Rep. Michael Capuano (D)

The congressman from the 8th District is Democrat Michael Capuano, the winner of a 10-candidate brawl in the 1998 primary who has been safe ever since. It has been said that over the past 70 years this district has been represented alternately by townies and Kennedys: James Michael Curley, the scampish five-term mayor of Boston and one-term governor; followed by John F. Kennedy in 1946. Then for many years, beginning in 1953, the seat belonged to Thomas (Tip) O’Neill, who rose to become speaker of the House. After his retirement in 1986, Joe Kennedy, son of Robert F. Kennedy, was elected to the seat. Then came Capuano, who was born and raised in Somerville. His paternal grandfather emigrated from Italy, and his father was the first Italian-American elected official in Somerville. His mother is the granddaughter of Irish immigrants. Capuano graduated from Dartmouth and Boston College Law School. He returned to Somerville to raise his family, practice law, and enter politics. By day, he worked for the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Taxation and practiced law. In off-hours, he served as alderman of the 5th Ward, as his father had. He served as alderman-at-large from 1985 to 1989, then won election five times as Somerville mayor. For decades an Irish and Italian town, Somerville now attracts many graduate students and yuppies. Capuano seems to have been the right politician for this mix, with deep Somerville roots and a penchant for innovation and reform. He had a solid base of support to run for the 8th District seat when Joe Kennedy declined to seek re-election. In a 10-candidate field, Capuano led with 23%, with former Boston Mayor Ray Flynn (1983-93) the runner-up at 17%.

In the House, Capuano is well to the left on the political spectrum, although relatively centrist within the Massachusetts delegation. He supports same-sex marriage, opposed a ban on partial-birth abortion, and harshly criticized the Bush administration’s handling of the war in Iraq. On the Financial Services Committee, he works closely with Chairman Barney Frank, another Massachusetts liberal Democrat.

Capuano is close to the Democratic leadership in the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi trusts him to take on difficult assignments and quietly get the job done. Pelosi, who grew up in Baltimore as the daughter of a U.S. representative, shares with Capuano an urban, ethnic political background. After Democrats won majority control of the House in 2006 and Pelosi was elevated to the speakership, she tapped him to take charge of the myriad tasks in the transition. In some ways, it was a rocky exercise. With Pelosi, he backed Pennsylvania Democrat John Murtha’s ill-fated challenge to Maryland’s Steny Hoyer for the post of majority leader. Tasked with helping to revise party caucus rules and ethics guidelines, Capuano emphasized inclusion and reform, and stayed out of the spotlight. In March 2008, the House passed his reform package, which created an Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent board that for the first time allows non-lawmakers to review possible ethics violations by House members. Congressional watchdog groups have long favored setting up such a panel. Republicans opposed the plan for its failure to put teeth into the House Standards of Official Conduct (Ethics) Committee, and the reform had little practical impact during its first year.

He also chairs the House Administration Committee’s Capitol Security Subcommittee, which puts him in charge of the Capitol Police force and other internal operations that affect the day-to-day lives of members of Congress. He was also assigned to head the Commission on Mailing Standards, which supervises franked mail, another sensitive insider task that requires the trust of House leaders. Republicans groused about possible free speech violations in a Capuano proposal to require House approval of members’ postings on outside websites, but he responded that the criticism was “laughably inaccurate.”

In the foreign policy arena, Capuano co-founded the Congressional Caucus on Sudan and traveled to the region in 2006 in support of United Nations peacekeeping forces.

Like any traditional Boston pol, he angles for federal goodies for his district. On the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, he has worked to secure funding for the North Washington Street Bridge near North Station plus several rapid-transit extensions. After a fatal ceiling collapse in a tunnel that was part of Boston’s “Big Dig” (a massive highway and tunnel project) in 2006, he sponsored a bill setting highway tunnel inspection standards, which passed the House. When Catholic bishops across the nation said in 2004 that they would deny communion to presidential candidate John Kerry of Massachusetts because of his support for abortion rights, Capuano was out front with a public reply to the bishops that Catholics should be able to vote their conscience. Capuano has expressed interest in running for the next available Senate seat in Massachusetts.