The Boston Globe reports there is a growing rift between Kerry Boston’s Mayor Menino:

Menino has repeatedly expressed his anger about Kerry in recent weeks, first over Kerry’s brief consideration of a plan to delay acceptance of the party’s nomination until after the convention and then over Kerry’s decision to cancel a scheduled speech Monday to the US Conference of Mayors because he didn’t want to cross a police union picket line.

In an unusual rebuke of his party’s nominee, Menino told the Boston Herald that he found the Kerry campaign small-minded and incompetent, and expressed frustration over a report that he had hung up on Kerry during a phone conversation about the canceled speech.

Menino told the Globe over the weekend that he was ”extremely disappointed” by Kerry’s decision to cancel the speech, and he denied yesterday that he had hung up on Kerry.

He suggested that Kerry’s aides were spreading that rumor. ”Someone on his staff made an error,” Menino said.

Yesterday, as Democrats around the country buzzed about the feud, a top aide to Kennedy said the senior senator was making calls trying to smooth over differences between Kerry and Menino.

[. . .]

Menino assured party officials that union negotiations would be resolved long before the convention started, but a contract deal with Boston police hasn’t emerged.

The Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association protests delayed construction at the Fleet Center for three days and then embarrassed Menino before the US Conference of Mayors over the weekend.