When gubernatorial candidate Steve Grossman needed a campaign backdrop to roll out his plan to save the state money on prescription drugs, the Codman Square Health Center seemed as logical a choice as any. That’s evidently what fellow Democrat Robert Reich figured as well when he announced his crime-fighting plan a few weeks later from the same location. So, too, for Shannon O’Brien, who held a “town meeting” for women there, and Warren Tolman, who came to this neighborhood institution to trumpet his plan to save city dwellers money on auto insurance.
Almost all the candidates show up at Bill Walczak’s door.
But when Republican Mitt Romney showed up, complete with PowerPoint presentation, to unveil his agenda on housing and sprawl, it was clear that the Dorchester health center had become the bipartisan campaign venue of choice in this year’s race for governor. Which is just fine with Bill Walczak, the center’s longtime executive director and chief cheerleader for a gritty urban crossroads.
“I’m happy to have them use us,” says Walczak, well aware that he’s using them every bit as much. Certainly his skills in politics and public relations have helped Walczak build one of the city’s most successful health centers, at the same time boosting a business district that was once one of Boston’s most barren.
“When all hell was breaking loose, all you ever heard about Codman Square was when something horrible was happening,” says Walczak, who founded the health center in 1979 with three employees in a basement office. Looting during the blizzard of 1978 had wiped out much of what was left of commerce in the area. In the three decades since, Codman Square has gone from basket case to showcase, sprouting scores of new businesses over the past decade–and anchored by the health center’s sprawling modern complex on Washington Street, which today employs 270 people and handles 130,000 patient visits per year. Walczak sees to it that the turnaround does not go unnoticed.
“You can either live with that”–a lingering reputation for urban blight –“or you can put Codman Square on the map as a place where good things are happening,” says Walczak. “And that’s what we’ve been trying to do, with some success, for the gubernatorial candidates.”
“He’s politically plugged in, he knows a lot of people, and he makes candidates welcome,” says Dorie Clark, who served as Reich’s campaign spokesman. “And he’s someone who is eager, for the sake of Dorchester, to make sure campaigns come through Dorchester.”
That candidates beat a path to Walczak’s door to spotlight a range of issues not limited to health care is no accident, either. Five years ago, the health center launched the CivicHealth Initiative, an outreach program that has expanded the view of community health to include neighborhood organizing efforts, a drive to boost voter participation, and the convening of candidate forums for every contest from City Council to Congress.
Though the nonprofit health care agency surely reaps dividends from Walczak’s unabashed promotion, the always-in-motion 48-year-old sees himself as a huckster for a higher cause. “Using our own history and Codman Square’s own history as a blighted neighborhood that has been able to strongly come back is a lesson that I think needs to be taught to politicians,” he says. “Government spends a lot of money trying to deal with the problems of working-class and low-income neighborhoods, yet there’s been very little effort to connect directly with those neighborhoods. So we’re trying to create that opportunity for them.”
Is he hoping Romney and O’Brien will want to connect with his neighborhood again before the November 5 election? “I’ve already contacted them,” says Walczak.
Asked if he can think of another spot in the state that gubernatorial candidates have so consistently converged on, O’Brien campaign spokesman Adrian Durbin says, “Other than the State House steps, none come to mind.”
Bill Walczak hopes to keep it that way.
