John Ronan ConnollyMartindale-Hubbell Law Directory Profile (born July 6, 1973) is an American politician, lawyer, and educator from Massachusetts. He served from 2008 to 2014 as an at-large member of the Boston City Council, and was the runner-up in the 2013 Boston mayoral election. On the council and as a mayoral candidate, Connolly was known for his support of public school reforms. This included support for charter schools.

Early life, family, and education Connolly was born in the Roslindale neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. Connolly comes from a politically prominent and connected family. His mother, Lynda M. Connolly, was a lawyer and served as a Massachusetts court judge; and his father, Michael J. Connolly, served several terms as a state representative and four terms as the Massachusetts secretary of the commonwealth. James Michael Connolly (who served as a member of the Boston City Council in the 1970s) was an uncle of Connolly, being married to his maternal aunt.

Connolly grew up on Cerdan Avenue, near the border of the Roslindale and West Roxbury neighborhoods. Residents of the area were predominantly middle class and Irish Catholic. For high school, he attended Roxbury Latin School, an elite college prep school with a largely suburban-based student body. For his undergraduate college education, he attended Harvard University where he earned his B.A. cum laude. He later received a Juris Doctor from Boston College Law School in 2001.

Teaching career After graduating Harvard, Connolly worked for three years as a teacher, working in schools with low-income students. He later claimed during his 2013 campaign that he had been motivated to teach at low-income schools due to his recognition that he had enjoyed a number of advantages in his upbringing that were not equally available to lower-income neighborhoods in Boston. His first two years as a teacher were spent working at a Jesuit school on the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City. He followed this with one year of teaching in Boston at the Boston Renaissance Charter Public School.

Connolly would later cite his experience of teaching at the two low-income schools as a pivotal experience for him, saying that it allowed him to see firsthand how, "poverty just becomes an incredible obstacle to someone's success." He subsequently reflected during his mayoral campaign that his year at Boston Renaissance Charter Public School was a difficult experience, characterizing the school as having been run poorly when he worked there.

Legal career

After his three years of working as a teacher, Connolly attended and graduated from the Boston College School of Law (the same law school that his mother had received her own degree from). He thereafter practiced law in Boston, primarily focusing in corporate law, while occasionally handling matters related to bankruptcy law. While running for mayor in 2013, Connolly characterized his legal career (up to that point) as having involved various routine business transactions.

Ropes & Gray (2001–2004) During his time in law school, Connolly received a competitive summer associate position at Ropes & Gray, a prominent law firm. This would ultimately lead to a position as an entry-level attorney in its corporate law division following his 2001 graduation from law school (at the age of 27). During his time at the firm, Connolly received mentoring from firm partner Mark V. Nuccio (who was himself an earlier graduate of the Boston College Law School).

Connolly's work as an attorney at Ropes & Gray included matters related to corporate transactions. One matter that he was involved in (per a biography that the firm wrote for him) was a leveraged buyout of "a large, privately held publishing company." Connolly himself would later say that he had been a junior lawyer on that matter, creating summaries of the company's business records for more senior lawyers to read. A matter he would later recall having had greater involvement in was the representation of the original owners of an air freight company in their negotiations to buy-back the company from its publicly traded parent company. While at the firm, he also carried out some pro bono legal work –including assisting a private school in its pursuit of nonprofit status.

Connolly would later reflect that his job at Ropes & Gray involved long (typically 80-hour) work weeks, for which he was well-paid (in excess of $100,000 annually, a significant amount for a newly-practicing lawyer). He recalled that he had found his long work weeks tiring and that they had limited the amount of time he was able to spend with his wife. (which in 2011 became known as "Murphy & King").

Hanify & King (2004–2007) After working at Ropes & Gray for 2½ years, he departed in April 2004 to begin working at Hanify & King, a midsized firm (which in 2011 became known as "Murphy & King"). When joining Hanify & King, Connolly had expressed to the firm's lawyer's his interest in being assigned more trial work than he had been given at Ropes & Gray. However, he ultimately did very little trial work while at the firm. By his own admission during his time at Hanify & King, he received annually earnings that (similar to his time at Ropes & Gray) "hover[ed] around a little over" $100,000.

By the time he joined the firm, Connolly had already begun to develop an interest in seeking elected office. He would later reflect that he had found legal practice unfulfilling, which is what motivated him to run for office. In 2005, he took a leave of absence in order to run for the Boston City Council. His 2005 candidacy was ultimately unsuccessful. Connolly briefly returned to the firm, only to permanently depart from it in April 2007, in advance of his (ultimately successful) campaign in the 2007 Boston City Council election.

