Today’s inbox (email, no link) reveals that, per the Tolman campaign, Warren Tolman
signed the People’s Pledge and called on his opponent Maura Healey to join him in his call to dissuade outside independent expenditure groups from taking to the airwaves in the Attorney General’s race.
“I was thrilled to see your commitment to joining me in signing the People’s Pledge, and I have attached a copy of the People’s Pledge that Elizabeth Warren stood up for and won on in 2012, that I have signed,” Tolman said in a letter to Healey. “I hope you will sign this pledge today so we can lead the way on this issue.”
So, on the one hand, great news that both candidates are committed to signing a People’s Pledge that will keep third parties mostly out of the race.
On the other hand, though, Healey has already signed a Pledge, and sent it to Tolman for his countersignature, as we’ve already discussed. Tolman could have simply accepted Healey’s offer, signed the document she sent him, and we’d be done. Instead, Tolman signed a different document and sent it to Healey to see if she’d sign it.
Are the two documents meaningfully different? Well, yes. Tolman says that his pledge is the one “that Elizabeth Warren stood up for and won on in 2012.” There were two gaping holes in that document: it didn’t cover direct mail, and it didn’t cover robocalls. A subsequent version of the pledge (the one that Ed Markey and Steve Lynch signed) corrected the direct mail omission, though robocalls remained outside its coverage. Healey’s version is modeled on the Markey/Lynch version and covers direct mail; Tolman’s proposal, which mimics the Warren/Brown deal in this respect, does not. Healey’s proposal therefore seems to be clearly the better one on this point.
A couple of other differences: the Tolman/Warren version sets the penalty for breach at 50% of the cost of the offending ad buy; Healey’s proposal is to make the penalty 100%. And the Tolman/Warren version allows the penalty to be paid to a charity of the candidate’s choice; Healey’s proposal would direct penalties to the One Fund. However, this isn’t actually a difference in this case, because Tolman has already announced that his charity of choice is the One Fund.
I’m particularly curious why Tolman apparently doesn’t think direct mail should be covered by a People’s Pledge. And more generally, I’m curious why he went the counterproposal route instead of simply signing on to a document that seems to do what everyone basically agrees these documents should do. Beyond, of course, the universal truth that all politicians want credit for being first.
The bias against Tolman on this site is getting out of hand. While the two candidates are likely going to meet to come to some kind of compromise between the two plans, the armchair campaign managers on this site seem see every action taken by Tolman as suspect. Isn’t this a Democratic Primary? Shouldn’t we respect both candidates, even if we prefer one over the other? I’m getting really tired of this nonsense. Wait for a story to resolve before passing judgement, Dave.
then this site would run silent until November, and all comments would be “Monday Morning Quarterbacking”. It is from things like this for which I draw information to make an informed decision.
Sorry about the grammar, but I am trying desperately to not end the sentence with a preposition!
As one of the lead Tolman defenders on this site, I appreciate that there is a distinction, that I didn’t initially catch, between these two pledges. I am glad David pointed that out to us and provided some even-handed analysis of their contents and asked questions for both campaigns to answer about how they will be proceeding going forward. Personally, I think it’s a little silly for both campaigns to get caught in semantics, and hope they can resolve this fairly.
I’m raising a question that I’d honestly like the answer to. If you’ve got an explanation, let’s hear it. If you’re just being defensive, save the pixels.
That’s some pretty aggressive language for someone who isn’t passing judgement, Davie. I think the moderators of a site that promote discussion among Democrats should try to stay unbiased. My humble opinion
I’m going to be alarmed if one of you says “Friendo.”
If you think what’s in my post is aggressive language on a political blog, you must be new to the genre.
I apologise if my tone got a little too personal. I do feel like the discourse on a Democratic political blog should try to remain positive toward all Democratic candidates, or else we run the risk of letting this excellent site devolve into intra-partisan infighting. Presenting a unified front should be the whole point of political parties, at least that’s how I feel, David. Healey may not be my first choice, but I’ll support her in a heartbeat over Miller, and I’ll do it with a smile on my face.
The whole point of BMG is to be biased. Moreover, the site isn’t trying to “promote discussion among Democrats.” It is trying to advance a progressive political agenda. Sometimes Democrats support that and sometimes they don’t. And then, of course, there is the Party of Voldemort aka the GOP.
