Challenger attacks, mayor parries, both score points
Challenger Michael F. Flaherty played the role of the relentless prosecutor, and he played it well, constantly pressing on issues ranging from public safety to secrecy at City Hall to a so-called “naughty list’’ kept by the mayor.
Mayor Thomas M. Menino played the role of the defendant, and, unfortunately for Flaherty, he, too, played it well, offering a series of rousing retorts and displaying an impressive command of his policies and programs.
Last night’s debate was, by every measure, a satisfying and spirited exchange that will probably set a combative tone for the final month of a historic campaign in which Menino is seeking an unprecedented fifth term.
The debate, an informal encounter around a circular table in a television studio that included taped questions from Boston voters, was crucial for Flaherty and his hopes of converting a second-place showing in last month’s four-way preliminary election into a successful bid for City Hall.
He was impressive when criticizing Menino for lax enforcement of a Boston jobs policy that requires contractors to award 50 percent of their jobs to Boston residents, 25 percent to persons of color, and 10 percent to women.
“As mayor of Boston, Michael Flaherty will actually enforce the Boston jobs residency policy,’’ Flaherty said.
Flaherty also repeatedly criticized Menino for his oversight of the city’s public schools, at one point underscoring his own effort to establish a program to prepare high school students for college entrance exams, or SATs. “In Boston for the last 16 years, it’s been just about getting kids to the end of the 12th grade,’’ Flaherty said.
Menino, who appeared surprisingly comfortable considering his renowned reticence to engage his opponents in political debate, slipped from one topic to the next with ease.
He accused Flaherty of offering Councilor at Large Sam Yoon a job just to win votes. He pointed to numerous police programs that he said have contributed to a decline in violent crime.
And he disputed firefighter union claims that the city needs a dedicated unit within the Fire Department to respond to calls about spills of hazardous materials, insisting that the city is adequately prepared with five other specially trained units in other departments that also have other responsibilities. Under the union’s plan, Menino said, “We’d have to take people out of the fire stations and have them sit there until there’s a hazmat call.’’
At another point, Menino and Flaherty sparred over questions surrounding Menino’s chief political operative and policy adviser, Michael Kineavy, who routinely deleted his e-mails in apparent violation of the state’s public records law. At the request of the Globe, the city recently released more than 5,000 of Kineavy’s retrieved e-mails, one of which described the mayor blowing up at a political supporter who dared to criticize him.
Flaherty said that e-mail and others show that Menino employs an autocratic style and has developed a “naughty list’’ of political enemies.
But Menino denied that. “There’s no naughty list,’’ he said at the conclusion of the debate.
Although Flaherty placed second in a Sept. 22 preliminary contest that featured four contenders, earning the right to face Menino in the final, he received only 24 percent of the vote compared with 50.5 percent for Menino.
In addition, Flaherty’s field organization pales in comparison to the well-oiled Menino machine, an efficient apparatus with outposts in every corner of the city that employs high technology weapons such as computer-generated supporter lists with old-style campaign tools such as sound trucks and street-by-street door-knocking.
Flaherty is also at a massive fund-raising disadvantage. At the preliminary election, his campaign war chest held only $200,000, compared with $900,000 bristling in Menino’s coffers.
In two debates held before the preliminary election, Menino faced Flaherty, Yoon, and businessman Kevin McCrea.
In those encounters, Yoon and McCrea thrust the most pointed barbs, while Flaherty adopted a polited approach, raising questions about whether his measured tone was designed to lay the ground work for another run four years from now, when Menino might be looking at retirement, or was merely a prelude to a more pointed and vigorous general election campaign. Last night, Flaherty appeared to take the latter approach.
Menino and Flaherty will face off one more time in a 7 p.m. debate Oct. 19 at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum. That encounter will be sponsored by The Boston Globe, New England Cable News, WGBH-TV (Channel 2), and WBUR (90.0 FM).
Michael Rezendes can be reached at rezendes@globe.com. 
