THE MEN who are thinking about challenging Mayor Thomas M. Menino should take a lesson from the women who actually did it.
Peggy Davis Mullen and Maura Hennigan didn't skulk around the city, testing the waters and the media receptivity. From the start, they understood both would be chilly. The two Boston city councilors forged ahead anyway, bolstered by the courage of their ambition.
If you only count votes, each failed as a mayoral candidate. But count guts, and they were winners.
Both women - now former city councilors - raised issues that were legitimate then and now. In 2005, Hennigan focused on affordable housing, education, and healthcare; in 2001, Davis Mullen championed school reform and questioned the city's development priorities.
Neither woman feared Menino. Meanwhile, according to the Globe's Stephanie Ebbert, Councilor at Large Michael Flaherty, Councilor John M. Tobin Jr., and former Suffolk district attorney Ralph C. Martin III are tiptoeing around town, trying not to step on Menino's toes as they seek support. They want buzz, but not enough to get stung by Menino's legendary wrath.
If they're afraid of Menino, how, as mayor, would they handle Edward Kelly, the head of the Boston firefighters union?
Menino hasn't said whether he's running for a fifth term. But he ended the year with nearly $1 million in his campaign war chest and no obvious alternative career path, especially in light of Hillary Clinton's imploding presidential bid.
The mayor insists that he's not "stale." His administration is scandal-free and no one doubts Menino's work ethic. But, after a while an incumbent's best intentions begin to feel stifling rather than inspiring. Neighborhood residents respect Menino, but still, the mayor couldn't deliver his city for Clinton during this month's primary. The New York senator won Massachusetts, but lost Boston to Barack Obama by about 10,000 votes.
The long-reigning mayor is also on the prowl for more power, as demonstrated by his recent push to assert greater control over the Boston Public Library. After pushing out Bernard A. Margolis, the BPL president, Menino now wants to subject BPL trust accounts worth tens of millions of dollars to oversight by City Hall. Library trustees are challenging Menino's power play, promising evidence of pushback in a city that usually rolls over for the mayor.
"The trustees will never voluntarily relinquish the control of those trust funds or the right to ascertain donor intent, which is sovereign," Jeffrey B. Rudman, chairman of the library's board of trustees, declared bravely. "What we owe City Hall and what we owe the public is transparency. We don't owe anybody obedience."
Another sign of spine comes from City Council President Maureen E. Feeney. Even though Menino initially opposed the plan, she is going ahead with plans for a city forum, at which community leaders will come together to promote greater civic engagement. James E. Rooney, executive director of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, is offering free use of the convention center and will be cochairman of the advisory committee that is putting together the event.
The fact that Feeney could find prominent people willing to serve on the advisory committee is another sign that taking on Menino isn't as intimidating as it used to be.
Feeney, who was elected to a second term as council president in January, said she isn't trying to enhance her own political profile. "My goal is to make Boston a better city. It's not about me," she said.
But leave it to a woman to multitask. There's no reason why the goal couldn't be about Boston and Feeney.
So far, women have been the only ones brave enough to challenge Menino outright; men just talk about it. They want an open seat and a clear shot. They believe in the conventional wisdom, that a sitting Boston mayor is nearly impossible to unseat. Haven't they noticed that change is the mantra, from the Massachusetts gubernatorial primary of 2006 to the Democratic presidential primary of 2008?
When it comes to challenging the status quo, it takes the audacity of an Obama or a Deval Patrick - or, in Boston, of a Hennigan or Davis Mullen.
These two women weren't perfect candidates, but they did understand the definition of leadership.
Leaders don't wait for a parade to form behind them. They start marching. When the moment and message are right, the voters fall in line.
Joan Vennochi's e-mail address is vennochi@globe.com.
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