Early Political Career
In 1976, Capuano was elected to the Somerville Board of Aldermen, representing Ward Five, the seat once held by his father. He served one term, stepping down in 1979 to run for mayor of Somerville. In the 1979 mayoral election he faced Eugene Brune, Paul Haley, and incumbent Thomas August. He lost the nomination to Brune, who defeated August. He ran again in 1981 to challenge Brune, placing second in a three-man runoff election. Capuano promoted his vote against Proposition 2½ and criticized Brune for expanding the mayoral staff in the face of tight city budgets, while Brune touted his prevention of service cuts after Proposition 2½ passed. Capuano lost in the general election with 40 percent of the vote.
Capuano served as chief legal counsel for the Massachusetts General Court's Joint Committee on Taxation from 1978 to 1984. He left the committee in 1984 to join Beacon Hill law firm and lobbying group Joyce & Joyce. In 1985 he returned to the Somerville Board of Aldermen as an at-large member.
He ran for mayor of Somerville a third time in 1989 and won the election. He served as mayor from 1990 to 1999, where he earned a reputation as a hands-on administrator. One of his priorities was to lower the city's population density, the highest of any New England municipality, by using state grants to demolish several buildings and replace them with playgrounds and parking spaces. He also oversaw a reduction in class size to 19 students.
Capuano ran for Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth in the 1994 election. Capuano was seen as a conservative-leaning party outsider, running against former state representatives Augusto Grace and William F. Galvin for the Democratic nomination, and struggled to obtain support among party leaders. During the race he framed himself as an advocate for the poor and urban communities. He criticized state aid formulas which, he argued, left poorer municipalities such as Somerville and Boston with less per-capita revenue than wealthier communities such as Cambridge and Brookline. To appear on the Democratic primary ballot required the support of at least 15 percent of delegates in the June state party convention. In what the Boston Globe deemed "an embarrassing defeat", he was pushed out of the race with only 13 percent of delegate votes. When asked why he staged the difficult race to begin with, he responded, "Because I wasn't ready to run for governor."
Read more about this topic: Mike Capuano
Famous quotes containing the words early, political and/or career:
“The shift from the perception of the child as innocent to the perception of the child as competent has greatly increased the demands on contemporary children for maturity, for participating in competitive sports, for early academic achievement, and for protecting themselves against adults who might do them harm. While children might be able to cope with any one of those demands taken singly, taken together they often exceed children’s adaptive capacity.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“There is a potential 4-6 percentage point net gain for the President [George Bush] by replacing Dan Quayle on the ticket with someone of neutral stature.”
—Mary Matalin, U.S. Republican political advisor, author, and James Carville b. 1946, U.S. Democratic political advisor, author. All’s Fair: Love, War, and Running for President, p. 205, Random House (1994)
“They want to play at being mothers. So let them. Expressing tenderness in their own way will not prevent girls from enjoying a successful career in the future; indeed, the ability to nurture is as valuable a skill in the workplace as the ability to lead.”
—Anne Roiphe (20th century)