A return to the trail

Political veteran Flaherty seeks City Council encore

October 26, 2011|By Andrew Ryan, Globe Staff

Standing at the T turnstiles in Forest Hills, Michael F. Flaherty unbuttoned his right sleeve, rolled up the cuff of his pressed blue shirt, and stretched out his arm. Waves of people rushed past, early morning commuters flooding off buses from Jamaica Plain, Hyde Park, and West Roxbury.

“He’s back,’’ said Kempton Flemming, 50, shaking the hand of the former city councilor campaigning for an encore.

“Good to be back,’’ Flaherty said.

Workers from across the city converge on this spot, jostling past Flaherty as they travel downtown. Municipal employees recognize the candidate from the decade he spent at City Hall, including a five-year run as council president. Others know his face from his 2009 bid for mayor, when Flaherty says he “came up a little bit short.’’ He lost to four-term incumbent Thomas M. Menino by 15 percentage points.

That explains why a well-dressed woman charging through the turnstiles asks the real question, “You running for mayor again?’’

The candidate blushed. The next mayor’s race is not until 2013. “No,’’ Flaherty said. “I’m running for City Council at large.’’

He may be on the ballot for City Council on Nov. 8, but more than anything Flaherty’s candidacy focuses on the mayor he lost to in a bitter fight. He uses Menino as a foil, attacking the administration as an indirect way of criticizing his opponents, the four incumbent councilors at large.

“Now more than ever we need an independent voice on the City Council,’’ Flaherty told a South Boston civic association earlier this month.

“The City Council gets bullied every day’’ by the mayor, he said with a hint of anger. “They are told how to vote, when to vote, what to vote.’’

When pressed, Flaherty does not offer specifics. He will not name which councilors are allegedly bullied, because he says he does not want to get into back-and-forth fights with individuals. Asked about instances in the past two years when the City Council stood up to Menino - like opposing the administration’s plan to close four libraries - he dismissed those as “isolated victories.’’

Having spent the past two years largely out of the public eye at the private law practice of Adler Pollock & Sheehan, Flaherty is running to regain a seat as one of four at-large members of the City Council who represent the entire city. To win, he must knock off an incumbent - Felix G. Arroyo, John R. Connolly, Stephen J. Murphy, or Ayanna S. Pressley - all of whom are running for reelection. Two other challengers will also be on the ballot, Will Dorcena and Sean Ryan.