After one year off and one year of remote joke- and jab-trading between Boston’s political leaders, the annual St. Patrick’s Day breakfast was back in person last Sunday with state Sen. Nick Collins hosting the event at its return to the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.
The strain of a two-year pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine loomed over the event as politicians offered notes of sincerity in between the breakfast’s trademark tortured roasts. Those gathered were “back without masks, and, for some of us, self-respect,” Collins said in welcoming the crowd. Senate President Karen Spilka said she was cheered that the event’s in-person return offered everyone a chance to “laugh, or at least cringe, together.”
Together, indeed, they can “get through anything except the Republican primary,” Collins said, gently needling Gov. Baker, who is not running for a third term. He had been expected to face a surprisingly difficult MassGOP primary with a challenge from his right.
In a Pink Floyd musical parody, Collins took aim at the governor’s “radical” Massachusetts Republican reputation and reluctance to impose and maintain statewide Covid-19 mask and vaccine policies, and ribbed him about missing his “bro,” former mayor Martin J. Walsh, who now serves as US Labor Secretary.
Politicians mined the gubernatorial race for some sharper digs. Mayor Michelle Wu reminisced about burying a time capsule behind City Hall that is full of “a bunch of things to leave behind – face masks, vaccine mandates, Marty Walsh’s dream of being governor.” That last one, at least, remains alive, Wu joked. The former mayor and Dorchester resident was rumored to be seriously considering running for governor until Attorney General Maura Healey’s entry into the race.
Spilka said she was told to keep her remarks as brief as “Ben Downing’s gubernatorial campaign” and offered a large inflatable “lame duck” to Baker.
Several speakers sniped at former state representative Geoff Diehl, a Republican candidate for governor endorsed by former President Donald Trump. Spilka riffed on an imagined Diehl daily schedule that included an anti-science rally, a Capitol insurrection, and a 2 p.m. book-burning.
Diehl’s election would have the effect of “setting us all back 50 years,” Wu said. Looking ahead at the open race, she joked, “it’s impossible to say which woman Democrat from Boston you’ll be congratulating eight months from now.” Healey and state Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz, the two Democrats running for the office, both joked about Zoom life and suggested that Baker might take a cue from Tom Brady’s about-face retirement from football.
While Healey laid out lessons for her return to campaign life inspired by other Boston pols – namely, achieve a Wu-level social media brand and take a footwear note from Senator Ed Markey’s Nikes – Chang-Diaz suggested that frontrunner Healey use her overflowing war chest “to finally teach members of the state Legislature how to use the mute button on Zoom.”
Attendees at the maskless event referenced Boston’s lifted vaccine mandates and the early morning protestors outside Wu’s Roslindale home. In a bit that drew some genuine laughs from the crowd, Norfolk County Treasurer Michael Bellotti read fake intercepted letters riffing on news of the day.
“Dear Mayor Wu, thank you so much for courageously adhering to the strictest Covid restrictions possible for the city of Boston and putting public health before all other selfish interests,” Bellotti said. “Please don’t cave in. Signed by Mayor Tom Koch and the Quincy Restaurant Association.”
The breakfast high table featured an array of past and former city councillors, including Andrea Campbell, who is currently running for attorney general. A full crowd of lieutenant governor and state auditor hopefuls made short pitches in a City Councillor Frank Baker-hosted speed run toward the end of the breakfast.
US Rep. Stephen Lynch, a staple of the event, was not at the breakfast. He and other members of a US lawmaker delegation are visiting Ukrainian refugee centers in eastern Poland. Other delegation absences: US Senators Elizabeth Warren and Markey, as well as US Rep. Ayanna Pressley.
Baker applauded Lynch’s work in foreign policy and offered a Lynch-esque joke about a Dublin man who drowned while drinking too much Guinness. But he, like several other speakers, ended on a gentler note at his last St. Patrick’s breakfast as governor.
“Despite the brutality and the trauma and the disruption and the isolation and all the other stuff that came with this very challenging — and at times, tragic — time, folks were good to each other,” the governor said.
