Menino beats odds once again

Ten days ago, it looked as if Mayor Thomas M. Menino was out of options.

The state board that he needed to settle his bitter dispute with Boston's police union decided against ordering a contract in time for the Democratic convention. Angry union demonstrations during his delegate welcoming parties seemed certain to scar what was to be a shining moment for Boston, and for the Democratic nominee.

But then, with a new chairman appointed by Governor Mitt Romney, the board reversed itself. A chain of events was set in motion that would allow Menino to swiftly settle four more contracts. By yesterday morning, at a news conference after signing a contract with firefighters, Menino declared something few had thought he could in time.

''We have labor peace in Boston at this hour," Menino said.

To outward appearances, no small amount of luck figured in the deals. But there was more than that at work. Never known as a political chess player who out-thinks his opponents with subtle strategies, the mayor from Hyde Park has made a career of a form of back-room poker: part luck, part bluff, and an uncanny grasp of the other players in the game.

''This clearly doesn't happen by accident," said David A. Passafaro, a former Menino chief of staff who is president of the convention host committee. ''Elements of this thing developed, and he sat down and created a strategy with it. He put things in motion that he thought would be successful."

A mayor who has fed off of being underestimated displayed a trademark political savvy. And he wasn't afraid to bet his legacy in the extended game of chicken with the city's police and fire unions, even in the face of intervention by some of the nation's most powerful Democrats and labor leaders. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, AFL-CIO president John J. Sweeney, and the Democratic National Committee chairman, Terry McAuliffe, all had aides working the phones these last few weeks, desperately searching for a way to end Boston's persistent labor woes.

The man at the center of it all seemed oblivious to the worries. Menino practiced his golf swing moments before a Friday news conference, signed autographs for youngsters on Thursday morning outside Boston Latin School, and unfurled one-liners about the standoff with the city's police and fire unions.

''Anybody who's got a contract they want to negotiate, come and see me -- I'm an expert," he told a gathering Saturday.

Yet his coup in quelling labor unrest does not change the fact that the run-up to the convention has been exceedingly messy. He has irritated national Democrats with his heavyhanded style and quickness to perceive snubs. He engaged in a very public spat with the party's nominee-to-be, Senator John F. Kerry, and angered the party apparatus by bringing trouble up to the brink of the convention.

With some 40 miles of road closures and so many disruptions to the lives of Boston residents caused by the convention he helped land, Menino has chafed people in his own backyard. Now, having thrust himself into the arena of national politics that he's always said he disdains, Menino has more at stake than ever in the convention's success.

''The convention was an effort by him not simply to showcase the city, but to showcase himself on a national stage," said Jeffrey Berry, a political science professor at Tufts University. ''He's got so much invested in this. That's one reason he's taken setbacks so personally."

The convention Menino started to pursue six years ago has become the event that figures to define him beyond anything else he'll do as mayor. It's a point Menino doesn't need to be reminded of; the front page of the Globe that trumpeted Boston's landing of the convention was once prominent on his office wall, but now has been taken down.

The pressures on Menino and his city are wrapped into the mayor's demeanor. At one moment nervous, and then brusque and cocky, he talks like a brash neighborhood pol reveling in his moment of prominence on the national scene -- much the same way the city that isn't quite New York is trying to show that it belongs in the same league.

''We're afraid to think big in this city," Menino, 61, said in an interview with the Globe. ''Nobody expected us to bring the Democratic National Convention to Boston. People said to me, 'You're crazy to do it.' I said, 'Why?' and they said, 'Because we never did it before.' "

Menino has been quick to lash out at his detractors, and to assign blame to others for organizing problems. But the extended stand-off with the unions highlights Menino's own stubborn streak.

A mayor who was once known as a close friend of organized labor let all 32 city unions enter the year without a contract, and let pride get in the way at the negotiating table, said Robert J. Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO.

''What's being lost in all of this is he's not good at doing his job," Haynes said. ''He's the most difficult politician I've ever dealt with in my life."

This week's scene figured to be the worst yet. Boston's front-line public safety workers were ready to form picket lines around the city, shoulder to shoulder with colleagues from across the country. The first scenes of the city's first national political convention were going to be of out-of-town delegates staying away from the parties organized to welcome them. Some labor-friendly delegates were even plotting a walkout at the FleetCenter during the mayor's prime-time address tonight.

But in the end, the sequence of events surrounding the final days of labor talks could hardly have worked out better for Menino if he had scripted it during one of his morning walks. Yesterday, McAuliffe hailed Menino as ''my mayor." Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, the convention chairman, called Menino ''a hero."

As Menino is the first to point out, he never thought he'd have the job in the first place. He lives in the remote Readville neighborhood of Hyde Park, a working-class enclave far from the tony neighborhoods of Beacon Hill and the Back Bay, where most of this week's parties will be. The son of a factory supervisor sold insurance and took menial state and city jobs before finding work as a state senator's aide, and then running for a job as a city councilor when the new system of districts took effect in 1983.

That seemed the pinnacle of his career. After all, he was an Italian-American in a city where the Irish and the Brahmins historically had been in control. When then-governor Michael S. Dukakis ran for president in 1988, his campaign passed on Menino's offers to lend a hand, ignoring him because, Menino has recalled, ''I didn't have a Harvard degree."

But his colleagues made him council president, and he was there at the right time -- 1993, when then-mayor Raymond L. Flynn left to become ambassador to the Vatican, leaving the job to Menino. He quickly solidified his political base with a reputation as the ''urban mechanic," the can-do mayor whose ubiquity and tenacity more than compensated for his lack of polish in front of a microphone. His reelection campaigns have become formalities; if he runs for a fourth full term next year, as he appears certain to do, he is unlikely to draw a credible challenger.

Menino looks healthy these days, thinner than he's been at any point in his career in public life and outwardly relaxed about convention preparation. He's had bouts of sulking, brooding, and spouting off, but in the final days before the convention, his public schedule has been typically jammed. He's made the rounds with national television outlets -- six live TV appearances on Friday alone.

Like many Boston politicians of his generation, Menino is anxious to showcase a city that is far different now than it was in some previous turns in the national spotlight. Thirty years after court-ordered busing revealed a repulsive underbelly of racism, Boston is now a majority-minority city with vibrant immigrant communities, Menino likes to remind audiences. Sixteen years after the Republicans campaigned against Dukakis by making Massachusetts a national symbol of filthy water and dangerous social policies, the harbor is glistening and the Big Dig is nearing completion, opening the waterfront and remaking a cramped city.

''This is going to finally bury some outdated stuff," said Lawrence S. DiCara, a former city councilor and longtime friend and associate of Menino's. ''This is a chance for people to walk around the city in safety, with no racial turmoil on street corners. He views it as if the city's a strong place that can get through this."

A successful convention now would be a typically Menino type of victory, snatched against the odds after the mayor seemed to have boxed himself in.

Menino said he is turning down far more invitations than he's accepting this week, but count on a mayor who will be typically omnipresent. He said he is unconcerned about the potential pitfalls.

''I honestly believe that's behind us," Menino said. ''Now it's all about the convention."

Rick Klein can be reached at rklein@globe.com.