The grand jury investigations and city cash woes keep coming, but Lawrence Mayor William Lantigua keeps smiling ? maybe all the way to another re-election victory.
Lawrence political watchers say three years of scandals ? including a failed recall vote ? haven?t knocked the popular mayor out of the lead in an eight-way contest for the city?s top political post.
?You have a school department in receivership, three grand juries, the indictment of police officers and political allies who are still sitting on the payroll. If any one of these was happening, an incumbent wouldn?t have a shot at getting elected in any city in the world,? said Michael Sullivan, the former mayor of Lawrence.
?But here you have a guy who not only is running, but leading.?
Lantigua, 58, plays games with the press, avoiding them at every turn. Yesterday he smiled as a Herald reporter pitched questions. He refused to say a word and then walked into City Hall.
It?s five months before the election and in neighborhoods across the three-square-mile city tucked into the heart of the Merrimack Valley, political signs supporting Lantigua are already stuck into chain link fences, staked in yards, taped to windows and stapled to telephone poles.
Residents say Lantigua is not only likable, but he?s done a good job as mayor. For many, it comes down to one issue ? road repair.
?My street got paved,? said Kathy Serrano, who owns a home at the foot of Tower Hill. ?A lot of the little side streets have been paved, too.?
As for the scandals that swirl about the mayor?s cronies ? yet never seem to reach him ? she said they matter less to her than the garbage pickup.
?If it was as bad as they say it is, or as they make it out to be, I don?t think they?d let him sit in that seat,? Serrano said. ?I?m pretty sure Deval Patrick isn?t going to let a corrupt person go and run a city.?
Outside a Dunkin? Donuts, Samuel LeBron, 43, said he blames the mayor?s bad press on envious rivals. He said he did not vote for Lantigua in 2010, when he was first elected mayor.
?Honestly, I see a lot of stuff getting done that wasn?t getting done before,? LeBron said. ?Like the roads. People say it?s just government money, but we were getting the same government money before and the roads had potholes.?
Lantigua?s skill at controlling the message that gets to Spanish-speaking voters is the root of his power, city political watchers say.
But not everybody is happy.
Maria Melendez, 50, and her friend Sonia Gonzalez, 49, said they are fed up with Lantigua and his administration. They lashed out at the incumbent city boss while inside a local hair salon.
?They do the streets,? Melendez said. ?But they have to do what is right, for the right reasons. Every time someone talks about Lawrence from the outside, it is bad. They need to be there for people, for the elderly, for education. They?re only in it for themselves.?
Gonzalez added: ?I don?t see Lawrence going up. I see Lawrence going down.?
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