As the race to find the next Boston mayor heats up and the November 5 election day perpetually nears, candidates Marty Walsh and John Connolly will take any little bit of help they can get. Whether its a fundraiser, featured article, or endorsement, both mayoral hopefuls understand the need to differentiate themselves from each other. Endorsements are fickle things, though, as their value can often be oversold or underestimated. But one recently for Walsh could prove to be the most profitable of them all.
Last Friday, The Dropkick Murphys, with the help of Jackson Media Group, published a video in support of Walsh by changing the lyrics of their Boston ballad ‘Shipping Up to Boston’ to “Marty Walsh for Boston.”
This show of advocacy from the popular punk group whose Boston-themed music has become a rallying cry at sporting events citywide — Red Sox games in particular — easily overshadows the endorsements the State Representative has received from the likes of Charlotte Golar Richie, Felix Arroyo, John Barros, State Senator Linda Dorcena Forry, Revered Jeffrey Brown, Arline Isaacson, and most recently City Councilor Tito Jackson.
As Joshua Dyck, Co-Director of UMass Lowel’s Center for Public Opinion, told BostInno recently, “Endorsements are one of the great hollow hopes of election campaigns” and can sometimes have too much stock put into them. Unless the person making the endorsement is able to mobilize their respective supporters to get to the polls, the endorsement itself is simply a press op.
Even the Boston Globe agrees, telling readers “Ask political veterans how much voters care about endorsements, and the response you get is a resounding shrug.”
That is, until a group with loud music and deep Boston ties starts singing about a particular candidate. While only a few Boston residents may be able to distinguish the difference between “the labor candidate” and “the education candidate,” I’d argue that 95% of them could recite a line or two from “Shipping Up to Boston” or “Dirty Water.” And with that, the Murphys can probably mobilize voters better than former mayoral contestants Golar Richie, Arroyo, and Barros combined.
After all, the group was able to assemble optimistic fans for the improbable 2004 Red Sox World Series run, the likes of which had been strikingly absent from The Hub for some 86 years due to a curse or whatever.
The ad was paid for by the American Working Families.
