Mr. Capuano Goes to Washington

On the wall of an anteroom in Somerville's City Hall is a plaque, dated January 16, 1952, that reads:

"Whereas we have been delightfully informed with the pleasant news of the arrival of the fourth bundle of joy at the Capuano household...someday, little brother will be the mayor of our great city."

The prophecy of that Somerville alderperson did not go far enough. For the "fourth bundle of joy," young Michael E. Capuano, would eventually be more than a mayor.

In this month's general election, Capuano secured the Congressional seat representing Massachusetts's Eighth District, left vacant when Joseph P. Kennedy II announced his retirement earlier this year.

The Eighth includes all of Cambridge.

To hear him tell it, Michael Capuano is a simple man. His constituents say he has a sense of what the people want and an even greater sense of what he's able to do for them.

To some of his political opponents, Capuano embodies all that is wrong with small-town politicians. His Republican opponent in the November election has alleged ethical blemishes and accuses him of ignoring the city's black vote.

Capuano gave The Crimson an extensive interview, in which he discussed his tenure as Somerville mayor and his thoughts on the 106th United States Congress.

Meet Mike

Capuano graduated from Somerville High School in 1969. He attended Dartmouth, earning a B.A. in psychology in 1974. During his first year of law school at Boston College, he married his high school sweetheart, Barbara Teebagy.

A newly-minted lawyer in 1978, Capuano spent his first years as a public servant working for the Joint Committee on Taxation of the Massachusetts Legislature, quickly rising to the post of chief counsel for the committee.

At the same time, he represented Somerville as an alderperson.

Through the 1980s, Capuano made a name for himself among his constituents in Somerville and Democrats throughout the state.

In 1989, he was elected mayor of Somerville, and voters re-elected him four times. His accomplishments can be summed up in the obsolescence of the word "Slummerville." What was once a collection of family neighborhoods bordered by falling-down commercial areas and struggling industrial parks became a haven for young professionals.

Capuano says the greening of Somerville is among his proudest accomplishments.

There is more open space than there was in 1990, partially because of the creation of nine parks.

Longtime Somerville residents say their mayor is popular because of his devotion to quality-of-life issues.

In 1997, Somerville allowed its residents to select their cable television company, after a long fight with the industry.

Tracing the Eighth

Capuano's odyssey from mayor to representative began in the first few months of 1998, when rumors of Kennedy's retirement began to permeate through Bay State Democratic circles. Party leaders informally floated the names of possible replacement candidates, and the popular Somerville mayor was among them along with two local politicians and a radio talk-show host.

Capuano says he called Kennedy and asked him a simple question, "how much travel time I'd have to spend away from my family."

"In 24 years of marriage," he explains, "I've spent at the most two weeks total sleeping away from my wife."

"My first step in the decision-making process is my family. And then the politics comes in."

His family gave their blessing, and Capuano began to assemble a campaign staff of volunteers including friends and local politicos.

He officially declared his candidacy in mid-May.

On March 14, Capuano held his first fundraiser-a dinner at a constituent's house in Somerville. At the time, he wasn't yet mentioned as a viable candidate by pundits.

The money was on State Senate President Thomas F. Birmingham '72 or State Senator Warren Tollman. There was even a hint that state treasurer Joseph D. Malone '78 would join the race.

"I've never been given anything in my life. I've never thought I would win, I just thought I could win," Capuano says of his mindset early on. "That's a big difference. Because anytime you get into a political race, you have to be ready and willing to accept the possibility that you will lose."

Slowly but surely, candidates trickled in.

Birmingham was out. Tollman ran for lieutenant governor on the Democratic ticket. Malone emphatically would not drop out of the Republican gubernatorial primary.

George Bachrach, the former state senator who gave Kennedy a run for his money in 1986, threw his hat into the ring.

So did millionaire Christopher F. O. Gabrielli '81, a venture capitalist, and Marjorie O'Neill Clapprood, a former state legislator-cum-talk show host.

Two Boston city councilors, Charles Yancey and Tom Keane, secured enough signatures to put their names on the ballot as did John O'Connor, Alex Rodriguez and Susan Tracy.

As the race settled, Capuano's early organization paid off, and pundits began to give him a strong, second look.

And then, on April 29, the spoiler: Raymond L. Flynn, the popular former mayor of Boston and ex-U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican, announced that he would not challenge L. Scott Harshbarger '72 for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Instead, he said, he was joining the race for the Eighth.

Polls conducted by The Boston Globe, which showed Capuano's support steadily rising, suddenly gave Flynn the edge.

Juggling Act

Capuano now faced a crowded field of contenders. And he had a city to run.

"It [was] much more hectic in prior campaigns," he says. "The best thing about them is if you're focused and run a good campaign, it's not too bad. It was a lot of work but there was only one ball in play here."

