Boston Globe: Stumping to newer roots

Menino joins his mayoral competitors in trying to woo younger voters

As the after-work crowd at Tia’s sipped mojitos and clutched aluminum bottles of Bud Light, Mayor Thomas M. Menino, tie firmly knotted and cuffs buttoned, worked his way through the packed patio, shaking hands and posing for iPhone photos.

“I got more energy than everyone put together!’’ Menino, a 66-year-old incumbent seeking a fifth term, declared with vigor after grabbing a microphone last Tuesday. “How many folks in this room here tonight was out riding a bike at 5 o’clock this morning? Raise your hand. I’m the only one.’’

Women in outsized sunglasses and men with open collars hooted and whistled. Most were younger than Menino’s children.

In the most competitive election of Menino’s tenure, his chief opponents are two city councilors, Michael F. Flaherty and Sam Yoon, who were still in graduate school when he took office. They are trying hard to paint the incumbent as a relic from Boston’s past while hoping to connect, often on a personal level, with the 20- and 30-somethings who make up much of the city but pay little or no attention to its politics.

Menino’s campaign, though, is refusing to cede the youth vote. He has countered with campus recruiting drives, bar gatherings like the one Tuesday at Tia’s in the North End, and a concerted effort at online social networking. His supporters believe it is working.

“If someone just read the papers, they would maybe get the assumption that every young voter is behind the other two major candidates,’’ said Michael Ratty, a 29-year-old North End resident and member of Young Professionals for Menino, which organized the event at the popular waterfront bar. “But I think when you get to events like this, you see that . . . the mayor has really connected with young people.’’

Ratty said he was drawn to the mayor through ONEin3 Boston, a Menino initiative for people ages 20 to 34 - one-third of the city in the last census - that provides networking opportunities, seeks feedback, and encourages people to engage in civic life and put down roots in Boston. Ratty, an avowed fan of Twitter, tweeted about the bar gathering in advance, then again (“HUGE crowd already!!!’’) from the patio after arriving.

Inching through the event, Menino fielded questions about recycling rates and Downtown Crossing development delays and drew plaudits for mandating credit-card machines in taxis. In a stump speech, he bypassed the potholes-and-public-safety stuff to highlight a new iPhone application for municipal complaints, the green-building standards incorporated into the zoning code, and cutting-edge businesses that have set up shop in Boston.

Menino asked the crowd’s help in moving Boston “to greater heights.’’

The roughly 150 people there, nodding and wearing Menino stickers, would seem to be the target audience for Flaherty’s “Good/Better’’ advertising campaign, which playfully seeks to link Menino with the past and the 40-year-old Flaherty with the future. In one, a gray cassette deck stands in for Menino, while a bright-blue iPod serves as proxy for Flaherty.

Yoon, meanwhile, has oriented his campaign toward what some call the “New Boston’’ - minorities and white progressives, many of them young and recent arrivals to the city. Yoon fits the profile himself: Boston’s first Asian-American city councilor is a 39-year-old former educator, community organizer, and affordable-housing developer who moved to the city in 2003.

The younger voters they are courting flocked to the polls last November but typically eschew city elections. Turnout in Boston for the last presidential election was twice as high as it was for the last mayoral election, but nearly five times as high among voters 18 to 39, said Bob LeLievre, a political data analyst volunteering for Yoon’s campaign.

That “Obama magic’’ might not have much effect on turnout in the mayoral race, said Maurice Cunningham, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. But that hasn’t stopped each of the candidates, including South End businessman Kevin McCrea, from trying to capture it ahead of the Sept. 22 preliminary election.

Jim Spencer, Yoon’s chief strategist, said it makes sense for Menino to target young voters, but he questioned the match.

“I don’t know how to say it without being rude to the mayor,’’ Spencer said. “It’s not his generation.’’

But it is the generation of Emily Nowlin, Menino’s campaign manager, who, three years out of college, had little trouble attracting student interns (100 and counting) and young-professional volunteers (250-plus). Some grew up with Boston politics, but many more were energized by the presidential race and are looking for their next campaign.

“He’s a pretty adept politician, and I think he doesn’t get enough credit for understanding political changes,’’ Cunningham said of Menino.

The cofounders of Young Professionals for Menino, two law-school classmates, are both longtime Menino fans: Gina-Marie Mariano, 24, whose father, Raymond Mariano, a former Worcester mayor, is friendly with Menino; and Mike Welsh, 25, who, as a child, received congratulations from City Councilor Menino and Mayor Ray Flynn after thwarting a burglary. (Welsh and a friend were playing at his Jamaica Plain home when they spotted a crime in process and told his mother, who notified police.)

But Mariano and Welsh noticed that many of their peers had not met the mayor - unlike legions of homeowners, parents, and regular voters - and did not follow local politics. Some knew Menino only as “Mumbles,’’ Welsh said. “Putting people face to face with him changes that impression, because he’s a really great guy and passionate about the city,’’ he said.

Their Facebook group merged with the campaign and grew into an official arm that helps to attract more young people. The Tia’s event was one in a series.

“I love the young people, love the old people,’’ Menino said, slipping out from the packed bar toward a waiting vehicle. He was bound for Fenway Park, and the ceremony retiring Jim Rice’s number.

“How can you refuse Jim Rice? I grew up with Jim Rice,’’ Menino said.

But he was taking a slight liberty with his age. Rice’s celebrated Red Sox rookie season came in 1975. Menino, by then, was a married father of two.