On this site between now and September, we’re going to have another person decry ithem as making a “baseless attack?”
David has been doing this for a while, in case you haven’t noticed. If he was in the business of baseless attacks, BMG would wouldn’t be a tenth of the site it is today.
The same goes for most of the commenters who have been attacked for asking questions or making fair points over the past week or so.
Calling everything that they do “baseless attacks” isn’t going to win any points for your preferred candidates. It will, however, make you and your posts seem shrill and whiny and reflect poorly on your candidate.
but not good enough for Warren Tolman? Simply because Healey put forward a version of a pledge we are all suppose to accept it as a final document? Tolman did exactly what Healey did – he signed a pledge and asked the other candidate to sign it. Ball in Healey’s court.
Everybody recognizes that omitting direct mail from the Warren/Brown pledge was a mistake that has been corrected in subsequent versions. I’d like to know what is wrong with Healey’s version, rather than just hearing that Tolman’s is closer to the first one ever put in place.
Granted that Tolman keeps both mailers and robocalls. I’m not comparing candidates.
My question is why is it so important to keep robocalls?
Why didn’t both is okay. Why didn’t one when the other isn’t either is a loaded question.
A few points, though:
1. They aren’t relevant as persuasive tools anymore, with very limited exceptions.
2. They’re cheap, so not really worth the time or effort getting worked up about.
3. A lot of robocalls today are limited to GOTV, which the consensus so far in these matters is that it should be okay for outside organisations to do…. and shouldn’t be banned.
it’s on both candidates.
This is all just posturing, I like the spirit of the campaigns though.
Lynch and Markey were running against each other in the primary so they didn’t want to kill the baby.
This is exactly the same thing. Healey’s is more transparent.
That primary had a strong, viable GOP general election contender which is simply not the case here. Poor fella barely even make the ballot in time.
What I would be interested in, the same question David is asking, is why might he want the direct mail exemption back in this race? My guess would be that unions may want to play an active role in the campaign, and may view that as a tool worth having. In which case it would benefit both candidates to allow direct mail, seeing that they have been been endorsed by different unions. That said, I am still leery of the role both Emily’s List and PCCC played in the CD-5 primary with their misleading direct mail and attack pieces, and would rather we follow the strictest standard possible. This can be a teachable moment for both campaigns, and I hope they continue to negotiate in good faith and in full view of the public.
From sending mailers to their own members, just in sending them outside of their membership pools as independent expenditures.
I didn’t know that, though I now truly find that distinction rather puzzling.
Mailing members is in-house, operates by very different rules in campaign finance terms and is membership outreach. These mailings make it very obvious that the union is sending it and normally are pretty positive about their candidate, instead of being negative about opponents.
We should all be completely fine with unions or other organizations communicating with their own members on how races stack up. Within their own relatively small pools, that should be allowed in an unlimited fashion. That’s ‘small d’ democracy, just as sure as knocking on doors is.
Mailing non-members is considered a different thing in the world of campaign finance law, and for good reason. It can be blanketed to upwards of hundreds of thousands or millions of households in a statewide race. They often aren’t anywhere near as obvious about who they’re coming from — and with Citizens United, can sometimes even completely avoid it to begin with.
Campaign finance law has long considered these two things very distinct, with much harsher limits on the latter than the former. I don’t see any good reason to suggest a union shouldn’t be able to contact its own members in anyway it sees fit — heck, any organization for that matter, even if it’s a right wing group.
The danger is when organizations can spend outside their membership. That’s where any “People’s Pledge” has always been directed toward and where it should be.
I meant puzzling in that I didn’t understand why there would be such an exemption, but you clarified that for me. Glad you and David have helped wade through some of this arcana.
I do have some follow ups though. If a union identified itself on a direct mailing that was sent to a non-union household, letting them know it endorsed Candidate A over Candidate B would that be problematic? It obviously was prohibited in Peoples Pledge 2.0, but was the risk that there are insufficient safeguards to ensure outside groups identified themselves and stayed positive and/or fact based in their ads? To put it another way, I am not a union member myself but as a voter I would like to know which candidates unions endorsed and wouldn’t mind direct nail that stated that in a positive way and clearly stated it was from such and such a union. But I also understand allowing that might create a loophole big enough to allow “bad mailers” like those employed in the CD-5 race or the Brown-Warren race.
