least Responsive Candidate in an Election Campaign: Doug Bennett, candidate for Boston City Councilor-At-Large.

When a Boston Globe reporter managed to get him on the phone to ask about why he was seen running a red light in front of the Globe's office building, Bennett abruptly ended the conversation. OK, that's not such a bad thing to do with a pestering reporter, right?

Well, he hung up on a reporter from the Dorchester Reporter in May. He was "snippy and unresponsive" with Boston Phoenix reporter David Bernstein when asked about some details of his campaign finance reports.

The Allston-Brighton TAB tried to interview him as part of their reporting and endorsement process, but he couldn't be bothered to respond:

All of the At-large candidates, except for Doug Bennett who was invited but never bothered to return calls or e-mails to schedule a meeting, met with the staffs of the Allston-Brighton TAB and West Roxbury and Roslindale Transcript at different times over the past few weeks.

And when we organized the BAIA candidates forum earlier this month for the Councilor-At-Large race, we were unsure whether he knew about the event -- let alone whether or not he would show up -- until the afternoon of the event, because we didn't get responses to our repeated queries. His campaign website doesn't list a phone number; Bennett never responded to my emailed request for the phone number, so I put his home number in the handout to attendees at the forum.

The Dorchester Reporter was tongue-in-cheek about this whole issue, writing:

Bennett has not returned a voicemail message asking about this odd trend of non-responsiveness.

I didn't bother writing Bennett to ask him to comment on this post.

Information on District 9 City Council Candidates

The preliminary municipal election is scheduled for Tuesday, September 22nd. Polls open at 7 am and close at 8 pm. The Allston-Brighton District 9 City Councilor race is being contested with four candidates; the two top vote-getters will face off during the November municipal election.

Also on the ballot:

• Mayor of Boston, where incumbent Thomas Menino faces three challengers, City Councilors-At-Large Michael Flaherty and Sam Yoon, and developer Kevin McCrea; and
• Four City Councilors-At-Large, where incumbents John Connolly and Stephen Murphy face 13 challengers, with the top eight vote-getters moving on to the November municipal election.
  

District 9 City Councilor Candidate Information

All four candidates for Allston-Brighton District 9 City Councilor have websites that include positions on some issues:

• Mark S. Ciommo (incumbent)
• Abigail C. Furey
• Benjamin Ian Narodick
• Alex Selvig

Boston Neighborhood News ran interview shows -- one with Abigail Furey and Alex Selvig, the other with Mark Ciommo and Benjamin Narodick -- some of which can be found on YouTube. The following candidates have YouTube channels set up:

• Abigail Furey
• Benjamin Narodick (also includes BNN interview with Mark Ciommo)
• Alex Selvig

The first candidates forum (9/15/09 at WGBH) is summarized here.

Second candidates forum (9/17/09 at Elks) is summarized here and tweeted here. Emails discussed here and here. Online video is here (alternatively, the same video content is here).

The Allston-Brighton TAB has covered the candidates in the following stories:

• "District 9 candidates make their plea for your vote" (9/17/09)
  
• "District 9 Boston City Council Hopefuls Have Housing, Expansion on Their Minds" (7/15/09)
• "Selvig kicks off campaign for Allston-Brighton's City Council seat" (7/2/09)
  
• "A-B’s district city councilor, Mark Ciommo, could face three challengers" (5/14/09)
  

The Boston Globe has not covered the race to date. The following are searches on the names of the candidates to the Globe's archives (Narodick has no hits):

• Mark Ciommo
  
• Abigail Furey
• Alex Selvig
  

The Boston Herald continues its tradition of not covering the District 9 City Council race as well as virtually ignoring all Allston-Brighton neighborhood issues -- unless they can put a picture of a Harvard rat on the front page.