Schofield, Campbell & Connolly (2007–2012) In May 2007, Connolly joined with two other lawyers (general practitioner Tim Schofield and criminal law attorney Cathleen Campbell) to become the third founding partner at a new small firm: Schofield, Campbell & Connolly. He would work at the firm until it split apart in 2012.

While Connolly continued to work on some business transaction legal matters at the firm, he focused the majority of his time each year on his public work as a member of the Boston City Council, as well as on political campaigning. An extreme example of this was in they year 2012, which he claimed to have only conducted ten hours of legal work for the entirety of. During Connolly's mayoral campaign, Schofield (who also served as co-chair of the campaign) corroborated that Connolly had focused the bulk of his time on city council work and campaigning. Schofield also noted that of the firm's three partners, Connolly had handled the least amount of legal work. During his later mayoral campaign, Connolly declined to publicly disclose what clients he had represented; citing attorney-client privilege. However, he shared a few example characterizations of the type of work he handled at the firm, including sharing that he had assisted an internet startup company to formulate its confidentiality policy and had advised a community theater on its business structure.

Connolly's annual financial disclosure (required of city councilors) showed him earning between $40,001–60,000 from the firm in 2008. This is an amount he claimed was derived from the structuring of his partnership, and an amount he claimed he paid back a substantial portion of to the firm. In the subsequent years, he reported far lower earnings from the firm. In 2009 he reported $5,000 or less, and in both 2010 and 2011 he reported $20,000 or less. His legal salaries came in addition to his $87,500 annual government salary for his work on the city council, which was his greatest source of salary earnings while on the council.

Boston City Council Connolly first sought election to an at-large seat on the Boston City Council in the 2005 election, but was unsuccessful. In 2007, Connolly ran again for an at-large seat and succeeded. He was re-elected in November 2009 and November 2011, forgoing an attempt at further re-election in 2013 in order to instead seek the city's mayoralty. His three terms on the council spanned from January 2008 until January 2014.

Connolly was best known as a councilor for his work in relation to education. He also did a notable amount of work as a councilor related to environmental matters. While city council elections are nonpartisan races, Connolly affiliated himself with the Democratic Party.

In council elections, his longtime base of support was centered in the West Roxbury and Roslindale neighborhoods. His support was particularly strong in West Roxbury.

2005 and 2007 campaigns

Connolly unsuccessfully ran for an at-large seat in 2005.

Connolly ran again for an at-large seat in 2007, this time winning. Before the election, his campaign office admitted to mailing literature about incumbent councilor Stephen J. Murphy that contained claims which had come from an unknown source. The acknowledgement came after a Boston Herald columnist had accused the campaign of sending the unsigned, unattributed flyers.

First term (2008–09) and second term (2010–11)

Connolly took office in January 2008. In 2009, Connolly proposed a measure imposing term limits on the mayor and city councilors. However, the city council rejected the measure.

In 2011, Connolly uncovered and publicized the fact that there was expired food in freezers at Boston schools. He had discovered he this while making surprise visits to the cafeterias at four different schools.

Third term (2012–13)

In 2012, Connolly was the only council member to vote against the city's teachers' union contract, opposing the fact that it did not extend the school day. Connolly also organized public hearings about the negotiations between the Boston School Department and the Boston Teachers Union. In 2012, Connolly publicly supported school reform legislation that was pending in the Massachusetts Senate. Also in 2012, Connolly called for the resignation of Boston Public Schools Superintendent Carol Johnson due to her failure to fire a school headmaster who had in criminal court entered an admission to sufficient facts for a jury to convict him of domestic violence allegations that he assaulted his wife. Connolly, in turn, faced criticism from many leaders in the city's communities of color for demanding the resignation of Johnson (who is African American, and was well-liked within the city's communities of color). Connolly also introduced an ordinance that would have held parents legally accountable for their children's truancy (frequent unexcused absences from school).

In December 2012, Connolly voted against an ordinance which created a requirement that residential rental unites be inspected every five years, with the owners of "problem properties" receiving $300 fines if added to a "chronic offender registry". The ordinance was strongly opposed by many Boston landlords, but was passed in the council by a vote of 9-4 vote and signed into law by Mayor Thomas Menino.

In the same council term, Connolly pledged to vote against a very substantial salary hike that had been proposed by some for the city’s police force.

2013 mayoral campaign

Connolly was a candidate in the 2013 Boston mayoral election. Connolly finished second of 12 candidates in the preliminary election in September 2013, behind State Representative Marty Walsh. On November 5, 2013, Connolly lost the general election to Walsh.

Primary In advance of launching his candidacy, Connolly began fundraising for his political committee, while publicly denying intentions of running for mayor. In December 2012, Connolly's committee raised $68,000, more money than any other city politician (including Mayor Menino) had raised for their committee that month.