Tonight's debate
Tonight's debate begins at 7 p.m. NECN anchor R.D. Sahl and WGBH's Greater Boston host Emily Rooney will moderate, and Boston Globe and WBUR reporters will ask questions.
Published 20:04, October the 18th, 2009
Flaherty to face off with Menino for the last time
A day after The Boston Globe reported a shrinking yet stable 20-point advantage for Menino, Flaherty’s campaign pointed to closer in-house figures that signal a crucial debate.
“It’s important for me to differentiate myself from Mayor Menino and show that I’m the person that is best suited to lead Boston in the future,” Flaherty said.
Flaherty has attacked Menino for weeks, most notably on a lingering public records scandal involving a top mayoral aide. Menino, who once held a 28-point advantage in the Globe poll, hopes to move on tonight.
“A lot of frivolous issues have been raised over the past several weeks by the Mayor's opponents,” said Menino campaign spokesman Nick Martin. “We’re hoping that Monday night is a real opportunity to have a substantive discussion about not only the challenges we face but the solutions needed to keep moving our city in the right direction.”
“It’s not enough to criticize when you lack the ideas needed to overcome the challenges ahead.”
Flaherty's team questions methods used in the Globe poll, which gave Menino a 52-32 advantage among 553 interviews with "randomly selected Boston residents" between Oct. 10 and Oct. 15.
According to Natasha Perez, spokeswoman for Flaherty, the fact that just 438 of the respondents are likely voters means that the poll is based on an unrealistic turnout of 79 percent; just over 20 percent of the voting age population voted in the 2006 mayoral election and only 17 percent in the September primary.
"We have a poll with very different numbers," Perez said, citing a seven-point margin in an internal survey she said uses a more suitable demographic. "We certainly feel like we can win this race and we use sound methodology to get to our numbers."