October 13, 2011
Adams Corner was awash this weekend with signs and stickers bearing the names “John O’Toole” and “Frank Baker,” the two candidates competing for Dorchester’s open City Council seat. But the real superstars had a national flavor: U.S. Sen. Scott Brown (R-Wrentham) and one of the Democrats vying to take his job, Elizabeth Warren.
Each candidate was led around by local sherpas and introduced to potential voters from Dorchester, Peabody, Weymouth and elsewhere, who had come to Dorchester for the third annual Irish Heritage Festival.
Former Mayor Ray Flynn, a conservative South Boston Democrat, met up with Brown inside the Eire Pub, “one of America’s greatest meeting places for Irish Catholics,” Flynn said. “Scott Brown is smart. He knows where the good voters are.”
The pub is a well-known political bellwether that sports pictures of former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton hoisting a brew with the owners hanging on the walls.
Brown walked behind the bar and started serving Guinness to customers, quipping, “The beers are on Ray.”
Flynn, who voted for Brown in the 2010 special Senate election, said the senator’s office asked him to escort Brown around at the festival. “I showed my Irish hospitality,” said Flynn.
Warren, a Harvard Law School professor, was escorted by Joyce Linehan, a local political activist. She was joined by her husband, Bruce Mann, and other supporters as she made her way through the crowd of thousands.
She, too, dropped by the Eire Pub, picking up support from one of the young bartenders, and buying a Bud Light for herself and a Guinness for Mann.
“She feels very welcome among the Irish,” said Helen Lilly, an Adams Village resident and voter. Lilly said Brown is different from when he was elected. “I think Scott’s a little bit arrogant lately,” she said.
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