Now's the time, Terry
Beacon Hill isn't looking so hot lately.
The House speaker has a bunch of iffy friends cashing in on his clout and underlings jockeying for his job. The tin-eared governor is trying to regroup after signing a $1.35 million book deal in New York when he should have been here for a crucial casino vote.
And even though the two men have a lot in common (giant egos and gargantuan mortgages, for example), Sal DiMasi and Deval Patrick don't get along.
With lame judgment and grandstanding tying up two-thirds of the state's leadership triumvirate, this should be Terry Murray's moment.
Like Patrick, the Senate president has a compelling personal story. She grew up in Dorchester's St Mark's parish. Her father worked three blue-collar jobs to support his five daughters. Murray, a latchkey kid, got her first job, selling wallpaper in a South End hardware store, at 14. She never finished college.
Still, the single mother bested a 12-year Republican incumbent in Plymouth in 1992, went on to chair the Senate's powerful Ways and Means Committee, and last year became the first woman to lead the Massachusetts Senate.
Like DiMasi, Murray, 60, can work the machine. Straightforward to the point of bluntness, Murray keeps her members in line and is not above payback. Even her fans - and there are plenty of them in state politics - say you don't want to cross her.
In her 15 years at the State House, Murray, a policy wonk, has pushed through legislation to bring about welfare reform, consolidated some state child-care services, and restructured the Department of Environmental Affairs. In recent weeks, she and other Senate leaders rolled out bills designed to slash the state's road construction and health insurance costs.
All of this could make Murray an appealing counterpoint to Patrick and DiMasi, who, between them, have been sucking up all of the air in the State House.
But while nature might abhor a vacuum, Murray seems quite friendly with it. Her profile has been distressingly low since she assumed the presidency just over a year ago.
After press conferences or Monday afternoon leadership meetings, Patrick and DiMasi tend to stick around to answer reporters' questions. Most often, Murray scurries to her office.
While Patrick and DiMasi were battling over casinos, Murray was nowhere to be seen. The biggest single issue facing the state this legislative session, and the president of the Senate is in the wings? Instead, after the smoke had cleared, Murray privately urged the governor and the speaker to join her on transportation legislation to show they could work together.
On Thursday, Murray sat down for an interview in her Senate office. Accompanied by no fewer than four staff members, she approached the event with the relish one might bring to a double root canal.
"I'm not comfortable all the time in the spotlight," she said. "If there's an issue, I talk about it, but I don't necessarily need to grab the mike or the camera. . . . I believe being head of the Senate, I should promote my members."
Selflessness is laudable, but it's not the heart of leadership.
And Murray has acknowledged as much. Earlier this year, she gave several fiery speeches to political insiders, accusing party bigs of sexism because they back Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination.
"The women in the party, we do the grunt work; we do all the back room work," she said, explaining the vehemence of her remarks. "I figured by this time in my life we would have gotten further. . . . I am only the 16th woman elected to the Senate, and the first woman president, since 1790."
OK, madam president, you've made it this far.
Now it's time to leave the back room and come up front.
Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at abraham@globe.com.
