About Last Night

Let's get right down to it: Last night's mayoral debate was the chippiest of the bunch, as Lisa Wong spent much of the night either angrily claiming Tom Donnelly didn't have his fact straight, or defending her positions.

The story of last night was Wong's aggressive defense/angry response to Donnelly -- particularly on taxes and her work at the Fitchburg Redevelopment Authority. Until last night, Wong seemed to float above the fray and the occassional jab thrown her way. She never, for example, go too fired up in the past when Donnelly all but scoffed at her and Ted DeSalvatore as being unworthy to run for mayor.

But last night, Wong fired back, and she did it with fire and anger. She said he was flat wrong on most points regarding the FRA and her tax stance. Oddly, somehow, Donnelly managed to stay out of the muck last night. Sure, the Weekend Mailer (now officially capitalized in all references) and his tax charges started all this, but last night he wasn't the aggressor, really. Which was kind of odd.

An interesting moment last night came when Wong asked Donnelly if the tax issue -- and the Weekend Mailer -- were his ideas or his campaigns (although she called them something not-so-nice that had "hired" in it). Donnelly candidly admitted that his campaign advisors pushed him to open up on the tax issue.

(A brief break to note: Donnelly has been very honest -- even perhaps to his detriment -- during this campaign. It wasn't the best answer in his interest to say his advisors pushed him on taxes. He said last week, and again last night, that Wong did a very good giving info to the council when she was at the FRA. Give the guy credit for doing the right thing.)

Wong noted last night that a slip of the tax levy to a 2.25 increase and a change in the tax shift would have saved homeowners money (remember, Donnelly advocates no change in the shift and the full 2.5 percent increase to keep money coming in). After the debate, one of Donnelly's paid staffers cruised over to note Wong had never proposed such a thing before and said she was backpedalling.

Maybe. Consider this from Thursday's Sentinel. "Wong said she believes more discussion is needed on changing the shift from 137 percent to 136 percent and lowering the yearly 2.5 percent increase." Maybe that was the first time she threw it out there, but she did kind of, sort of, mention it before Thursday's debate.

Outside of Wong's demeanor last night (and I'm not sure it hurt her. It was just very noticeable), the other big thing last night was the clear differences between these two. The taxes are one. Wong's desire for fast-track permitting and Donnelly's anti stance are stark. Donnelly's assurance that job cuts or union renegotiations must ASAP, and Wong's long-term financial view are very different. And then their fundamental campaign message.

Think back to the summer, when the campaigning was easy and people weren't paying much attention. Donnelly talked about his knowledge of city government and the city in general. Now, he's the guardian at the fiscal gate, the one person who can truly do what it's going to take to get the city back on the fiscal rails.

More striking is Wong. Back in the summer, she was about as wonky as you could get. In an interview with the Pride before the preliminary, she was discussing her desire to figure out how much it costs to fill a pothole and then create a system that maximizes efficiencies to fill potholes, instead of using the current less organized system. Makes sense, no doubt, but you didn't hear any of that last night.

Assuming a Wong victory, this race was locked down for her somewhere between Sept. 13 and Sept. 20.

At the Sept. 13 debate, Wong was in her full "goals-oriented" glory. She muddled through that debate -- as did the other three candidates. A week later, at the Sept. 20 debate, she had shifted into the vision and hope candidate, and blew the doors off the joint. That shift didn't earn her the blowout preliminary win by itself, but it went a long way toward cementing the deal for her -- particularly with the core activists and observers who attended and watched carefully.

Last night, when she wasn't fending off questions about her work and her plans, she stuck to the vision and hope message. While Team Donnelly continues to murmur about a late charge, the sheer size of the deficit makes it a tough road back. Lisa Wong is likely four days away from being mayor-elect, and that vision and hope will have start becoming plans and changes to move the city forward.