Joe Timilty's Lonely Campaign

The back streets of Roslindale are very lonely at 9 p.m. on a Saturday night. But State Sen. Joseph F. Timilty is hanging out in his campaign-hired mid-sized blue Mercury--parked in a gas station that probably never opens on Saturday nights. There is a very Greek-looking young man standing on the passenger's side of the car, leaning in the window, and briefing the candidate.

Across the street, the St. Nectarios Greek Orthodox Church community center is falling apart. There was a fire last year at this outpost of Roslindale's new Greek-American community; the walls are wood where they should be concrete; the concrete is peeling faster than the congregation is repairing. Inside the community center basement there is a small snack shop and about 30 tables covered in light blue grease cloths. The turnout is much smaller than it should be a couple of weeks before the election. About 45 Greek-Americans are sitting at the tables, chatting uniformly in Greek, and awaiting the candidate. There must be 300 donuts lying neatly arranged on the tables, but nobody has touched them. A young woman is manning the McDonalds-loaned drinking vat, but nobody seems to be interested.

"The other one's been in too long," a youngish male Greek-American explains in somewhat halting English. "Change is a good thing." Timilty walks into the room and there is more than polite applause, but it can't fill the room. There is an introduction--a slew of Greek words--and a smiling "Thank You, Mike," from Timilty. The candidate is in a dark blue pinstripe suit and blue shirt, replete with sideburns struggling to complete the Jerry Brown young-but-responsible look. The voice is all wrong--too high--bouncing off the yellow and beige walls in the basement.

"There are 'those of us who want to preserve our ethnic heritage," Timilty tells the crowd. "There are those of us who believe that the Greek-American ought to be recognized even when it's not election time." With the subtlety of a bulldozer, the senator paces his way through his speech. He finishes with a smile and that certain anxious Timilty look--"I hope that the next time I come here you'll all be here," he says as he begins his round, "but that I'll have a different job." Joe Timilty wants to be mayor of Boston.

***

This is not the first time, of course, that Joe Timilty has made that wish. Back in 1971, when he didn't even make it past the preliminaries. Timilty already had his heart set on City Hall. He made that wish again in 1975, when he got past the preliminaries but was narrowly defeated by Kevin H. White. And this fall, after White thrashed him in the preliminary by 14 per cent, Timilty once again made that wish.

"Do you want to see the same old Timilty-White show?" Boston School Committee President David Finnegan asked over and over again while campaigning in the preliminaries. Yes, Boston voters answered on September 25, but now they may be having second thoughts. Although the names are the same, this time there are a couple of differences.

In a couple of words, this campaign has been incredibly boring. Not that it hasn't descended into personal attacks--you can count on the mayoral race to do that, if nothing else--but it just hasn't had any punch. Unlike 1975, when corruption generated a lot of political flak, there has been no big issue. Campaign news has slid into the back pages of the newspapers. A real "lets-get-it-over-with" mood has spread throughout the city.

A series of more exciting events, moreover, has combined to take any edge off an election that was hackneyed the day it began. After the preliminary was over, The News was The Pope and it stayed that way until the pontiff left the country. A couple of weeks later, the Kennedys et. al. came to town to dedicate the John F. Kennedy Library. Kevin White was there--in the back row of the platform with some Boston Pops oboe blasting in his ear. And Joe Timilty was there too--with a camera, looking to attract attention to himself while snapping shots of the really big guys. In the middle of all this, a black football player was shot and paralyzed and racial violence came back to haunt Southie High. And it snowed in October. Boston has had an exciting fall season, but none of the hoopla has been generated by the race for mayor.

The other differences of course is that this time Joe Timilty's neck is really on the line. Timilty has a lot more to lose than another election and the $25,000 loan he took out before the preliminary. If the state senator is relatively young in years, he's twice his age in political saleability and getting older each time he runs. If there was little personal animosity between the two perennial opponents the first time they played this show, there's a whole lot now. Like Peter the Great in Sweden, Joe Timilty has regrouped and come back to take on the King again. The King's name is not Charles, though. It's Kevin.

***

Kevin White is standing on a street corner in the North End and smiling from ear to ear. He's not too far away to be talking about Quincy Market and his downtown accomplishments with some lady who lives just off of Prince St. But, as always, the mayor is thinking about something else. White's familiar figure struts up the street and what's left of his now-white hair glows in the cold sunshine. If he's not already there, the mayor is fast approaching mid-life crisis. If he's not mayor of Boston again, there's not much else that Kevin White wants to do. If Timilty has his neck on the line. White has his pride to lose this time--and probably some of his ego. And in his sometimes arrogant manner, the mayor has spent his $1.5 million and pulled out all the stops.

