'I arrived here, and the whole city was judging people by their color'

It was 25 years ago, but Felix Arroyo remembers the night well.

He was running for School Committee, trying to win votes at an event in Hyde Park. One man seemed distressed after Arroyo shook his hand. Arroyo says the man, who was white, recoiled from Arroyo, who is Latino, and wiped his hand on his jacket, ''right in front of me."

''What I did was impulsive" Arroyo recalls. ''I put my arm around his whole jacket. I said, 'It's really good to meet you.' My thought was, 'Go ahead, clean the whole jacket now, man.' "

Arroyo did not win a seat on the committee in that election, nor did he win when he tried again or when he came in fifth for four at-large council seats in 2001.

Then in November 2003 Arroyo's political fortunes changed dramatically. After ascending to the council because of a midterm vacancy, he placed second among the at-large candidates, surprising a city whose political infrastructure has been famously closed to outsiders.

In September's preliminary, he placed second again with such broad support that some giddy fans suggested he should run for mayor.

Those who know Arroyo say little about the man has changed. But the city in which the Puerto Rican-born teacher spent the last 29 years is being transformed. The city's burgeoning Latino population and the shift in Boston's political center of gravity toward minority and progressive voters have put Arroyo, 57, atop the crest of a wave. Being Latino is no longer the liability it was that night in Hyde Park. Now, his ethnicity is among the councilor's biggest electoral strengths.

That turn of events might have been difficult for even Arroyo to imagine not long ago.

Raised in a housing project in Puerto Rico by a police detective and a seamstress, he came to Massachusetts to do postgraduate work in education at Harvard University in 1976. The city's busing crisis quickly ruined his gilded image of the city.

''I arrived here, and the whole city was judging people by their color," Arroyo recalled over pork chops at Jamaica Plain's Tacos El Charro restaurant last week, shortly before he got up to sing ''Mexico Lindo" with the Mariachi band.

Arroyo did not gradually work his way into Boston voters' hearts. Even as late as 2001, the former president of the appointed School Committee, who has worked in municipal affairs for a generation, placed a distant fifth in the at-large council race. His general election victory in 2003 came suddenly.

In his first days on the council, Arroyo aligned himself with Chuck Turner and Charles Yancey, the only two other minority councilors, and with Maura Hennigan, who is a mayoral candidate this year. The group has been most frequently critical of the mayor, most criticized for failing to focus on issues that directly affect their constituents, and marginalized inside City Hall.

Arroyo is better known for his big stands than a nuts-and-bolts approach to city government and constituent services. He launched a much-pilloried two-day-a-month hunger strike to protest the war in Iraq, for example, and he and Turner gave an award to the country music group Dixie Chicks for speaking out against the Iraq war (the rest of the council refused to sign off on it). Council President Michael Flaherty invoked an obscure regulation that allows him to end discussion of any matter not germane to city business.

But when Turner said Flaherty's use of the rule amounted to ''institutional racism," Arroyo, who has learned much about politics in his 25 years in Boston, distanced himself from the remark. Flaherty endorsed Arroyo in his first run for reelection near the end of the 2003 campaign, but his support is not seen as crucial to Arroyo's second-place finish, which owed most to white progressives and Latino voters.

Arroyo has pushed for a switch from gasoline to biodiesel fuel for city vehicles; for the separation of the Boston Redevelopment Authority's planning and development branches, arguing that the two functions conflict; and for a stop to Boston University's planned high-security bioterrorism laboratory in the South End.

Arroyo --who raised five children, now ages 15 to 30, with his wife in Hyde Park -- is now separated and living with a son in Jamaica Plain.

While his priorities may raise eyebrows in City Hall, his stance on national and foreign issues are what attract many progressive white voters to his candidacy. Everyone interviewed at a fund-raiser in a Fort Point Channel loft last week cited Arroyo's stance on the war as one of their main reasons for supporting him.

''The city should be involved in" the issue of the Iraq war, said Hayat Imam, one of the organizers. ''It's our brothers and sisters going to war, right from our neighborhoods."

His ethnicity adds to his appeal among those voters. ''It's important that he's a progressive Latino who is outspoken about all of the issues, and he stands for racial justice, above everything else," said Dorchester People for Peace member Becky Pierce, who is white.

Arroyo owes part of his popularity to white liberal guilt, said Giovanna Negretti, executive director of ¿Oiste?, the Latino political organization.

''White yuppies are gentrifying our neighborhoods, " Negretti said, ''so there is a guilt trip factor here: 'We're the ones moving into these neighborhoods, we should at least support a Latino candidate.' It's not the issue, but it is a contributing factor."

Latino and other minority voters see great appeal in Arroyo, too.

''He's really for the community," said host Trinh Nguyen, a Vietnamese activist. ''He is also a candidate of color, and that's huge for us. Even though he is not Vietnamese, he reflects our values."

In the 2003 election, Latino voters used bullet votes to catapult Arroyo into second place: even though they could have picked up to four at-large councilors, they chose only Arroyo, widening the gap between him and his competitors. This year, Arroyo has said he does not want bullet votes, but Latino political activists said Latinos will give them to him anyway.

That breadth of support, which has made up for Arroyo's paltry campaign funds, was on show at 8 a.m. on a recent frosty morning. Arroyo stood by the turnstiles at the Forest Hills T Station, campaigning. Voters of many ethnicities and ages stopped to shake his hand or give him hugs. As the harried commuters rushed by, Arroyo was not really selling himself. He was promoting democracy.

''Exercise your right to select your own government! Don't give it up! November 8! It's free!" Arroyo shouted, his heavily-accented voice clearing the screech of trains.

For Arroyo, even the T- stop visibility, this most basic ritual of retail politics, is about the big idea.