PERENNIAL CANDIDATE: Hennigan must prove to voters that she’s running because she wants to be Suffolk clerk, not because she’s an unemployed hack.

Because the clerk’s post is administrative and technical in nature, there aren’t any big ideas to kick around as there are in, say, the governor’s race. Ask Hennigan and Dello Russo what they’ll do if elected, and you’ll get sensible but boring answers: reduce the backlog of cases, bolster community outreach, etc., etc.

So why is this campaign — one of the most obscure being waged this year — also one of the most intriguing? Chalk it up to its nakedly political character. Hennigan versus Dello Russo is a veritable case study in urban politics, with a well-known but isolated pol (Hennigan) squaring off against a rival (Dello Russo) who’s obscure but exceedingly well-connected. The outcome will hinge on which combatant makes best use of his or her key strength — and on how, exactly, Suffolk County’s power brokers involve themselves in the race.

What's her motivation?
When the Phoenix last checked in with Hennigan, the then Boston city councilor was waging what proved to be a doomed battle against incumbent mayor Tom Menino. Hennigan’s campaign had its high points — most memorably, she spanked Menino in their only televised debate — but anyone who craved a competitive race akin to the White-Timilty fights of yore was ultimately disappointed: Menino easily kept his seat, winning 66 percent to 31 percent.

The news was triply bad for Hennigan. She didn’t just lose the mayor’s race; she also lost her at-large councilor’s job, and racked up a fat campaign debt (approximately $700,000) to boot. Hennigan had spent most of her adult life in Boston politics — her childhood, too, as a child of peripatetic politician James Hennigan. And now she’s found herself in exile.

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But maybe not for long. Last year’s mayoral run enhanced Hennigan’s already-high political profile, in both Boston and the other towns (Revere, Chelsea, Winthrop) that comprise Suffolk County. Unlike Dello Russo, who’s never held elected office, Hennigan is a familiar name to most voters — and in a little-noticed contest like this one, that may be enough to win.

Here’s the downside: Hennigan needs to convince voters that she’s running because she actually wants to be Suffolk clerk, not because she’s an unemployed hack looking for something to do.

It could be a tough sell, especially since Hennigan, like her father, is something of a serial candidate. (She’s also run for state auditor, and twice for state senate.) Her strategy is straightforward: basically, she argues that the clerk’s post — which opened up when John Nucci left for a vice-president’s post at Suffolk University — would let her do much the same kind of work she hoped to do as mayor. “It just seemed like such a great opportunity to me to work on some of the key issues that I’ve talked about during my career in public service, which are public-safety and criminal-justice issues,” Hennigan says. “And one of the issues that has been so much on the forefront, sadly, has been public safety and the escalating violence — the murder rate, the shootings, the hopelessness that so many people feel that causes them to go down these roads.” (Note the stealthy dig at Tom Menino.)

Sounds reasonable. But is it? After all, during her last years as an at-large city councilor, Hennigan seemed at least as interested in potholes and stray power lines as she was in the root causes of crime. What’s more, the position of Suffolk clerk doesn’t really lend itself to anti-crime crusading: first and foremost, he or she is responsible for making sure operations run smoothly on a day-to-day basis.

Hennigan acknowledges this — but only to a point. “It’s an administrative position: keeping the cases flowing, acting as a resource for information,” she concedes. “But the part I find I would particularly be able to enjoy, and focus on, and really meet a need that clearly is there, is trying to pro-actively help people from finding themselves in the criminal-justice system to begin with — namely, people who go down the wrong road for whatever reason in their life. And in addition to that, violence — people who don’t anticipate finding themselves in a criminal court because a crime has been committed against them.”

All of which raises the question: if Hennigan is elected clerk, will she be so intent on solving society’s ills that she neglects the daily functions of her position? What’s more, Hennigan’s lofty vision of the office might not square with the limited resources she’d have at her disposal. (Whether she realizes this is unclear: when I asked Hennigan if she knew the size of the budget she’d be overseeing — $1.9 million, with less than 10 percent earmarked for community outreach — she admitted she didn’t.)