If we had a mechanism to keep ads positive, I don’t think there ever would have been a push for a People’s Pledge to begin with.
But it has to be an all-or-nothing approach, because how do we judge what’s positive and what’s not? As we’ve seen on BMG over the past few weeks, what one person sees as a largely positive diary can be seen by another as a sleazy hit piece. It gets really tricky.
Even if you don’t name an opponent by names or even mention them, you can create a “positive” ad where you talk about how your candidate is ‘the candidate of political courage and experience, who you will always be able to count on to fight for you’ but by saying that, you leave the subtle implication that the other candidate isn’t that candidate — which is a great way to drive supporters of another campaign insane.
Another can of worms you open up is why should unions be exempted, but not other organizations? Does anyone really want to say the SEIU should get to send out mailers to anyone, but the Sierra Club shouldn’t?
So you’d have to allow any organization to do it, from unions to the Chamber of Commerce.
Which will quickly make it look like any other election.
It’s not too hard to find out what unions are supporting who. They’ll generally have it on their website or you could google it and news articles or press releases will come up. A lot of papers still cover this stuff because it writes itself (or comes already written via press release). Unions can still knock on your door and let you know or post to BMG.
I don’t really think anything the People’s Pledge does stops unions or other organizations from letting people know who the particular union or group supports. But it does stop them from really being able to get a message across about why they’re making that decision beyond the internet savvy or if they really get out there and knock on doors.
Good discussion.
I figured as much, that it would be extremely difficult to control for the content of the speech as well as limit the scope of the kinds of organizations that could be allowed an exception. Good discussion indeed.
If we are being direct, the Republican has little chance at taking the AG’s office. This will for all intents and purposes be the deciding vote for AG.
Both campaigns have agreed to a People’s Pledge. They differ slightly on content and can work towards finding common ground. The idea that Healey’s pledge is pure and Tolman’s is somehow tainted I find disturbing.
So will Maura Healey sign a pledge that was good enough for Elizabeth Warren or will she drag this out by refusing Tolman’s offer? Healey has said she wants a pledge, here’s her opportunity to sign one and declare victory.
Does it help anyone to use that kind of lingo? You make it like people are trying to cast candidates here as good and evil. That’s just silly talk and doesn’t advance any conversation – just encourages nastiness and people digging their heals in.
One candidate wants to ban mailers as independent expenditures and the other doesn’t. That’s what’s going on here. Let’s be accurate and to the point – then the public can decide.
That “pure” and “untainted,” as opposed to their antonyms, is exactly how Healey supporters have been trying to portray this race.
Not saying there aren’t some bad actors — there always are — but it is absolutely ridiculous to suggest that all, most or even a lot have behaved that way.
Ridiculous.
Ha …. I’m starting to like this campaign better than the Gov’s race.
I have no problem David questioning Tolman on the mailers. Nice catch. We’ll see what the campaign comes back with.
But while we’re at time, why does Healey and Tolman want to keep the robocalls? I hate robocalls. Maybe someone from the Healey campaign could help us out on that one.
In my view, they should just set the highest standard possible by exceeding prior pledges by banning direct mail and robocalls.
I think you make a very good point.
Ban the hated robo calls and direct mail by outsiders.
Having seen bans like this fail over posturing and disagreements, our campaign decided when we proposed the pledge last week to take the strongest recent use in Massachusetts – the one used by Senator Markey and Congressman Lynch. All we did was sub out the names and office sought. We’d be glad to include robocalls to make it even stronger and will put that on the table as we discuss.
This new proposal by Warren Tolman is disappointing and I hope he changes his mind. Copied below is our statement to the media this evening.
“I’m disappointed that Warren Tolman is choosing a skim milk version of the People’s Pledge over the stronger version I signed and sent him last week. It’s more than a little surprising to see this gamesmanship from a candidate who never fails to mention his clean elections history from a decade ago. Voters want the real deal, not clean elections lite. Our campaign for Attorney General deserves nothing less. Senator Warren’s pledge was good, Senator Markey and Congressman Lynch improved on the original agreement and made it stronger. Banning direct mail by outside groups is a critically important element to any pledge. The stronger version already has my signature on it. I hope Warren Tolman will join me.”
for the response.
