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closed.” Fifty-eight percent of the voters agreed.
    Soon, FOR MAYOR MENINO signs sprouted in yards across the city, exploiting the magic of incumbency in Boston elections. Flyers in sixteen languages conveyed my commitment to safe neighborhoods, good schools, and caring government.
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    As Rosaria lost ground, Jim Brett gained it. A veteran state legislator representing white Dorchester, Jim was at home in neighborhood taverns and downtown boardrooms, an articulate, attractive candidate and a very good guy.
    Those were some of Jim’s positives. There were three negatives.
    First, although he was a player at the State House, Jim had no name recognition outside Dorchester. Second, he was a close friend of a controversial politician, State Senate President William “Billy” Bulger of South Boston, brother of the famous gangster “Whitey” Bulger. Brett argued that his ties to Billy Bulger would benefit the city. But the Bulger association, which extended through Jim’s wife, who worked for Bulger for twenty years, was a burden to Brett, especially in the minority community, where Bulger’s anti-busing politics of the 1970s was not forgotten or, like Ray Flynn’s, forgiven. Third, Jim’s down-the-line Catholic opposition to abortion, an issue not relevant to city politics, gave this work-and-wages Democrat an undeserved reputation for conservatism. Progressive and minority voters got the impression that he would not be a mayor for
them
.
    Balancing these negatives was a big cultural positive. Since 1925 Boston had elected seven mayors. All were Irish Americans. So was Jim Brett. The Irish voted above their falling weight in the population: “Heavy-voting ward” was ethnically neutral shorthand for an Irish American neighborhood. Jim Brett was of Irish descent. Former news anchor Christopher Lydon topped that, boasting that he was the only Irish
citizen
in the race. Mickey Roache, Ray Flynn’s former police commissioner, wanted it known that he received the Blessed Sacrament seven days a week.
    By the 1980s Italian Americans my age were tired of the “Pick-a-Mick” choice of mayors on the ballot and for once wanted to vote for one of their own. I learned that walking house-to-house in my ’83 council race. A man would come to the door, notice the name on my campaign button, and say, “Menino? I’m with ya. I’m Russo.” When I addressed Italian American audiences in ’93, it wasn’t my charisma that excited them. The green tide in Boston politics was receding, and Italians weren’t the only group standing on the beach happy to see it go. *
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Come November 3rd—the day after you elect me mayor—the city of Boston will begin a new era in which the needs of families are given the highest priority.
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—from a speech delivered the night the election became a two-man race
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    The winners of the September preliminary were . . . me, with 27 percent of the vote, and Jim Brett, with 23 percent. Rosaria Salerno, with 17 percent, was out of the running.
    Boston would not have its first woman mayor, but it was likely to see its first Italian American one. Polls showed me with a big lead.
    The swing vote was nearly all to Jim Brett’s left. It was now my vote. One poll showed me running 28 points ahead among “liberals” and, reflecting my support for abortion rights, 19 points ahead among women. It didn’t help Jim that Bishop John Patrick Boles picked this moment to endorse him.
    I had a good record on gay issues but, unlike Salerno, I had not supported domestic partner benefits for city employees. That did not matter to the Greater Boston Lesbian and Gay Political Alliance. It did not matter when, in a speech to them, I came out for “the distribution of condominiums.” I wasn’t Jim Brett. They endorsed me.
    When Roache called for an end to affirmative action in the Boston Police Department,