Local Notes

I know, I know, I've been a bad blogger. So let me catch up on a few Boston political notes I've been meaning to post about.

--Tom Menino got a terrific, but a bit odd endorsement from the SEIU Massachusetts State Council. Terrific, not just because it represents a lot of Bostonians, but because it's a very active political orgacombined nization. That means sign-holders, phone-bankers, poll workers, etc. Odd, because it appears that the endorsement was given without any candidate interviews or questionnaires.

--In case you haven't noticed it, on cabs and buses and elsewhere, Michael Flaherty has launched a "Good. Better." campaign. The premise: here's a thing that we thought was good in 1993 -- ie, when Menino took office -- and here's a modern version we know is better. I like it. Maybe they got the idea from my mocking of their '70s party, which I said really should have been a 1993 party.

--Ayanna Pressley got a big endorsement for at-large city council yesterday from Sheriff Andrea Cabral. OK, maybe it's not a shocker that Cabral favors the black woman in the race, but it's still a big get, especially this early. An interesting side story to this is that Cabral is one of the ardent Hillary-backers who, a year ago, were furious with Pressley's boss, John Kerry, for supporting Barack Obama. You might have thought they would carry that grudge out against Pressley, but instead many of them are eagerly backing her. Perhaps that's a sign that they've gotten past the hard feelings -- or perhaps, as I wrote at the time, they seem more willing to forgive black women who supported Obama than white women.

--The way things are going, this is going to be a real stealth campaign for those two open at-large seats; the end-of-May campaign-finance reports show that the 13 challengers have banked a total of about $90,000. Maybe they can all pitch in together to send a couple of mailers. By comparison, the five major challengers in 2005 (John Connolly, Ed Flynn, Matt O'Malley, Patricia White, and Sam Yoon) had over $200,000 on hand at the same point (and had already spent more as well).