Campaign finance reports are summarized here, and individual reports posted at Harry Mattison's blog:

• Mark Ciommo
  
• Abigail Furey
  
• Benjamin Narodick
  
• Alex Selvig
  

Some of the candidates have published Op-Ed columns and letters-to-the-editor in local newspapers during 2009:

• Selvig, letter, Allston-Brighton TAB, 8/20/09, "Why the 10-year wait for commuter rail service?"
  
• Ciommo, letter, Allston-Brighton TAB, 5/22/09, "Allston-Brighton's city councilor, Mark Ciommo, supports 5-zone plan for Boston Public Schools"
• Furey, letter, Allston-Brighton TAB, 2/19/09, "Letter: Seeking explanations from Boston College Community Task Force" (co-author: Ram Rao)
• Furey, Op-Ed, Boston Globe, 1/29/09, "BC's mixed blessings" (co-author: Ram Rao)
• Furey, letter, Boston Globe, 1/4/09, "New BC dorm would be in heart of a residential neighborhood"
  

And here at the Brighton Centered Blog you can find a story about any of the candidates using the tag's at the end of the articles or these links:

• Mark Ciommo
• Abigail Furey
• Benjamin Narodick
• Alex Selvig

All the blog posts can also be found by using the "election2009" tag here at Brighton Centered.


Corrections and/or additions? Email me at pahre@comcast.net

Image of question mark in Esbjerg by alexanderdrachman provided through a Creative Commons license.

Interview With Council Candidate Tim Schofield: "Now is the time to fight this fight"

Brighton resident Tim Schofield has announced his candidacy for the open Allston-Brighton seat on the Boston City Council. I caught up with him after the "human flag" event that was part of the Brighton-Allston Bicentennial celebration.

He grew up in a more rural environment in southern New Hampshire, and spent several years in the military during the Gulf War, but was attracted to Allston-Brighton because he "was looking for a balance of urban and community: Allston-Brighton had the reputation of being that kind of place." He added that A-B is "a community [where] you can live in an urban environment yet still have a small-town feel."

He wants to be a City Councilor because he thinks he "can make a difference in making this neighborhood a great place to live."

The major issues confronting the A-B neighborhood are "the foundational, or quality-of-life, issues: affordable housing, so people can stay here; good public schools; and public safety, where we have a different kind of battle [compared to other Boston neighborhoods], like density issues, students, and the 'broken windows' effect."

He has sat on the BRA's Boston College Task Force since March 2007, giving him a first-hand experience on the relationship between institution and community: "Institutional expansion goes hand-in-hand with these issues. [It is] the most important, specific issue facing the community right now."

He concluded, "The next few years are going to define the next 100 years for our community. Now is the time to fight this fight."


Council Race Continues to Heat Up

Watch this blog for more information on the fast-changing events surrounding the race for the open City Council seat. Word on the street is that there are at least three or four more people entering the race -- on top of the five candidates who have declared to date. But there are also a few people who stated no plan to run. I'm working on getting short interviews with all the candidates as they declare, and will post those interviews here; also see the previous interview with Alex Selvig.

Got a lead? Contact me: pahre@comcast.net

Alex Selvig Announces for A-B City Council Seat

Alex Selvig of Lake Street, Brighton, has just announced his candidacy for the Allston-Brighton open seat on the Boston City Council; the candidate agreed to a short interview. He runs a business importing boats for crew use, and has previously coached for the Community Rowing, Incorporated.

He has never run for political office before, so he considers himself a longshot. "I'm psyched to bring a whole lot of issues to the forefront." He expressed the desire for his candidacy to be a grassroots-based one.

When asked how he would fare in a race that might cost $25,000-50,000, he said, "I may have to run with whatever I can raise. I'll keep driving until the gas runs out."

"I think that Brighton is slowly being choked off," he continued. "It is a neighborhood of Boston that is being sacrificed... where university expansion is more valuable than keeping a part of town for families and people to live in. I just want to make this a better place to live." He also listed improvement of public schools as an important issue facing the neighborhood.

