As predicted, Gabriel Gomez’s amateurish week is coming back to bite him. NYT reporter Katharine Seelye profiled the race today. First up, the “pond scum” comment presented to a group of tepid Markey supporters:
None of them had heard the “pond scum” comment, but when told of it, said they thought worse of Mr. Gomez.
Exactly. Appropriate, perhaps, when fronting a far-right anonymously funded 2012 attack group on President Obama like Special Operations OPSEC Education Fund Inc. — Gomez’ last political claim to fame. But this is a race for a federal office in Massachusetts, not for senator of the Tea Party.
Next up, Little Boy Who Cried Wolf victimization:
Mr. Gomez … said that Mr. Markey had unfairly compared him to Bin Laden and that he had blamed him for the school shootings; neither Markey ad made such an assertion.
A meme grows in Cohasset: rage, weepy victimization, immaturity … you can fill in your own suggestions in the comments. Reality bites.
marcus-graly says
Then he’s already doing more to remove CO2 from the atmosphere than anything Gomez has proposed would.
bluewatch says
Did you know that he’s a Navy SEAL?
Incidentally, SEALs are all-male. Women are not allowed to apply.
Patrick says
How has no one asked Mr. Seal that question?
kbusch says
Raising this question is bound to turn the thin-skinned Mr Gomez ballistic.
matthewjshochat says
I’m sure he’s going to get the Tea Party Seal of Approval, but will ultimately lose this election.
That all but confirmed the obvious that Gomez is a bully.
Laurel says
They also don’t like it that he speaks Spanish — out loud! — during his speeches. His bullying aspects will undoubtedly please some, but he’s pretty offensive to the hard-right xenophobes.
oceandreams says
to help himself. He would have been better off running as a perceived nice guy with an interesting resume if no political experience. Probably his best shot was having people like him and decide it might be time for a change for someone who could be all bipartisany blah blah blah. Maybe I’m an optimist, but I just don’t see how nasty helps when you’re a blank slate, you’re at a significant party-registration disadvantage and the guy you’re running against is not any kind of lightning rod to be disliked.
Markey may not be inspiring the passion that Elizabeth Warren did, but – perhaps I’m biased since he’s my Congressman and I know him – he presents as a decent guy who wants to work for the causes he supports — causes which happen to be backed by a significant majority of the Massachusetts electorate.
kbusch says
It requires the kind of practice at being a politician that Scott Brown had. Mr. Gomez isn’t kidding when he says he isn’t a politician. Politicians, for example, get used real quickly to being criticized by the opposition.
oceandreams says
Because Scott Brown appeared to come out of nowhere, sometimes people forget that he had political experience (and came from a political family). I really don’t get the appeal of “I want this job even though I don’t have any idea what it entails.” Elizabeth Warren may not have held elective office before, but she was working effectively in Washington for years before she ran. Same for Deval Patrick, who had government experience if not as an elected official before running for governor.
Since so many Republicans claim to want to run government more like the private sector, I’m curious how many executives they think would be interested in hiring someone who were interviewing for a high-level position by boasting that they didn’t know anything about the industry or company.
mathelman says
can/should reporters objectively refer to Gabriel Gomez’s responses to run-of-the-mill Markey campaign operations as “temper tantrums?”