Tough guy

Somerville mayor Mike Capuano has a solid shot at winning the race for the Eighth Congressional District. Will his home city help him or hurt him?

Talking Politics by Jason Gay

Mike Capuano wants you to know it's perfectly okay for you not to read this story. You want to go work in your garden, eat your dinner, or walk your dog? Go to it. No sense wasting your hard-earned free time on some poor schmuck Democrat, the mayor of Somerville -- Somerville! -- who's babbling about running for Joe K's seat in Congress. No sense in wasting his time, either.

Same goes for the media. Screw 'em. Why bother rump-kissing a bunch of hacks who are gonna write what they're gonna write, anyways? Just treat 'em fair and square, just like everyone else. Political consultants? They can pretty much take a hike, too. Sure, you can use them now and then, but better to use your own people, trust your own instincts. Polls? Schmolls.

Because the way Capuano figures it, politics isn't rocket science, and you're either gonna like him or you're not. Give him 20 seconds of your time, he says, and you're either going to dismiss him as another knucklehead who doesn't deserve your vote, or you're going to think he's just a regular person like you are, a working stiff, a spouse, a parent, with his own attributes and shortcomings.

In his nine years as Somerville's mayor, the 46-year-old Capuano has developed an image as a tough-as-nails, occasionally combustible leader of a working-class city on the rise. Now he's taking this common-sense persona to the Eighth District. Capuano doesn't intend to force-feed the electorate with polysyllabic rants about health care, foreign policy, and campaign-finance reform, though the Dartmouth and BC Law grad is capable of it.

"Let's face it," he says. "There are probably only five guys up at Harvard who want to talk about the nitty-gritty policy details."

Prognosticators say that Capuano is a legitimate contender, thanks not only to his strength in Somerville (where there are 35,000 registered voters, roughly 13 percent of the district vote) but also to his expected support among Italian-Americans. In the April-to-July reporting period, Capuano also raised more money ($251,000) than anyone in the race.

Still, Capuano is hardly the only candidate with dough. Nor is he the only one doing the I'm-just-a-regular-guy routine in this crowded race. Front-runner Ray Flynn is your definitive salt-of-the-earth pol, and this time around, he's got plenty of competition from folks like Susan Tracy, Margie Clapprood, Tom Keane, and Charles Yancey. Heck, even John O'Connor climbs out of his Range Rover now and again to slap backs and tout his regular-guyness.

The key for Capuano, then, is to find the one asset that separates him from the pack before primary day. That asset could be the story of Somerville -- Capuano's home city, of which he is fiercely proud. But as politics often proves, whatever can give you a boost can also bring you down.

---

Virtually everyone in this race, it seems, has got a "thing" -- a supposed Achilles' heel that could prevent him or her from winning. Flynn's got the drinking thing, Clapprood's got the celebrity-lightweight thing, Tracy's got the gay thing, George Bachrach has the boring-wonk thing, O'Connor and Chris Gabrieli have the plutocrat thing, Alex Rodriguez and Charles Yancey have the little-guy thing, Tom Keane has the who-the-hell-is-Tom-Keane thing.

Capuano has the Somerville thing. Despite numerous improvements in recent years, this densely settled, ethnically diverse city of 76,000 people continues to be derided by outsiders as Boston's version of old New Orleans -- a place where shady characters abound, where crooked pols and dirty cops keep an uneasy peace. Part of this is mythmaking and ethnic stereotyping, of course, but part of it is rooted in truth. Somerville has had its brushes with organized crime and roguish politicians: Whitey Bulger's storied Winter Hill Gang had a foothold in East Somerville, and more than one city official in memory has been hit with bribery and/or cronyism charges.

Capuano, a former alderman's son whose thinning brown hair, blue eyes, and square jaw make him look like a compact version of Mike Barnicle, acknowledges his city's negative baggage. "It's there, believe me," he says. But Capuano resents the guilt by association, the insinuation that because of his zip code, he can't possibly be on the up-and-up. He's rankled by a recent Globe story about the race that quipped of his candidacy, "You can take the mayor out of Somerville, but can you take the Somerville out of the mayor?" Argues Capuano: "Could you imagine them saying the same thing about Charles Yancey and Roxbury?"

At the same time, however, part of Capuano clearly relishes his city's rough-and-tumble reputation -- as well as his own. Both the mayor's supporters and his foes describe him as a pugnacious, in-your-face leader, unafraid to mix it up with his political opponents. While the mayor may not fully embrace this characterization, he doesn't shy from it, either. no one will fight harder for us, Capuano's brochure screams, and his campaign tries to promote him as the ultimate scrapper. He even jokes about Somerville's reputation: "Not everyone has a dead body in their trunk," he says. (Capuano, who also wisecracks repeatedly about having Mafia connections, is prone to making glib, sometimes flaky remarks.)

Somerville residents may enjoy Capuano's tough-guy stance as mayor, but it could undermine his bid for Congress, where pols are supposed to be able to compromise and, well, kiss a little ass now and then. City alderman John Buonomo, who lost the mayor's race to Capuano in 1989 but now considers him a reliable political ally, says Capuano must shed his "bruiser" image in order to succeed outside his home city.

