Mis-remembering the '05 mayor's race

Yesterday, in a nice recap of the debate between John Kerry and Ed O'Reilly, the Globe's Matt Viser wrote:

In his reelection campaign in 2004 [sic]*, Mayor Thomas M. Menino assiduously avoided debating his opponent, Maura A. Hennigan, although he agreed to face her in an hourlong lunch hosted by the Globe at the Locke-Ober restaurant.

That's not quite right. True, Menino did agree to have lunch with Hennigan at Locke-Ober and let Brian McGrory (then a metro columnist, now the metro editor) write it up. But the public didn't get to watch. We did, however, get to see Hennigan and Menino square off in a televised debate that was broadcast on WGBH-TV and hosted by Emily Rooney.

This matters for two reasons. FIrst, Hennigan cleaned Menino's clock that night. (Even the Globe said so.) Second, by intimating that only the Globe could bring Menino and Hennigan together during that campaign, Viser's piece slightly exaggerates his employer's undeniable importance.

 *NOTE:Despite the title of this post, I'd originally missed the incorrect year. Thanks to Tony Schinella for catching it.