Focus put on people, problem solving

Christy Mihos, running for governor as an independent, was interviewed Monday by the Globe's Carolyn Ryan and New England Cable News's Jim Braude as part of a series of conversations with candidates for the corner office. The interviews are focusing on the candidates' backgrounds, as part of extensive coverage of their records and plans for the state. Future interviews with the candidates will focus on the issues.

Q. Christy, you've described yourself as the ''Kid from Brockton," as the ''luckiest man on the earth." What was it like growing up in your family, and how did that shape you?

A. Growing up in Brockton was great. I loved every minute of it. We were a very close family, certainly. My father was a very driven man, a Greek immigrant from Sparta. He loved this country as my grandfather did. They loved being here. They had one store, and they were very proud of the fact that it was 'Christy's' and had the family name. I was working in that store when I was 4 and 5 years old. At the time, eggs would come in a gross, basically, so you'd have to take them out of the box and box up a half-dozen or a dozen. So, I used to do that as a kid. I used to sort bottles. . . . I couldn't read, but I could tell the difference between the colors, so I would do that, and I would take out the trash, and at the end of the day I would get a huge reward of a bottle of Orange Crush as my pay. So, I just loved being in that environment where you could talk to people, feel it, smell what was going on behind the deli, smell the chickens roasting on the barbecue and everything, and it was just a great place to be.

Q. What were your economic circumstances like?

A. I was born and brought up on the second floor of a tenement, basically. . . . My father was very, very driven, and we would always work. You'd go to school, but then you'd work at the end of the day. He'd just keep us very, very busy. It was school, then Greek school, then music lessons, then you'd get to play a little bit. But it was always work, you know. Friday night, Saturday all day. Sunday you would go to church, and after church we would all go out to the supermarket that we opened in Holbrook and eat lunch at the snack bar. It was closed at the time. But then we would work through the day. At 3 or 4 o'clock we'd come home and do our homework and get up and go to school the next day.

Q. Talk about Christy as a teenager. What were you like in high school?

A. . . . I was sort of just driven. My dad was a very driven type of person. At Brockton High School he told me to run for class president, and I did and I won. But I just loved everything about being in Brockton.

Q. So then you're off to Stonehill College. . . . Did you think about going farther away to college? Was that an economic decision? Was that a personal decision?

A. It was a little bit of both. Staying at Stonehill, I could still work at the family business, certainly. I was playing in a bunch of bands at the time.

Q. What do you play?

A. I play saxophone, clarinet, bass guitar, a little bouzouki.

Q. A little what?

A. You know, bouzouki, the Greek stringed instrument. . . . I made a lot of money. I would make anywhere from 50 bucks a night to 150 bucks a night, and back in '68, '69, '70, that was a lot of money back then. So, I saved my money. I bought a real beautiful Corvette Stingray, canary yellow, 1969. . . . At Stonehill, I got really involved; I was elected president of the student government there.

Q. Do you have any idea why you ran then?

A. Campuses back then were just wonderful places to be. And I was just very much involved, and I loved everything about the government at Stonehill. It was a Catholic school, so I was a little bit of a rebel back then, too. . . . What I lobbied for is that, we had some problems back then certainly, it was right around Roe v. Wade, that let's get some gynecologists to come in here because we were having some problems back then.

Q. You mean problems that young women were getting pregnant?

A. It wasn't good.

Q. So how did the administration respond?

A. Not well. Not well.

Q. You were [also] going after tenure of the faculty?

A. Yeah, yeah, and again, when I was young and irresponsible. . . . I did things like boys and girls, men and women could live in the same dorm. Not in the same room certainly. But that passed under my watch, too. So I wasn't the quietest kid on the block, but I played club football, I played soccer a couple years.

Q. Tell us about meeting your wife.

A. I met her on my 21st birthday. I went to a wedding, a cousin's wedding on the North Shore. Unbeknownst to me, my dad and Antie's dad had known each other from Father Charles Mihos, who's the priest up in Lynn. My wife is from Lynn. And so I walked into this wedding, a cousin's wedding, and she just like walked with her mother right in front of me and I'll never forget it. She had this yellowish, pale dress on and she just looked at me, and I was just, like, stunned, you know what I mean?

Q. Did she feel equally stunned by you?

A. Well, she's pretty cool. She's a cool customer. I'm not, certainly. I got to talking to her, and we spent two or three hours talking, and I told her I was going to marry her and we were going to have kids, and she said, 'You're crazy. Please. . . .' I think I was 21 at the time. . . . About a year or so later I met one of her cousins at a dance, and I took out my Social Security card, wrote my number on the back of it, and I said give this to Andrea, tell her I'll call her, but here's my number, too. So . . . she didn't like that too much. I never got back that Social Security card to this day, and I do need it for something. But you know, three, four years later we started going out."

Q. [Married] 31 years. Two kids. How old?

A. Ashley is 24 and Christy's 20. Ashley just got out of Colby, she's working in Boston, living in Boston. Christy's going to school now. He's trying to get into the military academy, certainly. But we're a very close family. They still come home on weekends. They love to take vacations with us. So, ah, I pinch myself each and every day.