Interview With Council Candidate James Jenner

At the age of 26, James Jenner is the youngest in the field of nine running for the open, Allston-Brighton seat on Boston's City Council. Since age 12, he has been participating in one political organization after another: the campaigns ofJerry McDermott, Patricia White, and Maura Hennigan, and the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston.

Jenner is approaching the Council race very seriously: he has taken time off from both of his jobs (at Papa Gino's and UPS) in order to run full-time. He calls himself a "regular guy, not a politician. I have the same problems as my neighbors have."

He wants to be a City Councilor in order "to be a voice for my neighbors. The true wishes of the people are not always addressed to their content."

A lifelong resident of Brighton -- except for one year -- he thinks "there is no place like Allston-Brighton when in comes to culture and diversity... It's a wonderful, wonderful place to live."

Jenner sees the major issues confronting the Allston Brighton neighborhood as "collegiate enroachments in our neighborhood," substance abuse, overlooked problems of lighting and crosswalks, a high dropout rate in the educational system, and the high rate of burglary.

"Of all the burglaries in the City right now, [so many] of them belong to Allston-Brighton." His solution is two-fold: "working not just to punish those who are caught, but also to improve the preventative measures like neighborhood crime watches." Similarly, he sees that the substance abuse problem in A-B "has to be addressed by the police as well as by a community leader."

His future vision for A-B looks back to its past. "I would love to restore Allston-Brighton to its family-rooted and culturally diverse status it once had," he says, "as well as bringing more arts into the community. The Brighton-Allston Heritage Museum is a great addition."

"It feels like the residential areas of the neighborhood are becoming bordered off," Jenner continues, in reference to the institutional expansion in the neighborhood. "The students bring a lot to our neighborhood, but [we should] incorporate them, not exclude them." He points his criticism on this issue at Boston College. "I didn't really hear anything [in their master plan] about including the neighborhood; it was all about continuity [within] BC's campus. The time is now for them to make a really big gesture."

Interview with Council Candidate Mark Ciommo

As part of the series of short interviews with candidates for the open Allston-Brighton District seat on the City Council, I recently caught up with Mark Ciommo, director of the Veronica Smith Senior Center in Brighton Center.

Ciommo notes long-standing ties to the neighborhood, with four generations of his family having lived in Allston-Brighton. Among his reasons for wanting to be a City Councilor is his interest in setting a good example for his sons by supporting a neighborhood where "they will choose to stay and raise their families."

He cites some long-standing neighborhood institutions as strong influences on him personally. At the YMCA, he "met male role models to help him [have] a good childhood despite not having a dad." He is a product of the Boston Public Schools K-12, followed by Suffolk University, yet met his wife Laura while living in California. Her family is from rural California, but there was "no way the City boy was going to live in the San Joaqin Valley." He wanted to raise his family back in the A-B, the neighborhood of his childhood.

Some of his experiences that he highlights to support his candidacy are his involvement with the Hobart Park Neighborhood Association, Gardner School's Site Council, and a community policing task force. He also notes that, in his work with the elderly, "they know that they will get their concerns taken care of" by him, since his "door is [always] open to them."

In his previous run in 2002 for the same District City Council seat, Ciommo made the run-off but then lost to Jerry McDermott by 424 votes. From that campaign, he got the "opportunity to meet so many people throughout the neighborhood," as well as "hear the wide range of issues and concerns. [It] gave me a deeper appreciation of the Allston-Brighton community."

The most important issue facing Allston-Brighton is "absolutely the Harvard and Boston College expansions coming at us at the same time. It has the most impact over the future of Allston-Brighton." He reiterated his position, given earlier, that he opposes BC's proposal to build undergraduate dormitories in the former Seminary land. "If you say yes to one, you are only opening the door to more."

Institutional expansion is not the only issue he cites, though: basic City services are important, such as "safe streets, good schools, [and] property tax relief."

