Battenfeld: Kim Janey shining up her record and image with taxpayer-funded resources

Tom Menino did it. Marty Walsh did it. Now Boston Acting Mayor Kim Janey — who was supposed to be a new breath of fresh air — is doing the same thing.

Janey, locked in a tough election battle, is resorting to using the resources of her taxpayer-funded office to enhance her image and shine up her record — and by extension her campaign.

It’s a murky area of campaign finance law that elected officials have skirted for decades. They aren’t allowed to spend taxpayer money on their campaign, so they flood the zone with groundbreakings, press releases, speeches and grant announcements that come out of their office budget.

Money is tight in this campaign — especially for Janey, who got off to a late start — so she’s saving hundreds of thousands of dollars by bolstering her election bid with “official” expenditures that are part of her duties as acting mayor.

Janey argues that she’s simply doing her job as acting mayor — well, she doesn’t use the word “acting” — and serving her constituents by reminding them to check on elderly neighbors during a heat wave, attend a Fourth of July event or celebrate her first 100 days in office.

It’s all part of an incumbency advantage that Janey’s challengers for the most part don’t have the luxury of using.

Mayoral candidates Michelle Wu, Andrea Campbell and Annissa Essaibi-George are incumbent city councilors, but that doesn’t have nearly the same heft and power of the mayor’s office.

They are forced to spend campaign dollars when they want to make a campaign speech or a major announcement.

For example, Janey will be front and center leading this weekend’s Independence Day celebrations, parade and fireworks displays — a ceremonial role for sure, but one that will give her plenty of free media time.

And on Friday she marked her first 100 days in office, a made-up event since she was never elected to the office — she inherited it when then-Mayor Marty Walsh left to become secretary of labor. The city’s digital team even put together a slick video for Janey to show before her speech. And Janey didn’t have to spend a dime of campaign money.

Campbell on Friday tried to turn the 100 days mark against Janey, arguing that she failed to address serious issues in the city during that time.

“This is not the time for a celebration, it’s time for governing,” Campbell said.

Janey, who new polls show is one of the frontrunners in this fall’s election, is not the first or the last to discover the advantages of incumbency. Both Menino, who served five terms, and Walsh in his two terms were masters at using taxpayer-funded resources to buttress their re-election campaigns.

Walsh in his last campaign had few actual campaign events, and instead relied on his office appearances and events to get his message out to the city. And Menino — as a way of belittling his competitors — would barely even acknowledge the campaign existed.

And guess what? It worked.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3hs5K3n