New faces enliven races
Susan Passoni's supporters spent Saturday afternoon holding signs at the corner of Broadway and L streets, in the center of District Councilor Jimmy Kelly's longtime power base.
They far outlasted the other campaigns fighting for the same corner, and seemed to be getting a good reaction from passersby. But car horns don't vote, and the truth won't be known until sometime tomorrow night.
This promises to go down as one of the least interesting mayoral races in Boston history. That may not be true of the City Council races, which could actually offer something in the way of surprises. Below the radar -- and beyond the interest, perhaps, of many registered voters -- an unusually strong slate of candidates has waged spirited races across the city.
Sam Yoon and John Connolly both have legitimate chances of waking up Wednesday morning as citywide councilors. Passoni has forced Kelly, the former council president, into his first real race in years. In Jamaica Plain and West Roxbury, Gibran Rivera has made an unheralded effort to reach out to voters beyond his base in Egleston Square, both geographically and ethnically.
Yoon has tried to cobble together a coalition of voters of color and progressives. I asked him the other day what has he learned over months of meeting with Boston voters. He was surprised, he said, at the hunger voters had for talking about issues. He had been warned that because the council has relatively little power, some voters thought candidates weren't worth raising concerns with. ''The biggest surprise was how long I ended up spending at a lot of house parties," he said. ''They were almost there as much to listen to each other as to me."
It has been written so often that Yoon would be Boston's first Asian-American city councilor that the phrase has almost become part of his last name. But he has never been tempted to shy from the precedent that his election would represent.
''It would be an affirmation that people want to see a city council that reflects the changing city," he said.
''The New Boston" has long since become an empty cliche. Like any great city, Boston is always changing, always new. But there is a chance that this election will bring some change to City Hall, if not to the mayor's office itself.
That at least is the hope of Passoni, a South End resident running for a seat that has been considered a South Boston birthright since its inception. Conventional wisdom has held that there are too many more voters in South Boston for a candidate from the South End or Chinatown to have a chance.
But what if South Boston is less of a monolith than it used to be? What if people in the South End were to turn out in large numbers?
''I feel good about South Boston," Passoni said Saturday. ''Even second-, third-, and fourth-generation people have said maybe it's time for a new vision. So I think we've got a chance to do reasonably well here."
Kelly won't be easily unseated. He has never been seriously challenged, and enjoys a huge base of support in the district. But there's no question that he symbolizes a perspective that is changing. This, after all, is a man whose political career was originally built on his opposition to busing. That is devalued currency in 2005, and Kelly knows it.
It is sometimes said that this is no longer the political city of ''Last Hurrah" lore, and on the basis of this campaign it would be hard to argue the point. Fortunately, it is still a city where some people think politics can make a difference, and are willing to invest their energy into it.
''Win or lose, I do feel that this is my calling," Yoon said. ''I mean that in a faith-based way. Literally, this is a calling from my Maker."
Likewise, Passoni said she could easily envision another campaign.
''It's been a great process and I'd do it all over again," she said. ''I will do it again if it doesn't happen this time."
Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com. 