Maura Hennigan shouldn’t have worried about the lack of cross-questioning: the format suited her fine. She was poised, she’d done her homework, and her answers were smart. When asked about parking fines, she gave a clear answer in contrast to Menino’s evasive one. When one questioner addressed Menino with some landlord-tenant grievance that the city failed to fix, Hennigan stepped back and pointed out that public access to city information is a simple solution.
Part of it is that public speaking, especially of the extemporaneous sort, is just not Tom Menino’s strength. I suspect that this, more than sinister evasion of competition, probably drives the mayor’s unwillingness to participate in these TV debates. Still, over the hour town meeting, the mayor was more than tongue-tied, he was defeated by his own catch phrases (”partnering”!) and empty rhetoric. He just couldn’t manage to take credit for improvements in the city during his tenure without giving the implication that he doesn’t think anything’s wrong today that another task force or two couldn’t take care of. He never conveyed the intimate knowledge of the city and of the day-to-day management that Hennigan did.
My gut instinct is that Hennigan wouldn’t be as strong on economic development and the larger city vision. Menino really does work on these behind-the-scenes, trying to get the Harvard GSD to help with its urban planning for instance, and sometimes in the cultural realm the smoke and mirrors boosterism has real effect. But maybe we’re a city that’s had our fill of development and boosterism. Maybe the growing pains of a city coming off a boom decade — pains in education quality, housing costs and class resentment — will start to catch up with us. Maybe Democratic National Convention chickens will come home to roost.
So far she has been caught in the same dynamic that Peggy Davis-Mullen faced a few years back: upstart female challenger, underfunded and unable to get traction, and largely ignored by a news media rightly seeing her as a dark horse and by a citizenry who more or less liked Menino. The mayor, after all, has been skilled at straddling a wide coalition. But after watching Hennigan in tonight’s debate, I wonder: do we have a mayor’s race this year?
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