It’s the stuff of which Boston Herald front-pages are made.
Gene Rivers, the voluble Dorchester minister who backed Charlotte Golar Richie’s mayoral bid and ripped other minority candidates for not getting out of her way so that black and Latino voters could coalesce around her, didn’t actually bother to show up and vote himself. He hasn’t bothered to vote for years, it turns out, not even casting a ballot in Mel King’s historic run for mayor of Boston 30 years ago.
The problem for the Herald is that that paper had already given over its front-page to Rivers last Thursday. He stares angrily at the camera lens in a full page photo, and pens a lengthy screed inside that tears into the city’s black leadership for its inept squandering of a chance at real political empowerment. He scolds the community for its “extremely lackluster” turnout and the lack of discipline among its would-be leaders.
It was left to Globe columnist Adrian Walker to tee up Rivers this morning for this classic bit of do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do. “On this subject, he has forfeited the right to preach,” Walker writes of the civic lecturing from Rivers.
In an act of grace that the reverend should appreciate, Walker says Rivers, a cofounder of the Ten Point Coalition that formed in the 1990s to address gang violence, has done good for young people that is “beyond measure.” Of that there is no doubt.
But Rivers’s dereliction of civic duty is glaring. It is hard not to view it as a sign from on high of what ails the city’s older generation of black leaders, where hard-charging words seem to come easier than change-making action.
There was an irony, too, in Rivers’s sudden embrace of Richie, a weak candidate who never represented the sort of cause black voters might energetically rally around. Rivers has often scorned black candidates trying to secure a seat at the table of power, backing Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama and, more recently and locally, throwing in with South Boston state Rep. Nick Collins over then-Rep. Linda Dorcena Forry in the race for the state Senate seat representing Dorchester and Southie.
Walker probably did not have to work too hard to coax a comment out of now-Sen. Forry when he asked her about the reverend’s lapses at the ballot box. “The hypocrisy is disgraceful,” she said. “Particularly when we consider the blood, sweat, and tears that have gone into securing the right to vote for all, especially for African-Americans and women.”
Can she get an amen?
–MICHAEL JONAS
BEACON HILL
A tax fairness commission begins looking for ways to revamp the state’s tax code and plans to have a report done by March 1, State House News reports (via Gloucester Times).
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
Eileen McNamara, in a column for WBUR, says the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s deal with the Red Sox for game-day use of Yawkey Way is a shameful sweetheart deal.
Boston Mayor Thomas Menino launches a blog called NextBoston, which is designed to lay out the issues facing the next mayor and help during the transition.
A vigil was held for a badly abused dog in Quincy, NECN reports.
NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON
A government shutdown gets closer, with little sign of a resolution before tonight’s midnight deadline. “This may be the way the world ends,” Paul Krugman writes of the shutdown today. “Not with a bang but with a temper tantrum.” Another bit of unfortunate math: Slate’s Matthew Yglesias notes that the federal debt ceiling, which has reappeared as a fault line in the Obamacare wars, has little bearing on government spending levels.
House Speaker John Boehner tells Americans to delay getting cancer for a year while politicians in Washington fight it out over health care, the New Yorker reports. A federal shutdown won’t slow the rollout of national health care exchanges; the bureaucracy is doing that on its own.
A group of Democratic senators including Sen. Edward Markey wrote letters to 17 energy drink makers, including the producers of such popular drinks as Red Bull and Monster, asking them to cease marketing their products to children.
ELECTIONS
The Beat the Press panel debates whether failed mayoral candidate Charlotte Golar Richie was the victim of sexist coverage by the media. On the Sunday morning version of Keller@Large, Jon Keller and the Globe’s Jim O’Sullivan do a post-mortem on the preliminary and a look at the final.
James Aloisi, as part of his CommonWealth series of articles on pivotal mayors in Boston’s past, looks at the Boston Redevelopment Authority.
Elizabeth Warren tells the New York Times that she isn’t running for president, but the Clintons are keeping a wary eye on the freshman senator anyway.
The Globe traces New York mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio’s liberal roots back to his high school days in Cambridge.
Scott Brown puts his Wrentham home on the market, sparking speculation that he’s readying a Senate run in New Hampshire.
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
A new study finds that endowments at private foundations grew more than 12 percent last year, much better than the 1 percent loss from 2011. The gain was still only half of what was lost since the financial crisis started in 2008.
EDUCATION
Fall River officials have formed a task force to try to reduce the rate of chronic absenteeism in the city’s schools, where 45 percent of high school students and 30 percent of kindergartners were chronically absent.
Salem State University is planning to lease apartment space downtown for faculty and graduate students, the Salem News reports.
Some top-notch colleges and universities, including MIT, are making efforts to smooth the way for students who are the first in their family to attend college, a group that can find it an alien experience to arrive on campuses filled with privilege and wealth.
HEALTH CARE
The rush to join the legal weed dealing world in Massachusetts is raising concerns among medical officials.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
An off-duty state trooper will be charged with operating under the influence of alcohol in the fatal crash in Plymouth last week that killed a Carver woman and her daughter.
MEDIA
The Nieman Journalism Review examines what makes the Texas Tribune’s event business so successful and lucrative.
