Boston's mayor, Thomas Menino, looks and sounds like an average Joe: no glamour, no pretenses, and a complete inability to dazzle with wordplay. But "Mumbles" Menino keeps getting elected because he's possessed of something refreshing in politics: a serious work ethic. Since he was first elected a decade ago, the mayor has focused on restoring Boston neighborhoods, championing affordable housing, and lowering the crime rate. Voters have rewarded him twice with re-election, a ringing endorsement of substance over style in an age where the Terminator can become a governor.

Barney Frank might best be described as a living Nor'easter -- he's always a bit windswept and bedraggled-looking, and his accent is decidedly New England. Yet he's parlayed this seemingly unpolished charm into two productive decades in Congress, outlasting many of his early foes and acerbically dispatching the occasional bigots who share the hallowed halls of the Capitol. Now one of the senior Democrats in Congress, he sits on a daunting raft of committees: Financial Services, Homeland Security, Infrastructure and Border Security, and Intelligence and Counterterrorism. At poll time, voters know what a vote for Frank gets them: results.