DiMasi's stance strains old neighborhood ties
Born and raised on Prince Street in the North End, Angela Guarino knows Salvatore F. DiMasi not as the wily and powerful speaker of the Massachusetts House, but as Sal from Salem Street. They greet each other in the neighborhood, and when election time rolls around, she puts one of his campaign signs in the window of her shop, Contrada's Coffee, on the corner of Hanover and Charter streets.
"I don't usually do political things, but I do it for Sal," she said.
Lately, she has had her differences with the speaker. DiMasi is the chief opponent of casinos in Massachusetts, doing all he can to kill Governor Deval Patrick's plan to license three of them in the state. Guarino is a gambling aficionado who goes twice a month to Foxwoods casino in Connecticut to play a card game called "Let It Ride," stay overnight, and dine in the restaurants.
Now, it seems, her friend and neighbor is the one man standing between her and a little casino action closer to home.
"We should have people ask him: 'Sal, why do you say no?' " Guarino said, as behind the counter of her shop she packed meatballs to go. "I think Massachusetts needs casinos. More jobs. And it's easier for us to go gamble, which most of us like to do."
Elected 15 times to represent the North End, DiMasi is beloved by many as a friend and champion of the Italian-American neighborhood. But his opposition to casinos is straining the long and close relationship. In the shoebox salumerias and Italian tailor and pastry shops of the North End, some residents said they enjoy gambling and wish they could do so closer to Boston. Many also hoped a casino would spur the economy. So, they wondered, why is DiMasi working so hard to stop casinos?
"He'll stick to his guns. Why? I don't know," said John Cammarata, 69, a barber and lifelong North Ender who goes twice a month to play blackjack at Foxwoods and was holding court outside Contrada's. "But if everyone around him wants it - because he's the speaker, it gives him that kind of power to stop such a thing that the people want and all the other politicians want? I don't go for that."
The 40,000 constituents whom DiMasi was elected to represent are, in theory, the people he is most accountable to. But on casinos, the powerful speaker is charting his own course.
DiMasi has not faced a serious challenger since 1984, when he defeated restaurateur Salvatore Tecce and boasted that his vanquished opponent should name a dish in his honor: "landslide lasagna." In the last election, in 2006, he beat Kenneth J. Procaccianti, a little-known Republican, 8,299 to 2,188. The district spans the North End, parts of Beacon Hill near the State House, the Financial District, Bay Village, and the South End.
"I don't know why he wants to stop it," said Frank Guarino, 69, who was hemming pants by the light of a gooseneck lamp inside Fine Italian Tailoring on Salem Street. Guarino said it made good economic sense to draw gamblers from Connecticut to Massachusetts: "Why do they need to spend their money over there," he said, "when they can spend it over here?"
To be sure, some applaud his unbending opposition to casinos.
"When you see Sal DiMasi, tell him Maria Greco says thank you," said Greco, 86, who was walking with her husband, Tony, on Hanover Street. She said she agrees with DiMasi "absolutely, 100 percent."
Casinos "take bread from people's mouths to gamble," she said.
DiMasi has warned of importing a "casino culture" of problem gambling and crime. Just yesterday, speaking to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, he asserted that casinos would "cause human damage on a grand scale." He has argued that casinos will not generate as many jobs and as much revenue as Patrick contends. And DiMasi has said that the state should focus instead on job training programs. Recently, he has been calling representatives into his office and urging them to oppose casinos.
Even some casino opponents were frustrated by DiMasi's closed-door lobbying.
"I think it should have a due process," said Phyllis Vitti, 67, who was collecting her mail in the lobby of her building on Salem Street. "I don't think he's going about it the right way." She said she opposes casinos because they prey on "people who cannot afford it."
Many said they were personally flummoxed. A 1934 émigré from the Abruzzi region of Italy, Libby Federico, said he has relied on DiMasi for legal advice for years, including several free consultations. He said he likes to go to Foxwoods and Suffolk Downs and has talked with DiMasi about casinos.
"He doesn't want it," said Federico, a 90-year-old retiree. "He said, you know why? He said, because a lot of old people like me, they go [to Suffolk Downs] and gamble. They gamble all their money. . . . But I like it. I enjoy myself."
Michael Levenson can be reached at mlevenson@globe.com. 