Kevin McCrea outside his South End home.

By Jim O'Sullivan
News Editor

He says something about the unfortunate condition of the city's streets, but the particulars are lost in the high-decibeled growl of Kevin McRea's Harley Davidson V-Rod as it turns off Tremont Street and onto Melnea Cass Boulevard. McCrea steers the bike through Newmarket Square and the wrong way up Burrell St. onto Dudley, where his campaign workers - two bubbly high school graduates and a tall, reticent youngster whom McCrea dubs "the muscle" of the group - have fanned out to spread the word about the candidate least likely to lose because of questionable depth of character.

"Yup, I'm an interesting guy and I've traveled around the world, and I've done a lot of stuff, but I'm sick of reading these Kevin McCrea profile stories," the at-large City Council candidate was saying earlier, lounging against the sink on the second floor of his posh South End home. He wants to, he says, talk about education and housing and open government, the three underpinning issues of an underdog effort that so far has drawn more attention for its ancillary sideshows: McCrea's motorcycle-racing, his $200,000 infusion into the campaign, his apparent fearlessness in the face of political correctness - or, at times, political wisdom.

There is his send-up of his opponents, an Eddie Haskell-esque aping of the deferential and diffident campaigner who mouths inanities, never approaching substance. The performance is funny, and the type of personality politicians usually show strictly off the record.

"If half of these candidates weren't allowed to use the phrase, 'We can do better'," McCrea says, extracting one of his act's centerpiece's, "I don't think they'd have a lot to say."

"I think Kevin can be very zealous sometimes, without getting all the facts," says Sam Yoon campaign manager Andrew Kain, who has sparred with McCrea on the latter's website, a regular stop for political devotees who enjoy conflict in their council races.

Sometimes, when McCrea gets too colorful, he checks himself, and complains that such outward shows of character have contributed to what he sees as his caricaturization. Despite a trail buzz generated nearly entirely by those same outlying habits, he doggedly doubles back to the issues.

There is, for instance, the matter of his lawsuit against the City Council. Through a spokesman, City Council President Michael Flaherty declined to comment for the piece, but McCrea has cheerfully written on his website that Flaherty has refused to shake his hand. The suit claims the council violates the open meeting law, which aims to unveil government workings to interested citizens; last Thursday, the case got its first hearing in Suffolk Superior Court.

The suit stems largely from McCrea's disdain for the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), which steers the city's commercial and residential projects. McCrea says the body should be abolished, its personnel retained but its duties split between two agencies, both rendered legally answerable to the council. Under McCrea's plan, one agency would control development, the other would handle planning by acting as a coordinator over all the other city agencies. "I would categorize it as bringing citizen control over the government, and getting what is basically a traffic cop to get all these agencies to talk to each other."

Born in Brighton but raised hither and yon, McCrea, 38, says his time as a contractor and developer (he is part owner of the Komera Group and Wabash Construction, complementary businesses) have imbued in him enough knowledge of City Hall's intestinal workings to offer, to the voters, an informed critique. He wants to revamp the city's web site, empower the City Council, and mold a residency requirement through the collective bargaining process.

That policy - obligating certain municipal employees to live in the city - is one McCrea said he favors, but said should be handled in negotiations.

"I think the current administration was very disingenuous in its last round of negotiations with the police and fire. Why wouldn't he at least sit down at the table with them?" McCrea asks, referring to Mayor Thomas M. Menino's reluctance to bargain directly with union leaders. McCrea proposes establishing quotas in negotiations, then allowing unions to decide which of their members are eligible to live outside the city.

Neighborhood schools - another hot-button, third-rail agenda item - are a good idea, McCrea says, but not achievable right now. If elected, he promises, he'll visit every Boston public school - all 139 - and, by the end of a two-year term, put forth a plan to establish neighborhood schools across the city.

McCrea munches on hot dogs and chips, fare belying the West Springfield St. rowhouse whose first floor is a parquet ballroom. Adjacent to the kitchen is space for a pool table, a living room, and an office serving as campaign headquarters, where fiancée Dr. Clara Maria Lora (the wedding is scheduled three days before the Sept. 27 primary, the honeymoon details on hold) makes campaign calls.

The elevator takes McCrea and a visitor to the basement of the home - all of it paid for, McCrea says, by money he's made since starting out hauling plywood, which paid for the college degree that allowed him to study high altitude atmospheric physics. Now, a plaque on the wall on official South End Youth Baseball Giants award paper crowns McCrea "loudest coach."

Outside, a Ford Expedition is dotted with campaign signs, and the Harley V-Rod has been custom-painted to meet campaign specs. McCrea motors it past a few of his projects, to Dudley, where his wet-behind-the-ears campaign workers, fresh graduates of the John D. O'Bryant School of Math and Sciences have just triumphantly positioned a campaign sign in the window of Brickwoods Pizza, next to one of Flaherty's.

McCrea knows his unorthodox campaigning doesn't fit the footsteps of most winning political candidates, and seems generally surprised when his aides answer his question - "So did you smell votes out there or what?" - in the affirmative.

But, before slapping on his helmet and battered leather jacket and zipping up his steel-toed Daytona boots, he revs a cautious cylinder of optimism: "I really believe that when people meet me and hear what I have to say, and it doesn't get edited and caricatured in the press, that people will say, 'This guy has a lot to say, and we need him on the City Council to keep an eye on things down at City Hall'."

Then, with the engine purring, McCrea sounds the bravado he dons when he's "Mr. BIG," the candidate who will take a shot at the mayor, or call out his rivals on the Internet, mock his own style of dress, and ruefully admit his media skills could improve: "Believe me, if I get elected your head's gonna spin, the amount things are gonna change."