Crayton’s bright flame extinguished too soon

Howard Manly

It’s all final now for Anthony Crayton.

He came on the Boston political scene like a tropical storm, daring to trade votes for power on the historically weak Boston City Council, and actually working with his more conservative colleagues.

He left almost as quickly, defeated by the very liberal coalition that elected him in the first place.

That’s what Boston does to those who think, and most importantly, act differently than those willing to maintain the status quo, many of whom still confuse rock-throwing with political power.

Yes, Tony Crayton was a maverick. And, yes, he didn’t last long.

Now he is dead, at 56 years old, resting in St. Michael Cemetery. His family has yet to place a marker on the freshly dug dirt. The funeral was just last week and the flowers, once bold and colorful, now lay on the ground. They too will be gone soon.

His life should not have ended this way, virtually alone at the Chilton Hospice in Cambridge and away from the political scene in Boston. He helped out here and there, but the political force that he promised became faded from view some time ago. The official cause of death was liver failure.

“I considered myself a progressive pragmatist,” Crayton once told the Boston Herald. “I wasn’t involved in protest politics. My way was more of participation.”

Crayton came from noble heritage. His father was part Cherokee; his mother part Choctaw. They moved to Roxbury from Texas. Crayton was the fourth of five children. He graduated from English High School and attended the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

His love was politics.

Crayton’s first elected position was as president of the Black Political Task Force in 1989. When then city councilor Bruce Bolling gave up his seat in a bid for a citywide council seat in 1991, Crayton, an analyst with the Boston Employment Commission’ jumped into the race to fill Bolling’s 7th District seat. He trounced his main competitor Roy Owens, in a typically nasty Boston election, by a 57.5 percent to 42.5 margin.

“I feel exhilarated and elated,” Crayton said at the time.

That didn’t last long.

With mayor Ray Flynn courting the Clinton Administration for a job, the vote for city council president became more than a rubber-stamp. That city council president was expected to move up to mayor once Flynn left, and that is exactly what happened. While most of the liberals and progressives lined up behind Maura Hennigan, Crayton held out, ultimately voting for one Tommy Menino. In exchange, Menino appointed Crayton as chairman of the council’s powerful Ways and Means Committee.

Crayton became the first minority to sit in that position and he quickly guaranteed more attention and money for Roxbury.

He held more than 70 hearings during his first term and his used his position to cajole city officials to help out his district.

Something happened along the way.

The liberals and progressives turned on Crayton. He not only supported Menino, he also rejected a city-redistricting plan heavily supported by the liberals and progressives.

Payback came during the next election. Hennigan supporters, including city Councilor Rosario Salerno, worked against Crayton and actively supported his opponent, Gareth Saunders. Crayton lost a key Ward 4 Democratic Committee endorsement. Even the Black Political Task Force turned against Crayton.

“Basically people are disappointed in Tony Crayton and feel that he is not listening to us as a task force and even to his constituency,” Task Force President Tony Vandermeer said at the time.

Crayton lost by 90 votes. Six thousand were cast.

He didn’t go out quietly.

“Why did they gang up on me?” Crayton rhetorically asked a reporter. “It’s all because they wanted to be mayor and because they couldn’t stop the Menino machine…there was only one way to take out their vengeance and they took it out on me.”

Crayton went on.

“It’s kind of like slavery,” Crayton told the Boston Globe. “You didn’t like the guy who worked harder because that would make them have to work harder. We are not slaves anymore. What our community needed was hard work and dedication to hard work.”

No one worked harder.

“I never lost a vote on the City Council,” Crayton said. “I was good at what I was doing. I did my job...I was never part of their clique. They were into the political protests of the 1960s and guilt-tripping people into giving up resources… You have to make moves, get positions of power and use it as everybody else does and stop bellyaching.”

Crayton was maverick alright, not because he was outspoken, but because he was right.