Beam on Politics: Dishing with Khazei

My friends Art and Nancy came, and my former neighbor Mary Lou Walsh agreed to be my surrogate wife. My son Michael, a high school senior, rounded out the table.

The thing about risotto is – wait a minute! This isn’t a Martha Stewart column! Let’s talk about Khazei and Kirsch, who took a few hours away from their small children and their punishing campaign schedule to hang out with us. Khazei is best known as the co-founder of Boston's City Year program. Kirsch has founded three social service organizations, and is now the president of New Profit, Inc.

In fact, there was a bit of problem with the risotto, so the seven of us spent the first 40 minutes shuttling from the living room to the kitchen, to stir the finicky arborio rice. We chatted a little bit about Bedford, N.H., where Alan grew up, and about child-rearing in Cambridge, Vanessa's home town.

Kirsch mentioned that she had temporarily left her day job to fund-raise for her husband. A friend had told me that Capuano needed to raise $35,000 a day to stay competitive in this four-way race. Kirsch nodded; yes, that sounds about right. She and Alan had just returned from New York, where an event with mayor Michael Bloomberg had generated some serious wampum.

The table talk ranged far and wide. Khazei naturally tried to sell Michael on City Year. I was most interested in Alan’s discussion of his Catholic faith. I remarked how many of my friends and colleagues had been raised and well educated in the Catholic Church, and then abandoned it, often with a passion. That’s not Khazei. He and his wife, who is half-Jewish and half-Protestant, attend St. Mary’s church in Brookline and are raising their two children as Catholics.

“I don’t support the church on every question of doctrine,” he said – it almost goes without saying that, as a liberal Democrat, he is pro-choice – “but I value the teachings of Jesus Christ, especially the message of service. That is how I want to live my life. Jesus influenced Gandhi, and he and Gandhi both influenced Martin Luther King. They were social revolutionaries with a powerful message of nonviolence.”

I trotted out my theory that front-runner Coakley has successfully stalled the campaign into its final week, beginning Nov. 30, when two televised debates will take place, back to back. In my view, the cake is baked, to quote an oft-repeated Michael Flaherty-ism from the Boston mayoral campaign, meaning that Coakley’s rivals won’t be able to gain ground on her so close to Dec. 8.

Not so, said Alan, pointing to the huge numbers of undecided voters. "The media is going to hype those debates to death, and a lot of people will see at least one of them. Tens of thousands of decisions will be made in the final days, and those last-minute votes will go to the outsiders, like me."

Mary Lou's son, Christopher, is a Marine second lieutenant in Baghdad, due for transfer to Afghanistan. Alan delivered a somewhat convincing defense of President Obama's Afghanistan strategy. I say somewhat convincing because I could imagine others being convinced, albeit not me. Former Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev says fighting in Afghanistan is a bad idea, and he should know. He lost an empire there.

Khazei and Kirsch were the first to leave, so naturally we spent the rest of the evening taking about them. The verdict? Favorable, with a chance of votes. "He seemed very genuine to me," Walsh commented. "I admired his conviction that you don't have to be a professional politician to get things done."

Mike? Martha? "Pags"? Need some free pub? I’ve got the risotto thing down now, so consider yourselves (re)-invited. Come and get it!

Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com