METHUEN — At 2 years old, William Manzi III charged at his father to stop him from yelling at the boy's mother.
"He came up to me and started pounding me on my knee," remembered William Manzi Jr., the father of now Mayor William Manzi III.
The father picked up the toddler and whisked him into another room, then continued the argument with the mayor's mother, Dorothy. But the younger Manzi was intent on sticking up for his mom.
"This little thing comes running again and he hit me with his little hand. I just stopped dead in my tracks, and of course I stopped the argument," William Manzi Jr., now 75, said during a recent interview. "I just was amazed at this little fellow. I was in mortal fear of my own father. Billy came at me like a tiger. I was so proud of him for that."
William Manzi III, who is running for re-election for a third term, had it tough early in life, his father said.
William Manzi Jr. married Dorothy in 1955. William Manzi III, the couple's first child, was born a year later. They lived in a tenement on Elm Street in Lawrence. Doctors diagnosed Dorothy Manzi with a rare blood disease, Aplastic anemia, and she died at the age of 23 on April 30, 1959 — nine months after she was diagnosed, William Manzi Jr. said.
William Manzi Jr. brought William Manzi III, who was 3, and William Manzi III's sister, Karen, then 2, to live with his parents on Knox Street in Lawrence while he moved to Florida to find work as an electrician.
William Manzi Jr. took a job in Nassau, Bahamas. There, he met his second wife, Tania, a Spaniard who had immigrated to Cuba with her family as a child.
The couple married in 1960, then moved back to Lawrence, where William Manzi Jr. went to work for his family's business, Manzi Electric Corporation.
"Tanya came back here and raised those children like they were her own. It's like a gift from God," William Manzi Jr. said. "She raised them and did all the work, did the homework with them."
The couple, which had two more sons, moved into a ranch house on Hyder Avenue in Methuen in 1964. Joseph Solomon, the police chief whom Mayor Manzi fired in May 2008, grew up down the street, William Manzi Jr. said.
"Very good friends," the father said of the Solomon family. "Know the Solomons, love the Solomons. It just breaks my heart. They (the mayor and the former police chief) used to play together. So I'm telling you, this thing couldn't have been easy for him (the mayor)."
Running on adrenaline — and caffeine
Now 53, William Manzi III is finishing his second term as mayor. A registered Democrat, he is married and has two teenage children. He is campaigning for re-election while simultaneously managing a city of 44,000 people that continues to operate under the threat of further state aid cuts.
Manzi hustled to back-to-back campaign events and debates last week, as he looked to fend off challenger Al DiNuccio in the Nov. 3 election.
"The adrenaline keeps you going," he said.
Caffeine is another thing that keeps Manzi going. He said he hits Starbucks at The Loop at least once, sometimes twice, a day. The 20-something woman behind the counter last Wednesday morning didn't ask what he wanted, she already knew — a vanilla latte. The mayor paid with a frequent buyer's card.
City Councilor Joseph Leone first met the mayor when he was a newcomer to the City Council in the early 1990s.
"He seemed to be a student of the political process," Leone said. "Some people like hunting, some people like gambling ... he likes politics. Very well-read on it too — Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, you name it, he can give you a quote out of one of his books."
"Billy was always a voracious reader interested in politics," said Michael Manzi III, a younger cousin of William Manzi Jr., who grew up with the mayor. "If ever he was debating any issue with anybody, he was always well read. Once you got into it with him, you better be prepared."
Manzi first ran for mayor in 1993. He placed second in a field of 11 candidates in the preliminary election, then watched Dennis DiZoglio win the final election in a landslide, scoring 9,426 votes to his 3,216.
"He just wasn't ready, but he stuck with it," Leone said.
Manzi worked hard as a councilor, researching items on council agendas and visiting neighbors affected by city business, Leone said.
"He was like Tom Menino. I think 75 percent of people in his district had met him or spoken to him at one time," Leone said.
Manzi didn't run for mayor again until 2005. He took 70 percent of the vote, easily defeating political activist Ellen Bahan. Two years later, in 2007, he took 66 percent of the vote in his first bid for reelection, against then City Councilor Kathleen Corey Rahme.
Taking his lumps
The city limits mayors to three, two-year terms. So if Manzi wins another term, it would be his last.
The mayor acknowledges he has taken some lumps this year. He dealt with budget cuts and public backlash over revelations that he chose relatives of police Chief Katherine Lavigne, a police captain and politicians instead of higher-ranked candidates as reserve police officers.
Manzi received 1,221 votes in the Sept. 15 preliminary election. DiNuccio and a third challenger, Kevin Thompson, combined for a total 1,323 votes, meaning more people voted against Manzi than for him. As the top two vote-getters, the mayor and DiNuccio moved on to the final election.
Despite the results of the preliminary, the mayor is optimistic he'll be victorious in the general election, which is expected to draw more voters.
"You do the best you can," he said. "You hope that people look at the broader record."
That "broader record," Manzi said, includes beginning the Methuen High School renovation project, bringing cable competition to Methuen, leading the city through massive floods and an ice storm, spurring economic development, upgrading the city Web site and managing the city through what he is calling "the worst fiscal crisis since the Great Depression."
Another thing the mayor has going for him, according to his father, is love, the same kind of love he showed for his mother when he stuck up for her 51 years ago.
"He loves politics, absolutely loves it," William Manzi Jr. said.
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