Growing rift between Menino, Kerry worries Democrats

US Senator Edward M. Kennedy is trying to smooth over relations between Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Senator John F. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, as frustrations grow among top Democrats over the mayor's relations with party officials in the weeks before the convention.

Menino has repeatedly expressed his anger about Kerry in recent weeks, first over Kerry's brief consideration of a plan to delay acceptance of the party's nomination until after the convention and then over Kerry's decision to cancel a scheduled speech Monday to the US Conference of Mayors because he didn't want to cross a police union picket line.

In an unusual rebuke of his party's nominee, Menino told the Boston Herald that he found the Kerry campaign small-minded and incompetent, and expressed frustration over a report that he had hung up on Kerry during a phone conversation about the canceled speech.

Menino told the Globe over the weekend that he was ''extremely disappointed" by Kerry's decision to cancel the speech, and he denied yesterday that he had hung up on Kerry.

He suggested that Kerry's aides were spreading that rumor. ''Someone on his staff made an error," Menino said.

Yesterday, as Democrats around the country buzzed about the feud, a top aide to Kennedy said the senior senator was making calls trying to smooth over differences between Kerry and Menino.

''He's doing whatever he can behind the scenes to make things better," said the Kennedy aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Menino himself sought to downplay the rift. ''I talked with the campaign. There are no issues that will stop me from working for John Kerry. It's about the future," Menino said yesterday.

Within the Kerry camp yesterday, advisers reacted to Menino's simmering anger with a mix of confusion and annoyance, saying that they thought the mayor had little to gain politically or among Democrats by criticizing the senator or his staff's decision-making.

Democrats from Kerry's headquarters in Washington and Boston have been trading phone calls and e-mails for days analyzing Menino's behavior and the reasons he might be taking his pique public.

According to two Kerry advisers, theories generally involve the balance between the mayor's need to run the city and the Washington Democrats' desire for him to act with the convention's interests at heart and keep the peace in Boston.

''We're trying to work well every day with the mayor, but he appears to have his own issues that he chooses to deal with in his own way," said one Kerry adviser who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Menino and Kennedy, who worked closely to bring the convention to Boston, continue to have a good relationship, aides said, but other Democrats have had difficulties with Menino's hands-on management style.

Off and on for several months, Menino has ruffled the feathers of New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who is the convention chairman, and top party officials in Washington and in the Kerry camp.

Menino assured party officials that union negotiations would be resolved long before the convention started, but a contract deal with Boston police hasn't emerged.

The Boston Police Patrolmen's Association protests delayed construction at the FleetCenter for three days and then embarrassed Menino before the US Conference of Mayors over the weekend.

''Obviously, it's been a challenging time in the city of Boston. The goal is that we all come together and the day we leave Boston, we're all united as one," Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said last night.

''We're 26 days away, and it always works out."

Andrea Estes and Patrick Healy of the Globe staff contributed to this report.