Home Page

 

 

 

 

 

ARCHIVES OF LEAD STORIES

 

March 24, 2005

Yawu Miller

The idea of a motorcade came from members of the Caribbean American Political Action Committee.

“It’s something we always do before an election to try to generate excitement,” said CAPAC member Clarence Cooper, who hails from Trinidad, where the practice is common.

Linda Dorcena Forry’s campaign manager Stuart Rosenberg had second thoughts. A column of cars winding through the community could easily tie up traffic and anger potential voters, thought the Wisconsin native, but he deferred to CAPAC.

“If you were a political consultant you’d say, ‘it won’t work. You’ll just block traffic,’” Rosenberg said. “But who knows better, CAPAC or a Jewish guy from Wisconsin?”

Days before the March 15 election, 40 vehicles covered with placards bearing Forry’s name wended their way through the business areas and by-ways of the 12th Suffolk District. In high foot-traffic areas, the cars unloaded and Forry took the lead of a parade of volunteers and pressed the flesh with the people.

Her campaign strategy — which included intensive door knocking and a corps of more than 250 volunteers — enabled her to come away from a five-way race for a vacant State House seat with 47 percent of the vote. Her nearest competitor, Eric Donovan, garnered just 24 percent of the vote.

On Tuesday of last week, Forry’s victory was celebrated at Milton’s Hoosic Club where a who’s who of Boston’s political establishment rubbed shoulders with friends and supporters.

“It’s wonderful to have the opportunity to represent the 12th Suffolk District,” a tearful Forry said to the mixed-race audience. “I feel blessed.”

Supporters at Forry’s celebration hailed her victory as an indication of the city’s new racial climate.

“Once again we’ve proven that if you build bridges across ethnic lines, you can win and you can win with a resounding ‘yes,’” said state Rep. Marie St. Fleur. “We’re not buying into the negative politics of the past.”

The daughter of Haitian immigrants, Forry worked as an aide to former state Rep. Charlotte Golar Richie during her years in the State House, then moved with Richie to the Department of Neighborhood Development when the latter was appointed to head the agency.

Forry came out early in the race, beginning fundraising and door-knocking in Ward 18.

“The strategy was simple,” Rosenberg said. “To hit Mattapan like it’s never been hit before in December and January.”

Forry’s team knocked on doors of registered voters, following up each visit with a phone call and a mailing. The aim was to shore up votes before the other candidates were able to get a toehold.

The 12th Suffolk District includes precincts in Ward 18 (Mattapan, Hyde Park), Ward 17 (Lower Mills), Ward 16 (Neponset) and two precincts in Milton.

From the beginning there were five candidates in the race: Forry, Donovan, Stacey Monahan, Emmanuel Bellegarde and Kirby Robeson. Because Forry, Bellegarde and Robeson were all Haitian American, the vote in that community was widely seen as being split.

By targeting Ward 18, Forry went after the black vote and Bellegarde’s presumed base.

“We saw we had an opportunity to stop Kirby and Emmanuel before they ever got started,” Rosenberg said.

The seven precincts in Ward 18 also represented the largest single bloc of voters, delivering 2,017 votes of which Forry received 1160. Once that area was shored up, the campaign shifted into Milton, where she received another 565 votes.

In Ward 16’s precincts 4, 11 and 12 — Dorchester’s whitest, most conservative and highest-voting — Forry campaigned lightly. The 1,344 votes were mostly split between Donovan and Monahan whose Irish Catholic roots in the area gave them a home-court advantage. There she picked up 19 percent of the votes.

In Ward 17, where she served on the ward committee, she campaigned last. There she picked up 53 percent of the 1,344 votes — slightly better than her total tally of 47 percent of the 5,886 votes cast in the race.

While Ward 18 was instrumental in Forry’s victory, it was clear that she had to appeal to a broad cross section of voters in the district — whites, blacks, Caribbean Americans, urban dwellers and suburbanites. Her platform of affordable housing, health care, school reform and community-based public safety was not too different from the platforms advanced by her competitors.

The clearest split in opinions in the race came with Forry and Monahan’s stands in favor of gay marriage and Donovan’s support for the death penalty. In the end, the more conservative sections of the district seemed to gravitate toward Donovan, who after his defeat railed against the new Boston and the current direction of the Democratic Party in published reports.

At Dorcena’s victory party, state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson took the opposite tack, speaking in praise of the new Boston — a phrase used in the news media to describe the new political reality wrought by increased voter participation among the city’s majority population of color.

“This continues the march for communities that historically have been marginalized,” she told the Banner. “Now, after Felix and Andrea and now Linda, it’s not a fluke. This is real. This is not a fluke. The progressive message about unity works. It’s resonating in this city.”

Back to Lead Story Archives

Home Page