The Globe was able to get a quote from Edward McHugh of the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers Union. Edward McHugh is the brains, and I use that term loosely, behind the 99 Percent PAC which politicized the tragic events over the past week in Boston for the Stephen Lynch campaign. Stephen Lynch acknowledged knowing those involved in a WCVB report.
When asked about his robocall, which has since been denounced by the Lynch campaign, Edward McHugh came back with this truly bizarre statement (emphasis mine):
“There was no intention of upsetting everybody or trying to shine a light on anything in an unkind way. That was never, ever the intention,” he said.
Told that some voters felt uncomfortable with the language, McHugh responded, “I guess as an ironworker we get mad about issues like this. We don’t get squirmy or squeamish, we run at them.”
Am I missing something? What are you running at Ed? This is your robocall:
“All of us share the shock and sorrow of the recent events in Boston, but as Americans we’re not going let the perpetrators of this tragedy or anyone else stop our democracy from moving forward. Wouldn’t it be great to have a real working person representing you in the Senate? Not another millionaire, someone who truly understands the day to day problems facing working families?”
So what exactly did Edward McHugh do? Did he advocate to create policy, what? Edward McHugh did absolutely nothing. What tough guy Edward McHugh did was create PAC which hid it’s identity and mislead people to believe his robocall was somehow influenced by the Occupy movement. Ed, is that what iron workers do? They cower and hide? Maybe you should poll a few iron workers they might give you a different answer.
Ed you used a tragedy as a cheap political prop to achieve political goals, while you don’t get squirmy or squeamish about it, people find it disgusting. Congratulations.
Christopher says
How does not letting terrorism stop us translate to putting a person with a working class background in the Senate?
fenway49 says
I think – being charitable to the union – that they planned a “putting a person with a working class background in the Senate” robocall before the attack. Then they either tried to use the attack for political points, or they felt they needed to acknowledge it and offer a justification for making a political robocall at all under these circumstances. The problem is that the segue is very bad, or rather nonexistent. They could have added a sentence:
mike_cote says
that made reference to the Marathon bombing. I don’t remember the words exactly, but to me, they seemed pretty close to the robocall text, but coming from Lynch’s mouth. I wish I knew the words precisely, but they were close enough to the Robocall text that it made me yell at the TV using words I should not repeat here.
johnk says
We were watching Kimmel (but could have been surfing to Letterman) and my wife had a similar reaction. I bored her with the post and she pretended to be interested, but then after watching the commercial she thought the robocall post was referring to the Lynch commercial. Slight difference between the two, Lynch tries to capitalize but doesn’t say it. It’s horrible, he sunk very low. It’s difficult for anyone to not think less of him after watching that, it’s a shame.