Hopefuls court E. Boston Latinos
In the Italian pizzerias and shoebox bakeries of East Boston, everyone knows the joke: On Election Day, vote for the candidate whose last name ends in a vowel.
In this tight-knit Italian-American enclave, some still vote for loyalty. Some vote for blood. Others vote because somebody's cousin gave them a name and told them to check the right box. Whatever the reason, candidates named Travaglini, Petruccelli, and LoPresti have owned the polls here for nearly a century.
Voters will have several vowels to choose from in next month's Democratic primary for state representative, but one belongs to the first Hispanic candidate in the Boston neighborhood most transformed by immigration. Gloribell Mota, the daughter of Latin American immigrants, is battling the Italian-American political machinery for a seat that Italians have held for 74 years.
Since 1990, the Latino population has soared to nearly 40 percent in East Boston. Spinelli's bakery in Day Square is now surrounded by the likes of Taqueria Jalisco, La Frontera restaurant, and El Sol Food Market. And in a story playing out in cities and towns across Massachusetts as immigrants transform schools, shops, and neighborhoods, Latinos in East Boston are now setting their sights on political power.
"The political dynamics in East Boston will never be the same," said Edwin Argueta, coordinator of Nuestra Voz Cuenta, or Our Voice Counts, a nonpartisan program working to increase Latino voter turnout. "The more that we learn about the structure, the system, the rules, I think that we're going to use it to make sure that our community grows."
East Boston has been an immigrant gateway for centuries, a home to Irish and Russians and Italians. It is also a blue-collar neighborhood that often feels neglected on the other side of the tunnel. Candidates for political office routinely take to the stump here, talking up popular issues like the sparkling new development along the harbor or fighting expansion by Logan airport.
Mota, a 31-year-old mother of two, is running on a platform of promoting affordable housing and expanding access to healthcare. Though their numbers are increasing, Latino voters in the neighborhood are still in the minority, and Mota acknowledges she needs the support of non-Hispanic voters. An aide to Felix Arroyo, Boston's first Latino city councilor, she emphasizes her community service, the fact that she lives with her mother, and that she graduated from East Boston High.
"I'm Latina. I'm fluent in Spanish. I'm proud of it -- orgullosa -- but I am much more than that too," Mota said in an interview in her sparsely furnished campaign headquarters. "I'm not here to represent one section or another."
But her Italian-American rivals, Jeff Drago, 28, and Carlo Basile, 36, are fighting back by recruiting Spanish translators and Latino political operatives. Basile, a business consultant and the son of Italian immigrants, bought ads in a Spanish-language newspaper. Drago, an aide to Mayor Thomas M. Menino, will host a soccer tournament to connect with Latino voters.
"I need to know what they want and what they need," said Drago, who has the mayor's backing. "I'd be foolish if I didn't."
A struggling fourth candidate, Mary Berninger, is not as solicitous. Instead of putting up Spanish-language signs on stores, she said, immigrants should learn English and get more involved in neighborhood causes.
"Sometimes I think there are two East Bostons," said Berninger, 51, who is of Irish descent. "They're not invested yet."
East Boston added the most immigrants of any Boston neighborhood from 1990 to 2000, when the foreign-born doubled to 45 percent, the highest in the city. Spanish now floats among the gritty waterfront tenements and bustling Maverick Square bodegas stocked with foreign newspapers, tortillas, and international phone cards.
But only 1,590 of the 9,173 Latino adults in Each Boston are registered to vote, said Argueta. And less than half of the Latino voters cast a ballot in last year's governor's race.
Many Latino residents said they would like to vote, but are not citizens and therefore are ineligible. Still others are absorbed in the politics of their home countries.
At a Maverick Square minimarket this week, three Colombian men debated South American politics, but they had not heard of Mota, whose campaign headquarters are across the street.
"I can't vote yet; it's not because I don't want to," Luis, 42, a Colombian immigrant here illegally, said in Spanish. "I would like to vote. It supports the democracy."
Even Latinos who plan to vote are divided over Mota's candidacy.
John Sepúlveda, 36, a Colombian immigrant who is backing Drago, said Mota should join an existing campaign and work her way up through the system.
"It's not the time yet," said Sepúlveda, who immigrated at age 11. "There is a Hispanic learning process. They're still learning how the game is played."
Some traditions have surprised Mota. At a housing development for seniors, a woman scolded her for failing to adhere to a long-held tradition that political candidates offer elderly voters coffee and Italian cookies.
Predictably, perhaps, some other candidates were well on top of that. One recent day, Basile delivered gaily wrapped cookies to the senior citizens picnic at Piers Park and served coffee from a steel urn. As sailboats bobbed in the water and a bingo game got underway, he flirted with women and joked with the men.
"You want coffee?" he asked one woman, flashing his hazel eyes. "How do you want it?"
As he left, another woman called out, "Bring some cookies back, too."
Mota is battling a group that bonded a century ago as a disenfranchised collection of immigrants. But, observers say, Italian-Americans are now staunchly entrenched in Boston's white power elite.
A recent walk with Drago as he campaigned in Orient Heights, a historically Italian neighborhood of graceful houses and harbor views, offered a glimpse of East Boston's political machine.
At the first house, a cousin of former Senate president Robert E. Travaglini hollered from inside that he was in the shower, but that Drago assuredly had his vote.
"If I didn't give it to you, my cousin Paul will kill me," the man said.
A few doors down, Drago awakened the district's city councilor, Salvatore LaMattina, who came downstairs barefoot to chat.
Minutes later, a deeply tanned Travaglini, driving by in a super-sized Cadillac Escalade, stopped and grinned behind dark sunglasses. He dodged a question about whom he endorsed, saying only, "He's my friend," with a nod at Drago, and drove away.
Despite the intensive loyalties of Italians in the past, some are lining up behind Mota.
Mary Sentner, 75, who has voted for state Senator Anthony W. Petruccelli and held signs for Menino, said she has felt let down by some people she supported in the past. Mota, she said, seems to care about issues that matter. And she had a good feeling when Mota knocked on her door recently.
"Italians are like that," she said, referring to herself. "You either like somebody or you don't."
At a nearby variety store selling Colombian food and DVDs, a Drago campaign sign was in the window. But the owner, Colombian immigrant Maria Kenney, 52, said that was only because somebody put it there.
She said she will vote for Mota because she is Latina.
"If we don't support our own," she said, "who will support us?"
Globe correspondent Matthew Mahoney contributed to this report. Maria Sacchetti can be reached at msacchetti@globe.com. 
