Both Walsh and Connolly have taken great pains to straddle these two worlds. They’ve each tried to graft enough of the new Boston onto the city’s old, politically active base to cobble together a winning coalition.
Walsh is the son of Irish immigrants and a second-generation construction laborer. He speaks with a ragged Boston accent. The 46-year old state legislator measure the success of his days on the campaign trail by how much his right hand aches at night, when he’s done shaking hands. He’s a former alcoholic who has touched a vein of fervent support in the city’s recovery community. There’s plenty of Tom Menino in Walsh: He won’t stun anyone with oratory, but he combines a fierce work ethic with a unique ability to connect personally with voters.
Walsh entered the mayoral race vowing to out-hustle field, and he topped September’s 12-person preliminary election. Walsh will never out-debate Connolly on policy minutiae, but along the way, he’s surprised skeptics. He wowed a room full of downtown business executives recently with a riff about how he’d never imagined, when he first ran for the State House, that he’d be a key vote against the death penalty, and for gay marriage, but he’d grown with the job. “You grow and evolve,” he says. “You learn.” He argues that he has traction in the mayor’s race because “my upbringing is resonating. I keep hearing the theme, I’m a regular guy.”