If you are okay with banning robocalls why not send back a different version banning direct mail and robocalls? Otherwise are you not just sending back the same version you sent earlier, that only deals with direct mail?
I think both candidates can surely agree to the strictest agreement possible which would ban both direct mail and robocalls. But I do hope this doesn’t collapse and we have no agreement entirely. The Healey camp could accept the agreement as is, or modify it to include robocalls as well, simply sending back the same agreement seems to indicate a lack of sincerity towards a final compromise resolution. I also think robocalls are far worse than direct mail, if that is the main area of disagreement.
The gamesmanship is on. My pledge is better than your pledge. It’s my pledge or no pledge.
Apparently banning direct mail is important to Healey but keeping robocalls might interest her.. Her campaign statement (not the quoted section) offers to discuss robocalls but the quote for the media goes out of its way to mention direct mail. Could this mean that her outside supporters have the resources for robocalls but not for direct mail. In that light the Healey pledge could be seen as self-serving.
Warren Tolman has a record on clean elections. Healey’s campaign has a media sound bite.
But I do feel like this could be said about any pledge. They’re all unsatisfying, and they’re all basically games of chicken that will inevitably be violated.
Attacking her as not willing to sign and suggesting the two deals are the same… really, this is BMG. Elevate your comment quality.
How is is this different from what striker said above?
Was replying to Striker57.
I appreciate David’s original post and learned more about the evolution of the People’s Pledge. The Healey version is the improved, better version. V.3 may be the ringer.
Let’s encourage the candidates to talk issues!
attacking Tolman for not signing a pledge is fair game but calling Healey out on the same stance is ridiculous and dishonest. Interesting logic.
Please point out where I said the “two deals are the same”.
And really? This is BMG? I had no idea. Please enlighten me as to how to “elevate your comment quality” – perhaps add more personal attacks on those of us posting opinion you disagree with?
The most progressive pledge would be without robo calls and no direct mail by third parties. That’s what Healey proposed. Tolman’s proposal was not progressive, and it was after she sent hers. His is a giant step backward and all Democrats should agree on that.
This quote in particular is appalling
The “skim milk” version was good enough for Elizabeth Warren. I am not going to argue that the AG candidates can’t hold themselves to a higher standard than that pledge, and I would prefer a ban on robocalls and direct mail. But I honestly don’t see how she can be praised as a clean elections follower and progressive visionary with that pledge, but Tolman is somehow tainted because he is favoring that same pledge.
He also lost an election rather than violate his commitment to clean elections, and I would also counter, besides proposing a “stronger” pledge, what has Healey done during her career to advance the cause of clean elections? There is absolutely no reason for this to be a cause of political one upmanship, or to be used as an excuse to tear someone else’s proud record on this issue down.
is what Elizabeth Warren could get Scott Brown to agree to.
Moreover, in a Senate Race, where organizations will dump millions in ads if it’s important to them, the Warren/Brown People’s Pledge made a big difference.
In an AG race, where there would be far less money for ads from any organization, direct mail would be where a lot of the money would be spent. Direct mail is extremely costly. Not TV commercial costly, but very costly.
Robocalls are so cheap than most BMGers could fund one to thousands and thousands of people if they really wanted. They are also an ‘endangered specie’ in terms of being useful in doing anything other than internal communications.
The fight over direct mail matters. That’s where the bulk of outside money would be spent on this election if it’s allowed.
Unions will backing Toleman and they want to be able to use “outside” i.e. national AFL-CIO money etc to send mailers to their members on behalf of Toleman as it is the cheapest way to reach the rank and file.
I have no problem with this by the way I am just pointing out the reason why Toleman would be reluctant to include mailers in the “People’s Pledge”.
Healey (with an e)
The real challenges in politics is getting the candidates names spelled correctly. Remember how long it took to figure out Deval L. Patrick? Patrick who?
😉
Sure I know him, Pat’s a great guy. We go way back.
Patrick and Murray!
…named Patrick Murray:)
That’s what this is sounding like. It sounds like both campaigns are engaging in a bit of oneupmanship and negotiating by press release and trying to get credit for taking the initiative. It seems to me that both candidates want some type of pledge and can easily and privately iron out the details. They are both more than capable of giving us a campaign we can all be proud of.
Point Healey.
She proposes and Warren decides he’d lose something by just agreeing and moving on. So, pitch fit.
