Flynn moves from the left to left out

Ray Flynn has always been something of an enigma, and never more so than in recent years.

A fiery, left-leaning champion of urban issues during his decade in office, the former Boston mayor and US ambassador to the Vatican has emerged as a leading voice of conservative Catholic beliefs, speaking out forcefully against everything from abortion to gay marriage. In the process, the lifelong Democrat also seems to have become allergic to Democratic candidates for high office, casting his lot with Mitt Romney and Paul Cellucci in the last two gubernatorial elections and George W. Bush for president in 2000.

With the nation's Democrats descending on Boston, the man who helped lead battles against Reaganomics as head of the US Conference of Mayors -- and helped catapult John Kerry to a US Senate seat in 1984 -- is today an outsider in his own party.

Chatting on a park bench in the Public Garden on a summer evening last week, Flynn shows the same vigor that seemed to carry him effortlessly through 18-hour days as mayor, days that often included a five-mile run to help unwind. A few passersby offer greetings, but many more show no hint of recognition, testament to how much turnover and change the city has experienced in the 11 years since he left office.

To many, Ray Flynn seems to have changed a lot, too. ''I can understand why some people would say that," he says. But the man who brought voice to neglected neighborhood concerns and helped to heal racial strife during tense times in Boston insists that he hasn't veered at all from his bedrock commitment to ''social and economic justice in the Catholic tradition."

''I didn't leave the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party left me," he says, invoking the refrain of blue-collar Reagan Democrats who have found themselves disillusioned with Democratic stands on social issues.

But those liberal Democratic positions were all firmly in place during his time in office, when Flynn crusaded on behalf of national Democratic candidates, including Bill Clinton in 1992. What seems to explain Flynn's alienation from his party brethren is not so much that the Democratic Party left Flynn, but rather that he left office.

Neil Sullivan served as Flynn's chief policy adviser in City Hall and was part of the ''Sandinista" wing of liberal activists who helped form Flynn's winning coalition in the 1983 mayor's race. As the leader of a ''grand coalition" on behalf of the economic underdogs, says Sullivan, Flynn relegated his strong views on social issues to the back burner. Now unburdened by the dictates of such governing considerations, in some respects Flynn is simply giving voice to views he has long held, but also long held in check.

''On urban issues, Ray Flynn was one of the most progressive mayors this country has ever had," says Sullivan. On the other hand, ''like a great many economic populists before him, Ray Flynn is very conservative on many social issues."

Despite his recent support for Republicans, Flynn hardly sings the GOP's praises, saying he strongly opposed the Bush administration's tax cuts and finds little in the Romney record so far that has addressed concerns of average families.

But despite his long ties to Kerry, Flynn says he doesn't plan at this point to back the state's junior senator or Bush, though he says that could change.

''If I seem like a man without a party, it's because I'm a man without a party," says Flynn.

Many prominent economic populists veered to the right once out of power, says Sullivan, pointing to William Jennings Bryan, Poland's Lech Walesa, and turn-of-the-century agrarian leader Tom Watson. ''He's not an aberration in that regard," Sullivan says of Flynn. ''It's just hard for so many of us to reconcile economic leftism and social conservatism. It's not hard for the people who are that way. It makes perfect sense to them. So that's where Ray Flynn fits in."

But for the man who was once the life of the Democratic Party, finding a way to fit in on the current political landscape is proving to be another matter.

Michael Jonas can be reached at jonas@globe.com.