The mayor is capable of that kind of change, Buonomo says. He's seen Capuano evolve from a hesitant and somewhat uptight mayor -- the type of official who stood at the back of public meetings and seldom mingled with the crowds -- into a comparatively relaxed, engaging leader.

"I think he's grown into the position," Buonomo says. "I think I've witnessed a maturing. He can still be very direct, but he can also be very flexible."

Capuano has also benefited from Somerville's strengthening economy and housing market. Over the past decade, the city has been flooded with thousands of new residents, especially post-rent control refugees from Cambridge and Boston who have border-hopped in hopes of finding a cheaper place to live. These recent arrivals have brought new investment; housing prices continue to surge, and businesses seem to sprout up weekly in the triple-decker neighborhoods. Davis Square, a handsome, brick-sidewalked district of eateries and mom-and-pop shops, was recently named one of the hippest neighborhoods in the country by two national magazines.

Capuano says he has welcomed this transformation, pushing for improvements that have helped new and old residents alike. He fought to improve public safety and to repair strained relations between the community and its police department. He added 15 total acres of new green space. And he helped improve Somerville's much-maligned school system by rebuilding or replacing six city schools.

"I think he grew up in a city where he saw the old, and he realized the city had to do something new," Buonomo says.

But Capuano's critics charge that the mayor is a product of the old school who's taking too much credit for Somerville's improving rep. There are those who say Capuano's selling a bill of goods to the Eighth District, that Somerville's so-called reformer doesn't always practice what he preaches. Capuano has been criticized for hiring relatives for city jobs: his cousin is the city's auditor. More flak followed when the mayor named a close friend, Joe Macaluso, as the city's housing director. Though Capuano defends himself against the patronage rap by invoking JFK -- "Was Bobby Kennedy a good attorney general?" he asks -- there is sentiment that he should be more careful given the city's past troubles.

Capuano has also drawn scorn for being autocratic and iron-fisted; aldermen who don't see eye to eye with him often find their proposals shut out. Kevin Tarpley, elected last year as Somerville's first African-American alderman, is frustrated by what he sees as the mayor's reluctance to push for more minority hiring of city workers. "He's trying to appear that he's this great, independent, new politician, when he represents old-style politics at their worst," Tarpley says. "If you don't agree with him, he tries to figure out a way to hurt you."

Not surprisingly, Capuano chafes at the notion that he is anything less than professional in his behavior, whether with his supporters or his detractors. "I'm only abrasive with someone who's abrasive with me," he says. "If you treat me with respect, I'll treat you with respect."

---

Capuano is shaking hands inside Joe's Variety, a breakfast hole-in-the-wall in Watertown where 80 percent of the customers seem to be named Joe, everyone appears to read the Herald, no one has a beard, and anyone who ordered a bagel might get laughed out of the place. The mayor, who is wearing a blue shirt and a checkered red tie, heads to the back part of the store, next to the Coke machines, where a crew of regulars stand and sip coffee.

In these kinds of campaign stops, you can usually tell in the first 10 seconds whether the candidate is going to be welcomed with open arms or avoided as if he's carrying fistfuls of plutonium. Capuano gets the red carpet at Joe's. He hovers in the rear of the store, chewing the fat about everything from Margie (he faced her last night in a TV mini-debate) to vacations in Italy to, of course, Somerville.

Capuano says that wherever he goes, he finds people who want to talk about his hometown. A city of immigrants and transients, Somerville is a little like the Brooklyn of Boston -- if you haven't lived there yourself, chances are that someone in your family, or at least someone you know, did for a while. This type of tradition cultivates bonding, not to mention votes. Capuano figures to do well not only in his own city, but also in the Somerville-ish, working-class neighborhoods of East Boston, Watertown, Charlestown, and Cambridge.

"This district is full of people who are used to getting the short end of the stick," Capuano says. "I think I'll do well wherever there are two-family homes."

Sure, it's populism at its most overt, but there's a refreshing authenticity to Capuano's approach. Despite his considerable campaign fundraising to date, there's a purposefully low-rent, no-frills feel to the mayor's candidacy. Next to the objets d'art issued by the O'Connor and Gabrieli campaigns, Capuano's brochures look like kidnappers' ransom notes.

In the coming weeks, Capuano's aides say, the mayor will begin to spend some of his dough, hit the airwaves, and try to shed that seat-of-the-pants, local-yokel image. How Capuano will fare at this is uncertain. The idea of a director getting Capuano to rehearse for TV ads is an amusing thought (trying to make a cat take a bubble bath comes to mind). Though his money will allow him to take his campaign to another level, Capuano seems content to go after voters the only way he knows how: face to face, one at a time. The Somerville way, he says.

"My voters are the silent heroes of the world," Capuano says. "And they're not very well represented right now."

Jason Gay can be reached at jgay@phx.com.