Politics

Politics

Boston win for McCain? Not likely

John McCain, regardless of his performance nationally, is going to lose Dorchester, Boston, and Massachusetts.

That makes him no different than Republican presidents back to Ronald Reagan - who, at least in part due to a near-mythic swing into the Eire Pub in 1984, connected with the blue-collar Democrats that often swing elections in these precincts. Both Bushes had their Stetsons handed to them here.  Read more

Chang-Diaz gets embrace of elected Dems at rally

Sonia Chang-Diaz, the newly-minted Democratic nominee for the state Senate's Second Suffolk seat, took a victory lap this week with some of the state's top Democrats as incumbent Sen. Dianne Wilkerson battled back against renewed allegations that she lied under oath at a 2005 court hearing.  Read more

Backers say Ross has votes for council presidency

City Councillor Michael Ross will succeed Dorchester's Maureen Feeney as the president of the Boston City Council next year through a unique agreement that will make his chief opponent for the job, Councillor Steve Murphy, the body's vice-president. The arrangement was disclosed on Wednesday, hours after the Reporter's website broke the news that Ross had lined up the seven votes he needs to win the presidency.  Read more

No place for race-baiting in Senate contest

In the early aftermath of last month's primary election, some supporters of State Senator Dianne Wilkerson made remarks that were racially charged and deeply troubling.

Reporter correspondent Gintautas Dumcius was in the room when the senator's supporters rallied in Grove Hall last Tuesday for what served as the launch of Wilkerson's bid to challenge Chang-Diaz in a sticker candidacy next month.

Dumcius's report included the following:  Read more

Lupo captured the voices of Boston's neighborhoods over five decades

There's too many injustices in our world. So, I believe a journalist should write by the standard of "comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable." Alan Lupo did this for many decades and Boston and Massachusetts are really a better place because he practiced this.  Read more

Yoon weighs mayoral run -- in a maybe sort of way

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Oct. 1, 2008

Based on language on invitations printed and passed out for a fundraiser held this month in California, Boston's daily newspapers ran a story framing City Councillor Sam Yoon as a possible candidate for mayor of Boston in 2009.

Although Yoon and his new spokesperson, Curtis Ellis, were both determined to leave the possibility of a Yoon run open (and what aspiring politician would weigh down their name if it was floated anywhere as lofty?), the hullabaloo about 2009 seems based more on a slow news week than an impending reality.  Read more

Wilkerson write-in try awkward for Dems

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Oct. 1, 2008

As state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson cranks up her political apparatus for a write-in campaign to keep the Second Suffolk District seat she's held for 15 years, her colleagues on Beacon Hill, in City Hall and among the Dorchester delegation are largely staying on the sidelines.  Read more

Presidential politics enter S. Vietnamese flag day

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Oct. 1, 2008

After Saigon fell on April 30, 1975, the yellow flag with three red stripes (often flown in Dorchester's Vietnamese-American community) was forbidden on Vietnamese territory. It was the flag of the South Vietnamese, first born after France signed the Ha Long Bay Accord with Emperor Bao Dai of Vietnam in 1948.  Read more

Racially-charged start to the latest round

The latest round in the slugfest between incumbent state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson (D-Roxbury) and Democratic nominee Sonia Chang-Diaz has taken a racially-charged turn, after one high-profile Wilkerson supporter said that Chang-Diaz is not a "person of color", even though Chang-Diaz is of white, Asian and Latin descent.  Read more

Congressmen offer take on economy

Dorchester's two men in Congress - Michael Capuano in the Eighth District and Stephen F. Lynch in the Ninth - agree they want to see Wall Street help foot the bill for any government-sponsored bailout of the financial industry. Nonetheless, the men came down on opposite sides of Monday's vote on Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's $700 billion bailout bill.  Read more