He hopes the future of A-B will be "as a place that attracts families more than it seems to now," as well as being a good place to retire in. "I work with the elderly, and I know that the people who remain in the neighborhood like to stay [because their] churches, family, salons, etc., are all here."

Interview With Council Candidate Paul Creighton

Paul Creighton is no stranger to Allston-Brighton politics: he had a strong showing with more than 30% of the vote against then-incumbent Councilor Jerry McDermott in the 2005 race. He works as the Director of the Allston-Brighton Area Planning Action Council.

Creighton wants to be City Councilor because "being an elected public official is an honorable position to have. I think I can be helpful to the neighborhood."

And he paints a picture of a neighborhood that could use a lot of help:

"The community and neighborhood infrastructure has disintegrated, and there are very few institutions left that would make for a strong community life. The number of people starting families has shrunk tremendously... The schools are less and less meaningful in people's lives. The expansion of the larger institutions (particularly BC and Harvard) are almost a death blow to what I view as a neighborhood life... The degree of change has only accelerated over the last few years."

His list of major issues confronting the Allston-Brighton neighborhood is broad: increasing property taxes; a tight city budget; unaffordable housing; little confidence in the school system; and traffic. He blames many of the problems on the ever-expanding institutions, and the "willy-nilly" way that all the change is occurring. "It's going to be one big dormitory, one big academic institution," he says. "It will be very hard for anybody else to lead a different kind of life that doesn't march to the academic beat."

Looking forward, Creighton maintains that "unless you do something to try to change the culture of city services, it's all going to get worse."

A long-time community activist who started his career in the war on poverty, Creighton still believes "that community action and organization [are] a way to contend with these powerful forces. You begin by organizing people to fight the fight."

Finally, he sees the role of the City Councilor as someone who "has to be out front, not sort of sitting on the sidelines waiting for how the wind blows. The district City Councilors are supposed to be leading... You have to be someone who is prepared to fight City Hall."

Interview With Council Candidate Rosie Hanlon

Rosie Hanlon is well-known in Allston-Brighton as the Executive Director of Brighton Main Streets, although she is also involved in many other community activities. I caught up with her the day after she formally picked up papers at City Hall to initiate her candidacy.

"I'm a city girl," says the lifelong resident of Brighton. "I love the convenience of my area. I love going down to the river and up to the reservoir."

She has run unsuccessfully twice before for the Allston-Brighton seat on the Boston City Council. The first was against City Councilor Brian Honan in 1997. "I was really concerned with the apathy" in the district, she said. "If we don't vote, then we don't get the city services that we need. My mission was to get people to vote." Following Honan's death, she was among nine candidates for the seat in 2002 during her second run.

She considers there to be three major issues currently confronting Allston-Brighton: institutional expansion, public schools, and substance abuse.

Rosie has been a member of the Boston College Task Force for many years, and remembers the process they went through over the last master plan. "We were adamant" that BC would have to put more undergraduate students on campus, she said. "By the time the master plan was developed to completion, we got it up to 800-plus beds."

Regarding today's institutional expansion plans of Harvard and BC, she notes: "Development is going to happen, but it has to happen in a reasonable way that doesn't impact the peace and quiet of our communities."

But she also cautions against blaming institutional expansion for the high rates at which families are moving out of A-B. "We lose families because of the school system. I think our school system is getting better, but we still have a 40% dropout rate." She also notes that too many families pull their children out of the public schools after kindergarten. "We really have to make sure that our public schools are community public schools."

She is passionate that the community needs to better recognize the problem of substance abuse among the neighborhood youth. "You can right now buy a bag of heroin for less than the price of a happy meal." Drug transactions, she says, are widespread in "the parks, the parking lots, [and] the convenience stores" in A-B. Part of the solution is "to prepare the parents, and let them know they have the support they need."

Looking toward the future, Rosie has a vision for the neighborhood. "Brighton has always been like the peninsula to the City of Boston. I have been working towards Brighton being known as a 'destination'... a place that people will want to be."