Q. Let's just go back to music for a second. Do you play it now? . . . Do you perform with friends?

A. No, I got that all out of me I think when I was very, very young. I cut a record when I was very young with some guys.

Q. What kind of record?

A. A Greek record.

Q. How did it do?

A. Pretty good. You know, I think my father bought all the copies, so it did pretty good.

Q. So we heard that you had 500 people at your wedding?

A. Oh, I think it was 550, and if you didn't invite them -- we haven't seen them since, a lot of them -- but if you didn't invite them, they'd kill you. It was a wild wedding. It was wonderful.

Q. You talked about how close-knit your family was as a kid. Fast-forward to current events. Your brother, your sister, your brother's wife, your brother's daughter, your mother, have all contributed [money] to Tom Reilly. Of all those people, only your mother has contributed to you. What's that about?

A. Well, that was certainly back in October, before I announced or anything. But, hey, look, families stay together, move apart, and it is what it is. . . . I regret that we're not as close as we once were, but you know, I moved to the Cape, everyone sort of goes their separate way.

Q. There was an article where you were quoted in the Boston Herald saying that, essentially, ''nothing was ever given to me, everything I've done by myself," and your sister writes a letter to the editor saying that's just complete garbage, essentially, ''his father, our father, gave us many things." How does it feel when you open the newspaper and your sister has written the piece?

A. What are you going to do? There's a First Amendment. They can say and do whatever they want. . . . You know, my father is not with us anymore, my uncle isn't, my grandfather isn't. I'm running for governor, and that's what the press wants to cover. They don't want to know about people who aren't here with us any longer. Look, I had a wonderful childhood, a wonderful life, but everybody moves on. So, you can pick your route, you can pick your friends, but you're sort of stuck with your relatives at some point.

Q. It's a little bit forgotten, but you ran for state Senate down on the South Shore. And it was a closely fought race, and you lost . . . Can you talk about that experience?

A. Well, I'm glad I did it certainly, and the best thing that ever happened to me was losing, because certainly back in 1990, 1991 the economy really just went into the tank, and I was able to focus back on Christy's, and I was able to get through some real tough times when a lot of my peers in the business went bankrupt and all. . . . I think I answered questions [in the campaign], not in a political manner, but it was yes, no, I'm for this, I'm not for that, and I was a young rookie at the time certainly.

Q. So now you would be answering questions in a far different way?

A. Look, I've had a lot of experience. When I got into the Turnpike Authority I was about 6 foot 2. Now I'm 5 feet 8 . . . I got my brains beaten in by your paper and a couple others in the city. . . . But I've learned a lot. I've learned what this is all about.

Q. You and your brothers expanded Christy's to more than a hundred and some markets. You kept 10, they're on the Cape, and now you're expanding that again. Compare your business experience to your experience in politics. What's been most satisfying to you?

A. Dealing with people and trying to solve problems. Making people happy, whether it's my customers, making them happy, or toll payers and taxpayers, just trying to deal with the issues straight on, you know, moving the politics aside and trying to get some results, getting things done, speaking truth to power, basically on the political side. And, on the business side, it's trying to grow the business by growing a never-ending number of happy customers. I mean, you cannot have a business unless you have happy customers. It kills me when I get a customer complaint or we're not doing something each and every day, if we're not hitting on all cylinders, all pistons each and every day and making people happy coming into Christy's. I mean, my name is on that banner each and every day, and I take it very personal when we don't do what we should be doing at the stores.

Q. What do you do for fun?

A. Well, I don't play sports. I used to play tennis a lot, but I hurt my shoulder, so I don't play that any longer. Antie [his wife] and I take a lot of walks on the beach, certainly . . . Her name in Greek is Antigone so I call her Antie. It's Andrea in English, sorry. But yeah, we take a lot of walks on the beach. I collect beach glass, certainly. We just like to be on the beach. I love boating. I've learned how to sail in the past few years so. You know, on a boat nothing gets to you.

Q. Who is your political model for this [independent campaign]?

A. Yeah, Lowell Weicker, in Connecticut. . . . during the Watergate era, he was my hero. Here is a 6-foot-7 United States senator from Connecticut, first guy who called Richard Nixon and all his underlings liars. . . . A long-term Republican. And they beat him up for it, basically, so he left the party, ran as an independent for governor, won overwhelmingly, right, and always just called it the way he called it and didn't care who was going to come after him at all.

Q. You are seen as someone who [was] very much behind Governor Romney's election or sort of reentry into Massachusetts politics. You commissioned a poll and triggered a lot of momentum for Romney, and then it seems like that wasn't repaid to you in terms of loyalty from Romney. Can you talk a little bit about what excited you about Romney and sort of how you feel about Governor Romney now?

A. Well, certainly at the time, we all watched him open up the Olympics without a hitch and all. I knew him from his senatorial run, certainly. But if you're looking for credit or loyalty in this business, get a dog, basically. . . . When he [Romney] was focused that first year and a half, I thought he was hell on wheels. I thought he was really going to make a difference here; he was going to build the Republican Party so we'd have a viable two-party system, but it didn't happen. I say this all the time: There must be a seat-ejection switch in that governor's chair, because as soon as they sit in it, pow, they want to get out, and I've never understood it.