This election has featured some vintage White. If there is anything damaging being thrown around, it's all the stuff about the rising numbers of city employees and the mayor's bureaucracy/campaign staff. Timilty has failed to exploit issues, like the always wasteful and sometimes illegal activities of the Office of Cultural Affairs. White, meanwhile, has displayed unusual arrogance and, in keeping with the Richard Daley model, has gotten away with it. "I don't stop work at 5," he's told us several hundred times, "Why should they?"

In any other city, there would be a lot of yelling and screaming over White's refusal to debate Timilty on television. But in Boston, only Timilty is yelling--and not loud enough. White has even refused to appear on the same platform as his challenger. "What we don't want are joint appearance which are going to use the mayor's prestige to bring Joe Timilty publicity," says Stephen Crosby, the mayor's campaign manager. And people have actually bought this line. All the Boston Globe could gurgle is that White "does not lack for chutzpah."

It's not as if Kevin White would have nothing to talk about in a debate with Timilty. But it's more fun to use the issues as a backdrop for personal attacks. So White has labelled Timilty a "basic barroom drinker with general tastes" and accused him of floating all over the issues. "I believe he cannot run this city and I think everyone in the business knows it but the public," the mayor says, "I can see him now getting elected saying. 'Uh, what do I do now?"' Timilty hasn't hesitated to step into the fray, of course. When asked about possible names for his seventh child, he said he hadn't considered the name Kevin because it is synonymous with weakness. The senator has compared the mayor to a Tammany Hall leader and Richard Nixon. And the daily press conferences he's held to draw attention to himself have featured posters like that one that has White's photo next to "Wanted. The $89 Million Bandit," a.k.a. The Mayor.

Timilty has taken the anti-White tack, mostly because there's nothing in his record to talk about. Timilty's biggest selling point is his work as chairman of President Carter's National Commission on Neighborhoods. But his performance there, like his work in the state house, was less than stellar. Almost half the commission's 19 members dissented on the final report--and the other half quit or were fired. And Timilty has been stressing the "neighborhood" issue, whatever that means. Said one Commission member: "Joe's notion of leadership was you give everybody everything and then they owe you and they'll vote for you."

This notion has been taken to Boston's streets--particularly into the homes of the 58 per cent of voters who, as Timilty's latest ads tell us, "voted against Kevin White" in the preliminary. Back in September, there were four major candidates for the mayor's office, including Finnegan and State Rep. Melvin H. King. And if the campaign managers disagree on most points, they'll both readily admit that somebody will be elected mayor on November 6--and the key to the election is the King/Finnegan vote.

Timilty knows this. And so, in what many see as a desperation move, he's moderated his stance on rent control and taken several jabs at White's handling of the racial issue. Timilty's campaign aides won't deny their motives. "The people who voted for Mel King are looking for some kind of a statement they can hang onto," one said after the candidate found a new urge to support rent control. "We're giving them one." White, through a series of obnoxious "Breakfast at the Bixbys" radio commercials, has attacked Timilty for waffling--something which the mayor is also pretty skilled at.

In order to pull off a minor miracle on November 6--the latest poll gave White a 14 per cent victory margin--Timilty needs endorsements from the King and Finnegan camps. And he just hasn't gotten them. King, who supported Timilty in 1975, agreed with the Black Political Task Force's assessment of this year's race: vote against White, but don't endorse Timilty. The city's other leading liberal--State Rep. Barney Frank '62--gave his support to Timilty. But with the major papers lined up against him, it all seems too little and too late. The Finnegan people, meanwhile, are keeping pretty quiet. While Bill Ezekial, the man who ran Finnegan's preliminary campaign, has switched to the Timilty camp, the candidate says he just "doesn't feel motivated toward involvement."

***

Joe Timilty is turning red and blue and yellow. He's standing on the ground floor of the Footlight Club and there are "Timilty for Mayor" signs in front of the discolights. The music is very loud--as are the costumes. And as he stands next to some huge guy in a massive sombrero. Timilty looks decidedly uncomfortable. A young woman dressed up as Mr. Bill from Saturday Night Live screeches up to the candidate and asks to take his picture. Her friend, in a President Carter costume, stands next to Timilty and the mask grins like an idiot. Timilty grins, too--but he just doesn't look that happy