Annals of electioneering

Yes­ter­day was the may­oral and city coun­cil pri­mary in town– now, Boston’s had the same mayor for six­teen years. We do that– unless something’s hor­ri­bly bro­ken, we mud­dle along. Hell, I some­times think Ray Flynn would still be mayor if he hadn’t been gun­ning for that Vat­i­can Ambas­sador thing– though really, and not to slam on the Catholics, but … Vat­i­can Ambas­sador? Not sexy, Ray.

Dur­ing the last may­oral race, there was one chal­lenger, a long-time coun­cil­lor whose theme was essen­tially “We can do better.”

Eh. She didn’t get many votes.

This time, though, there were almost a half-dozen chal­lengers for the may­oral seat, includ­ing a repub­li­can (a thing hardly heard of in munic­i­pal pol­i­tics) and a young councillor-at-large whose elec­tion was excit­ing when he first got his seat four years ago, sim­ply because he’s the first Asian-American to get a seat in Boston, as well as a teacher by pro­fes­sion. We’re a pretty white town when it comes to the politi­cians who get elected, so it was excit­ing to elect him and then see him be re-elected two years later. There were a num­ber of other can­di­dates, clearly, and for the first time in a while the councillor-at-large posi­tion was also con­tested enough to be sub­ject to the pri­mary, because this man was run­ning for mayor.

He didn’t make the cut for the gen­eral elec­tion– the more estab­lished city coun­cil­lor run­ning did that, and now Boston’s out a minor­ity at-large coun­cil­lor who (so far as these things go, which isn’t far, Boston’s exec­u­tive is very, very strong) did some good work for the neigh­bor­hoods and was at least a young voice with a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive. There’s per­haps a longer post in here about expe­ri­ence or hubris or per­haps racism beyond a cer­tain layer of pol­i­tics, but to me, the fac­tor was this– he just hadn’t been doing this long enough for me to want to put him in as mayor.

I also didn’t vote for him, though, for the same rea­son I didn’t vote for other candidates.

I have had 56 pre-recorded tele­phone calls from that can­di­date and sev­eral other may­oral can­di­dates as well as some of the at-large con­tenders in the last month. 56. Includ­ing twice a day from this “young, excit­ing” may­oral can­di­date and another man run­ning for the at-large position.

You know– the Do Not Call list exists for a rea­son, and just because you’re a non-profit caller doesn’t mean peo­ple don’t find repeated calls extremely annoy­ing. A pre-recorded mes­sage ask­ing me to vote for you is not impres­sive. A pre-recorded mes­sage ask­ing me to vote for you fea­tur­ing voice record­ings from “ordi­nary peo­ple” that are cut off or gar­bled or non­sen­si­cal in their con­tent? I’m going to tell peo­ple what a pain in the ass your cam­paign is– which I also did when some of these sup­port­ers accosted me on the way into my polling place.

“No, I won’t be vot­ing for X,” I said when they asked. “Your campaign’s been ring­ing my phone off the hook and it’s a nui­sance.” The vol­un­teer pooh-poohed it, but when I said “Twice a day,” she did look a lit­tle concerned.

Okay– I am being a bit of a crank here. As I said, I voted for some­body else because I didn’t think Excit­ing Young Man had the expe­ri­ence (and yes, the BH did crack on the com­par­i­son with our Pres­i­dent, but still, this can­di­date was no Barack Obama)– but hon­estly? If I don’t know any­thing about you except what you put out there in the media? The phone calls are a strikeout.

Rah. Damned elec­tion­eer­ing kids on my lawn, clog­ging my phone lines.

And … though expe­ri­ence counts, I will note that the peo­ple who came out on top in yesterday’s vot­ing were not the ones who were call­ing morn­ing, noon and night.

So– dear city elec­tion can­di­dates– Do Not Call with auto­mated mes­sages. The old ways of signs and per­sonal calls and vol­un­teers ring­ing on door­bells isn’t nearly so annoy­ing. Mmkay?