Titanic turnout
In contrast with this year’s Boston elections, which brought less than 14 percent of registered voters to the polls, 37 percent of the electorate turned out in 1981 — a recent record for non-mayoral contests. Why the big numbers? Chalk it up to a bevy of extra ballot items, including proposals to change the structure of the City Council and school committee, and to call for British withdrawal from Northern Ireland. (Voters said Yes to all three.) |
DO PANIC. That was the gist of an editorial in the November 8 Boston Globe, which bemoaned the meager turnout for the Boston City Council elections two days earlier — just 13.6 percent of registered voters had shown up — and which warned that the city’s storied political culture was in grave decline. “Despite what Mayor Menino and the other incumbents might want to believe, the lack of vigorous challenges does not mean that voters are happy with the status quo,” the editorial fretted. “Boston’s political system is rigged against change, and it needs a major rethinking.”Whether or not the editorial writers knew it, this was an ironic plea. After all, in the run-up to elections, the Globe had helped foster the very apathy it was now lamenting — ignoring some campaigns, skimping on candidate profiles, and generally signaling that the election didn’t matter much.
Consider the paper’s treatment of John Connolly, an at-large challenger who ended up winning one of the council’s four at-large seats. Connolly did nab the Globe’s only at-large endorsement. But despite his political promise and bloodline (his father, Michael, is a former secretary of state), the paper’s news side barely noticed him. The first piece that focused on Connolly’s campaign ran the weekend before the Fourth of July, in the relatively low-profile City Weekly section; the second, which ran on Election Day, was only written to address an anonymous-mailing scandal Connolly foolishly sparked at the last minute. But at least he received that coverage. Michael Flaherty — the at-large incumbent, perennial ticket-topper, and possible mayoral challenger — wasn’t the subject of any article, period.
In fairness, the Globe wasn’t the only local heavyweight outlet that downplayed the council races. For example, WBUR-FM (90.9), the Boston University–based NPR affiliate, didn’t do a single reported news story on the elections until after they were over. And the Herald only covered the aforementioned Connolly mailing flap. Which raises the question: if, as the Globe editorial page put it, Boston politics need CPR, why is the press idly standing by?
No news is bad news
Earlier this year, the council race in Roxbury-based District Seven looked like it might provide some juicy political drama. The long-time incumbent, Chuck Turner, was a Harvard-educated organizer with a penchant for incendiary tactics; his main challenger, Carlos Henriquez, was a former aide to Flaherty and the son of Sandra B. Henriquez, the head of the Boston Housing Authority and an appointee of Mayor Tom Menino. On paper, this showdown resembled the District Four race in 2003, which pitted incumbent Charles Yancey against challenger Ego Ezedi. In that contest — which saw the relationship of nonwhite politicians to Boston’s white power structure become a major campaign issue — Ezedi got plenty of press, and gave Yancey a real scare before losing in the final.
Turner vs. Henriquez, however, never generated much media. (Neither the Globe nor the Herald endorsed in the race; a Herald columnist wrote about it, but Henriquez didn’t get a single column or article in the Globe.) And in the end, the incumbent won in a blowout: Turner got 82 percent of the vote, Henriquez 18.
Maybe this outcome vindicates the press’s disinterest: if Henriquez was a doomed candidate, there wasn’t much reason to pay attention to him. But Turner’s landslide win could also be seen as an indictment of the press. When the media acknowledge a novice candidate such as Henriquez, they’re telling the public that he or she deserves to be taken seriously; when they don’t, they’re doing the opposite.
Not surprising, Henriquez thinks the media herd gave him short shrift. “The only real way to transcend [the lack of coverage] was to actually spend money to create your own press,” he tells the Phoenix. “I actually created a newspaper for myself this summer — we printed 3000 copies of an eight-page newsletter and went out delivering it door to door. There was a little bit of response to it. Still, it’s not the same as someone picking up a periodical and reading your name in it.
“People say the neighborhood is apathetic about voting,” he adds. “They blame the candidates — they say the candidates didn’t do a good job getting out the vote. But myself and Chuck probably put out over twenty or thirty thousand pieces of campaign literature. At what point are they going to say, ‘The media’s got to generate some help too?’ ”
