By Michael Jonas
What’s in a name? Plenty when it comes to Boston neighborhoods and local politics.
Matt O’Malley, an earnest 30-year-old activist, was the first one out of the gate when Boston City Councilor John Tobin announced last week that he is resigning his district seat to take a top job at Northeastern University.
The District 6 seat that Tobin is giving up – and that O’Malley is now running for – covers West Roxbury and Jamaica Plain along with small slivers of Roslindale and Mission Hill. But it is more conservative-leaning West Roxbury and liberal-laden Jamaica Plain that matter here. That’s why recent accounts of the impending race made O’Malley look like a candidate who has hit the daily-double in a city where neighborhood identity is taken way seriously.
From a Boston Globe story on Monday: “O’Malley grew up in West Roxbury and ran unsuccessfully for an at-lage seat on the City Council in 2003 and 2005. He bought his first home in Jamaica Plain in 2007.”
From blogger Mike Ball’s report of his chat with O’Malley about the sharp political differences between the two neighborhoods: “He says he has lived in both, knows both, and sees no reason for anyone to play one neighborhood off another.”
What’s the rub? O’Malley actually grew up in Roslindale. He regularly referred to himself in his earlier campaigns as a kid from “Rozzie,” and O’Malley’s parents still live in the modest cape where he was raised, not far from the Arnold Arboretum. A couple of years ago, however – and not without some neighborhood controversy – local zip code lines were redrawn and the O’Malleys’ longtime Roslindale homestead was suddenly in the West Roxbury zip code.
“My parents didn’t move to West Roxbury; West Roxbury moved to my parents,” says O’Malley. He says he explained the whole megillah to the Globe reporter and has done so any time he’s asked to sketch out his Boston biography. “I am from Roslindale,” he says.
But as the race heats up for what is often described as the West Roxbury-Jamaica Plain district seat, it surely won’t hurt that, along with now claiming a JP address, the patch of Roslindale that O’Malley once called home is now high-voting West Roxbury.
