Mayor pressured from all sides

As he nears what should be the crowning achievement of his tenure, Mayor Thomas M. Menino is finding himself increasingly isolated: His allies in the labor movement are not at his side, national Democrats are growing frustrated with him, and even some delegates are threatening to stay away from the Democratic National Convention.

The mayor, lauded and criticized as a micromanager, is suddenly at the center of a situation he cannot easily manage. He has played tough with the Boston police union for many months, refusing to give in to its salary demands, saying the city cannot afford them. For the second day in a row, members of the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association have pressured workers at the entrances to the FleetCenter.

"This is something I wanted to bring to Boston," Menino said of the convention. "But I have an obligation. Do I sell the city out for [it]? Whatever I do, I'm going to make sure the taxpayers can afford it."

As Menino struggles to find a solution, national Democratic leaders are becoming increasingly concerned that he has not made more progress. For weeks, they deferred to Menino, who assured them he would head off any disruptions. Now, they're exerting pressure behind the scenes but are still relying on him to resolve the impasse.

"The senator's frustration is rising, that's fair to say, but he feels that this is a city issue and he can only do so much," said one Democratic Party official who is close to US Senator Edward M. Kennedy. "He's making a lot of calls, but it's just outreach right now. We'll take the cues from the mayor for now. There's a point when cues stop, but I don't know when that is."

In recent days Kennedy has contacted AFL-CIO leader John Sweeney, other labor leaders in Washington, and top Massachusetts Democrats and congressmen to open as many channels as possible to urge the Boston unions to put an end to the pickets at the FleetCenter.

Menino said yesterday that national politicians might be able to help by prevailing upon the patrolmen's union to be more reasonable, but acknowledged that in the end, it is up to him.

"The only way anyone can help is if they give us a barrel full of money," Menino said yesterday.

In any case, Menino advisers said, the BPPA may not be susceptible to lobbying from national Democrats: the union -- among the most active and unpredictable in the city -- endorsed Republican George H.W. Bush instead of then-Massachusetts governor Michael S. Dukakis in 1988.

With Democratic Party officials slated to escort hundreds of reporters and cameramen through the FleetCenter on Tuesday to showcase the convention site, the clock is ticking. Some Democratic operatives have thrown out ideas -- asking former House minority leader and two-time presidential candidate Richard A. Gephardt, a close friend of the unions, to act as a third-party emissary; seeking federal assistance to ease the city's spending-and-revenue crunch -- but none seemed entirely practical.

Menino has had trouble with union negotiations before. He has been dogged by pickets at Christmas tree lightings and State of the City addresses. But this time, a national spotlight shines on him and on the city he was hoping to reintroduce to the nation as a cradle of innovation and sophistication. This time, the unions are forcing Menino to choose between his concern for the fiscal health of the city and his determination to make good on the promise he made when Boston was chosen -- that his would be a smooth and trouble-free convention.

In his previous battles with unions, Menino has stood his ground, just as he has this time with the BPPA -- at least at first. He resisted the demands of firefighters in 2001, for example, even as they supported his election opponent, Peggy Davis-Mullen. They dogged him at public appearances with embarrassing protests. He gave in, just before the election, handing firefighters a contract that included hefty raises and generous extensions of sick leave, a contract fiscal watchdogs decried as overly generous.

That concession, and others like it, may be driving the police union to test his resolve, said Samuel R. Tyler, president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau.

"Part of the reason we're seeing what we're seeing is that, in the last round of contracts, the unions learned if they gave the mayor a hard time, if they follow him around and picket, in the end, he would back down and agree to a more generous contract," Tyler said. "That is what happened with the last police contract, the firefighters' contract, the teachers' contract."

But, Tyler added, the city was in a much stronger fiscal position in the last round of union negotiations, and the mayor can ill afford similar concessions now.

Menino has tried to solve the impasse with the BPPA by cutting deals with other unions, hoping to leave the BPPA isolated and more willing to compromise. He came close to agreements with several major unions, including the police detectives, only to see them fall away at the last minute.

Now, as the battle intensifies and the city heads to court, people close to him say Menino is irritated, but also seems confident. He did not appear at any public events yesterday, which a press aide said was unrelated to the furor at the FleetCenter. Late in the day, his office called a press conference to discuss the city's legal challenge to the picket, but instead of appearing before reporters, Menino sent corporation counsel Merita Hopkins out to face them alone.

Menino proposed taking the negotiations to arbitration, a move that could resolve the stalemate quickly, and, potentially, make the battle less personal. The union has rejected the arbitration offer. And yesterday, at least, neither side seemed ready to retreat from combative rhetoric.

The mayor bristled yesterday when he was asked, during a telephone interview, if he was embarrassed by the police picket that is garnering national attention.

"It's not embarrassing to me," he said. "It should be embarrassing to the union leadership ordering them to picket. They're the people preventing people from getting a day's wage, not me."

Globe staff members Glen Johnson and Rick Klein and Globe correspondent Elise Castelli contributed to this story.