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[This Just In]

CITY HALL
Peggy Davis-Mullen makes it official

BY DORIE CLARK

WEDNESDAY, April 18, 2001 -- In a brash and ambitious statement, Peggy Davis-Mullen took to Mayor Tom Menino’s home turf of Hyde Park Tuesday afternoon, April 17, to stage her long-anticipated announcement that she — finally — will officially enter the mayoral race. More than 100 supporters crammed into an overheated VFW hall to hear the candidate’s half-hour speech, which touched on her signature issues of housing and schools while repeatedly cautioning that “we cannot afford to wait any longer.”

Davis-Mullen proved her mastery of the photo-op, from the venue (which appealed to veterans and older voters) to the iconography (the hall’s 1970s-style wood-paneled walls were festooned with the new blue-and-yellow “Peggy Davis-Mullen for Mayor” signs amidst heroic friezes of World War II soldiers) to the human backdrop (beefy union guys with firefighter buttons, flanked by her three clean-cut middle-school-aged sons, one of whom was wearing a green windbreaker embroidered with the word “Southie” and a shamrock).

But she was emphatic and downright fiery on at least one count. “Over the past few days, there have been many unsubstantiated allegations about my taxes,” she said. “I want to make this very clear to my supporters and to people in the city of Boston: I filed my state and federal taxes for 1998 and 1999 on time. I’d be happy to provide documentation.” Indeed, campaign consultant Karen Scharma started answering those charges by handing out copies of Davis-Mullen’s 1998 and 1999 Massachusetts returns (signed and dated appropriately, though most of the figures had been whited out) to reporters. Attached was a copy of two money orders from Citizens Bank used to pay her 1999 taxes and dated April 15 of last year. (Davis-Mullen received a refund of $300 in 1998.)

In a room chock full of supporters, however, Davis-Mullen successfully managed to focus attention on her vision for the city — and her differences with incumbent mayor Tom Menino. “During the past eight years, Boston and our nation have undergone unprecedented economic growth,” she said. “Yet we have failed to take this historic opportunity to address our most pressing needs — improving our children’s public education, providing affordable housing for working families, and ensuring that development benefits all of our neighborhoods.”

That message is resonating with residents like Shirley Kressel of the Back Bay, who says she supports Davis-Mullen: “I’m grateful that somebody has the guts to challenge the status quo. We basically have a mayor who doesn’t see the city as a community — he’s busy turning the city into a theme park, a real-estate-investment opportunity, an employment center for suburbanites. The things he does for the people who live here are scraps.” Mike Funches, an employee of the Boston Transportation Department who boldly wore his uniform to the kickoff, has never been involved with a political campaign before. He says he’s become tired of Menino’s “hard-nosed tactics and not relating to the community” and will be out campaigning for Davis-Mullen in Roxbury and Dorchester this year.

In her speech, Davis-Mullen cast the populist net wide, invoking a litany of ethnicities and professions and neighborhoods, and noting that “everyone deserves to make this city their home.” She’s counting on activists like Kressel and Funches to be her foot soldiers because — with less than $20,000 in the bank to compete with Menino’s $1.1 million stash — her bid is a long shot at best. But as she intoned during her speech, “Dreams can come true in Boston, Massachusetts.” Buoyed by the Rocky theme song that accompanied her walk to the podium, Davis-Mullen and her screaming supporters seemed to think this one will be possible.

Issue Date: April 19, 2001






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