Boston Herald | November 3, 2013 | By Peter Gelzinis

The knock against Marty Walsh is that he’s a union guy who lacks John Connolly’s “vision.”

Shamaiah Turner might beg to differ. As a self-described “black girl growing up in Boston,” Shamaiah was not without options. She graduated from Boston Latin Academy, went on to Tulane University only to drop out and build homes for a year with Habitat for Humanity and again in post-Katrina New Orleans.

“College is where it was supposed to be,” she said, “yet when I came home I’d see these buildings going up all over town and I’d wonder, ‘How do I work on a project like that?’ Building stuff is what I really wanted to do.”

Today, Shamaiah is a sheet metal fabricator with Harrington Bros. in Stoughton and a graduate of the Building Pathways program that was the vision of Marty Walsh, a Savin Hill union guy who was eager to open up the building trades to a black woman like Shamaiah who lives in Mattapan.

While John Connolly speaks about the visions he’d like to turn into reality, Marty Walsh has already done it. And therein lies the difference between these two men who would be mayor.

Kevin White’s vision reshaped Boston’s once meager skyline. But it was Ray Flynn and Tom Menino, a couple of so-called meat-and-potato neighborhood guys, who ushered that skyline into the 21st century.

For all of Kevin White’s brilliance, he left office as an aloof emperor, more comfortable in the drawing room of the Parkman House than a Dunkin’ Donuts in Andrew Square.

The last 30 years rebooted that image — from Flynn riding the snowplows to Tom Menino as the “urban mechanic.” Ray was a college basketball star who worked as a probation officer. Menino once sold insurance door-to-door. Both became mayors who straddled the line between neighborhood folk and downtown players.

Marty Walsh is their logical successor. He is the candidate who has pushed that paradigm forward … from helping to establish a charter school in Dorchester, to opening up the building trades union for women like Shamaiah Turner.

Is it just a coincidence that in most of the mayoral polls, Walsh has emerged as the candidate better able to relate to, and deliver for, people across the city? Or do they recognize the same humanity that was the foundation of the Flynn and Menino years?

It’s way too easy to believe Marty Walsh’s union pedigree automatically means he would give away the store to cops, firefighters and teachers.

It takes more thought to understand that a Savin Hill guy who would open his union to a woman like Shamaiah Turner, is the only candidate for mayor able to reason with other city unions in the language they understand and respect.

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