"But now," he recalls thinking, "I have several balls, significant balls up in the air. I'd like to concentrate on several of them simultaneously."

The hot political summer did Capuano well. He capitalized on his Somerville base, and, whenever possible, he canvassed his district, shaking hands and renewing old friendships.

He hammered his opponents on education and took slack for Somerville's questionable education record, but survived.

He came off sounding like a committed moderate in debates, strong and steady.

While Flynn invoked his political legacy and Bachrach touted an impressive plan for activist government, Capuano says he tried to be modest.

"When I ran for the office, I presumed whoever won this seat would become a member of the [House's] minority party," he says. "That's not a shock. That was part of my decision-making process."

He says he avoided making explicit campaign promises because he knew he couldn't keep them.

Educating Mass. and the Masses

If national races lacked a single, unifying issue, candidates for the Eighth found it difficult to talk about anything but education.

State records show that Boston's public schools have perennially underperformed. Significant numbers of perspective Massachusetts teachers have failed basic competency tests.

As mayor of Somerville, Capuano took heat for that city's underwhelming educational record.

SAT scores for Somerville high school students are below the state average.

Capuano was quick to point out that test scores of third and fourth grades have risen slightly since he became mayor.

And he claimed that plans to further nationalize education or to institute a voucher system were impractical.

"Kids in Somerville are not just competing with kids in Worcester, they're competing with kids in Los Angeles and in Bangladesh."

Although he says that "eventually," the federal government should assume more of a role in secondary education, he recognizes that many in Congress don't feel that way.

"That's the biggest part of the rock, to convince other Congressmen that it should be a federal issue."

He says he sees national education standards at least "20 years down the road."

Capuano says higher education is close to his heart.

"My oldest kid is a senior in high school, and we're starting to look at college tuitions. And they're killers," he says.

"We are well down the road of taking a good college education out of the reach of the average middle-class family. That's wrong."

The Primary

The race wound down, with Boston Globe and Boston Herald polls showing Capuano neck-and-neck with Flynn as of late August. In the latter of days of the campaign, Bachrach began to pull out all the stops.

He promised to cut the national defense budget 14 percent and re-invest the money in schools.

Capuano says he believes the progressives of the district were not looking for promises, they were looking for pragmatism.

"The only promises I've ever made is to do the best job I can," he says.

"And I don't think the average voter is stupid enough to fall for those things, and I think this election is proof of that."

Proof--in the form of a huge victory.

Carried by strong support in Somerville, Capuano netted 24 percent of the vote in the 10-candidate field. Ray Flynn was second, with 17 percent. Bachrach finished third.

In Massachusetts a majority is not required to win a primary election.

"I've always thought voters were smarter than we give them credit for," Capuano says.

"They know that whoever was elected Congressman was not elected King of the world."

"As a member of Congress," he continues, "you don't get to cut the defense budget 5 percent or 14 percent. [And] any person should be able to stand back and say the government is not ready to cut 14 percent from the defense budget."

"The first focus I'm going to take is to learn how to work within the House establishment," he says.

"I can talk about all sorts of great issues in the world, but it's not going to work if I don't learn how to work within the current system."

Get to Work...But First

It's now mid-October. Capuano is a shoo-in to win the election. His Republican candidate, J. Phillip Hyde, steps up the attack on Capuano's ethics.

Capuano, Hyde says, is not as clean a politician as he would have you believe.

Capuano's ethical problems are "well-documented," Hyde claimed.

"He said [on tape] he didn't care about the Constitution."

Then came a Boston Herald report that Capuano was involved in a questionable land transaction involving a piece of land in Somerville owned by a man who allegedly had family ties to the mob.

Capuano labeled the accusation a "smear."

Long-time Somerville residents say Capuano's only flaw is that he's "too loyal."

"I have known Mike for 20 years," says 25-year Somerville resident Francine Mello.

"One of the things that has always amazed me about his term as mayor is the ethics that Mike has brought home as mayor. The people he surrounds himself with are people with values. He's also got a sense of loyalty that is incredible," she says.

Testing of a Winner

Capuano was elected on November 3 with 82 percent of the vote.

In the days after the race, he listed Social Security and defense as two issues he'd like to tackle, aside from education.

"We must focus on America's defensive needs for the 21st century," he says, sounding like a conservative from Texas rather than a liberal from Massachusetts.

"We're the military leaders of the world. It's a role that we asked for. And I think it's a role that we should have."

Although Capuano admits that he is not too familiar with defense policy, he says it's vital to the Bay State area.

"There's a lot of military dollars coming in to Massachusetts. I have no doubt that Harvard University gets a far amount of money for military things."