He finally made up his mind.
http://www.boston.com/...
Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino today endorsed fellow Democrat Elizabeth Warren in her challenge to Senator Scott Brown, a Republican for whom the mayor has shown a personal affinity.
Appearing together at a major rally in Roslindale, the mayor said he had withheld his endorsement of Warren until he got to know the first-time political candidate better.
I missed the actual rally; I didn't check my voicemail last night. I would have had to work anyway, but I wish to God that I had known! Coming home on the commuter rail I had a choice--go all the way to Highland station and walk a half mile or get off at Roslindale Square and take the bus home. I made the wrong choice.
I really am wondering about the whole thing--the place, the time, the buses! Mayor Menino couldn't have picked a worse place for a rally, or maybe it was the Warren campaign that chose it. I will explain, being very familiar with the area, why this rally seemed designed to decrease support for Warren.
To understand, you need a map of the Boston public transit system. Unfortunately, the pdf's on the MBTA site cut right across the place I'm talking about so I don't have a good online version. Boston has robust public transit system with several subway lines. One of the lines is the Orange Line, which serves some of the poorer areas of Boston. One end of the Orange Line is Forest Hills Station. The area around Forest Hills is a place of the Boston three-decker home. Not many people in the area have cars and they don't need them. 18 bus lines run out of Forest Hills station, and the buses run frequently, some every ten minutes or so. Many young mothers with small children take the bus, and of course during rush hour the buses coming out of Forest Hills are packed.
Almost all of those 18 bus lines have the same first leg of their route--they run for about a mile out of Forest Hills Station down Washington Street right into Roslindale Square. Roslindale Square is a tiny place for a rally. It's the center of the post-War town of Roslindale, and was built on a scale for foot traffic. There is zero parking available in this part of town. The square itself is a small fenced-in park that acts more like a rotary than anything else. All the traffic of Roslindale is shunted around this park
Google Maps
It's great for the weekly farmers' market or for a small festival, but really terrible for a big political rally. The one plus, easily accessible by public transit. Only problem was all the buses were put on a one hour delay. Which wouldn't have been so bad if the delay was restricted to 3:30 in the afternoon, when the rally started. But according to the woman waiting with me at the bus stop for 45 minutes who had been to the rally, it was almost like Menino and all the union guys were giving these long, long speeches, not mentioning Warren much, dragging out the clock until rush hour when she came on. Frantic pedestrians were walking by us, worried about late daycare, worried about the hour of their lives stuck in traffic. When the bus finally came it was packed with very, very cranky people, who all knew the reason why they were getting home so late--Elizabeth Warren.
I know that traffic snarls go with political rallies. Of course. But usually the trade off is an easily accessible, large venue. This park is TINY, zero parking and with the buses not running, basically inaccessible. And all the car traffic was impossibly snarled up too. Yes, you couldn't get a place more authentically Boston. But they should have been in and out instead of giving speeches for two and a half hours. Fallon Field, a baseball field a couple blocks away, is three times the size, just as accessible, with more parking, and wouldn't have snarled up traffic. Likewise, Healy Playground is even larger and almost as close, just as accessible, and not in the middle of a rotary.
It's like they deliberately picked a place that would give bad optics and make the maximum number of people annoyed with Warren, and delayed everything enough to get the largest effect.