I’M NOT EASILY provoked to write about topics that aren’t focused on my work and passion, the transportation sector. But the recent public writhing of Boston’s fading old guard in response to Mayor Michelle Wu’s decision to appoint a new chair for Boston’s Zoning Commission is worth reflecting on.
I fear, as we approach a mayoral election year, that a plethora of manufactured issues will wend their way into what ought to be a debate about the city’s future. I say “manufactured” because there is no news in the recent reports that the mayor is exercising her right to appoint officeholders of her own choosing. Imagine telling Kevin White or Ray Flynn or Tom Menino or Marty Walsh that they didn’t have the unfettered right to make municipal appointments to fill expired terms.
Apparently, there are a few who think the rules are different for the city’s current mayor. Rather than speculate regarding why this may be, let me make some pertinent points.
To give the background: A fellow whose appointment to the Zoning Commission expired in 2022 believes himself aggrieved because he was not allowed to keep his vise-like grip on a highly important governmental position, a position he served in for nearly this entire century. As if, somehow, he was entitled to a sinecure for life. As if this mayor, or any mayor, is not entitled to field their own team. As if terms in office don’t have meaning.
Describing the replacement of someone sitting in a long-expired term a “termination,” as a city councilor recently was quoted describing it, is pretty rich. How can you be terminated from a position that expired two years ago?
Suggesting that his not being reappointed may have something to do with his vote to scuttle a major initiative of the mayor – well, I’m shocked, shocked that people are shocked that a mayor elected (by landslide proportions, mind you) to introduce forward-looking change at City Hall would want to appoint officials who will support her agenda.
There is an accepted norm that elected officials get to choose the people who run the agencies and commissions in their administration. Period. The real issue here is the inability of a stubborn few to recognize that Boston in 2024 is not the same city it was 24 years ago.
This may seem an obvious point, but it seems lost on a waning but vocal group of folks who, like King Canute, resist in vain the tide that will eventually wash over them. We have seen ample evidence of this political tide in Boston for some time now, but for inexplicable reasons some folks just cannot or will not acknowledge reality.
It is no secret I am a long-standing supporter of Mayor Wu. I endorsed her in 2021, and will be proud to do so again next year. So while you may consider that my thoughts here are simply a reflection of my support for the mayor, I would urge you to consider the facts. And the facts are best borne out by electoral outcomes.
I first observed the change in Boston politics several years ago, when people I know well assured me there was no way Congressman Mike Capuano could lose reelection to Ayanna Pressley. These same people assured me that Lydia Edwards couldn’t win a state Senate election in the district anchored by East Boston. These same folks, confident in their certainty, told me East Boston would never turn down a casino at Suffolk Downs when the question was posed to them as a ballot question.
These predictions by the self-assured guardians of the status quo, as we now know, were all wrong. The Old Guard misread the times, the voters, and the direction the city was moving in. They misread it again when Michelle Wu was elected mayor in a landslide. They most recently misread it when Allison Cartwright was elected clerk of the state’s Supreme Judicial Court for Suffolk County (by a substantial margin).
The transition of Boston’s politics toward a more progressive, diverse majority is not new. Indeed, it is no longer a transition – the transition has happened. It is today’s reality. I was writing about it here seven years ago.
I noted then that transitions like this go well beyond the stereotypes of age or ethnicity. As I wrote in 2017:
“The real test of change: choosing [Lydia] Edwards was an easy decision for my 91-year-old Italo-American parents, who are constantly amazed and sometimes threatened by the changes taking place in their neighborhood but who quickly embraced Edwards (with no prompting by me) as the kind of person they wanted to trust with the future of the community they have made home for many decades.”
The Old Guard seems unable to believe that Boston is changed from the place of their youth. Alas, change has come. Boston is younger, more progressive, more diverse, and yes, more inclusive, than the Boston many of us grew up in.
As a lifelong Bostonian, I take this as a good thing. Boston is a great city with a great future because it is embracing the future, not clinging to the past. Those of us who love this city and want to contribute to it in a positive way need to move with the times, because while life is learned (in part) by understanding the past, it is lived not by clinging to the past but by looking forward.
Funny thing about Boston. If you look at the mayoral election map of 1971 (Kevin White vs. Louise Day Hicks) and 1993 (Tom Menino vs. Jim Brett), you will be looking at basically the same map. The loser in each race basically won the same wards and precincts that hug the eastern border of the city (Southie and the eastern precincts of Dorchester). The 2021 map is similar (although South Boston now has a few decidedly progressive precincts) with an interesting difference, showing the loser winning mostly in literally outlying precincts.
This is both a revealing metaphor and a cautionary tale for anyone considering sacrificing their time, fortune, and political reputation on the altar of next year’s mayoral election.
James Aloisi is a former state secretary of transportation and a lifelong resident of Boston. He served as a member of the City’s Human Rights Commission under Mayor Ray Flynn.
The post Flap over zoning appointee really about old Boston vs. new appeared first on CommonWealth Beacon.