Note that Brown is generally if not entirely accurately, credited with the first People’s Pledge. Um, who won the election? I just mean, big whup who gets the “credit.” Bad call to make a thing of this.
To the extent anyone is paying attention and looking for substance, it’s Warren gumming things up by refusing to extend the pledge to media that were included in the last pledge. Which was objectively better for voters.
Again, bad call to make a thing of this.
… she missed an opportunity to score another point when she failed to sign the pledge that Tolman sent her. Had she done so, she would have looked like the bigger person and she could have still sent out a press release explaining that she intended to keep pushing for a stronger pledge that includes direct mail. That way if Tolman kept refusing to include direct mail, she could have kept hitting him over the head with that refusal. As it currently stands, ker “skim milk” comment comes off as a bit silly and she risks appearing, as christopher suggests up-thread, like someone more interested in one-upmanship and trying to get credit, rather than someone concerned in limiting as much outside money as she can, even if it’s not all of it.
Tolman most likely preferred the Warren/Brown model because it left out the direct mail. He’s going to be the big fundraiser in this thing most likely and he’ll want to out-mail his opponents.
I’ve met Warrent Tolman and Maura Healey, heard them speak at my local Dem committee. I think both have slightly different backgrounds but have the potential to be great AGs. I’m curious to see how it all plays out. Hopefully nothing too nasty…
I do hope they sign a pledge to end robocalls – the worst! Go out and knock on doors!!!
While I agree that the optics of “the People’s Pledge” are marvelous, I think in practice they have little to no effect — especially among two equally progressive Democrats in a local primary.
Neither candidate is addressing the role of the AG’s office in protecting privacy, investigating and prosecuting apparent police and FBI misconduct, and investigating and prosecuting corruption of local government officials. In my view, this is the only issue of substance in this campaign — and I don’t know where either candidate stands.
My bottom line is that this “issue” is emerging because the difference between these two equally-progressive candidates is vanishingly small. There is precious little substance for these candidates to argue about.
The sitting AG apparently has no problems with the Boston FBI recruiting a brutal thug as a hitman who is then sent to FL to execute an inconvenient witness. She apparently had no awareness of a jobs mill that churned out THOUSANDS of unqualified Probation Department employees, a housing director who illegally raised millions of dollars for Democratic candidates, or of a state crime lab that churned out THOUSANDS of illegally falsified “lab results”.
If Warren Tolman or Maura Healey don’t persuade me why, how, and what they would do differently on such matters, then I don’t care one iota about this “people’s pledge”.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and this entire campaign seems to be trending towards a general election with NO candidates (for any office) worth voting for.
I won’t be voting for either AG candidate until and unless my questions (above) are addressed.
I think there’s really no serious argument that the Brown/Warren pledge didn’t have an enormous effect on that race. Conversely, there’s no mystery why Marty Walsh didn’t sign a pledge in the race for Mayor of Boston, and perhaps some of that dynamic is in play in this race as well; we don’t know, because Tolman so far won’t tell us what’s wrong with the stronger version that Healey has proposed.
So these things do work, and they do potentially affect the result. None of which is to say that the candidates shouldn’t be addressing the other issues you raise.
The Brown/Warren pledge had an enormous effect on the TV ads, but on the race itself? Really hard to say.
Because Senator Brown couldn’t hide behind 3rd-party slimeball attacks, he damaged himself with every Fauxcahontis episode. To the extent he thought better of that crap, the pledge forced him to drop it.
that, because outside groups couldn’t run the many millions of dollars that they otherwise surely would have, the nature of the race was quite different than it otherwise would have been – in part because of the content of the discussion, and in part because, as trickle-up correctly notes, the Pledge forces candidates to own their slime if they want to go that route. Did it change the outcome? Doubtful – I think Warren would have won anyway. But I do think on balance the Pledge hurt Brown more than it hurt Warren.
It occurs to me that I don’t really dispute your point. What it comes down to is, I don’t like the pledge. We had a notable experience with it here, and got the result we wanted, and I think that biases our view.
But, would I want Natalie Tennant or Alison Grimes tied to a pledge? Absolutely not. And you say the pledge hurt one candidate more — to me that’s an argument against it.
(But this is a longer argument, for another day.)
I agree that the Brown/Warren pledge was hugely important.
That was a national race with a then-popular GOP incumbent who had just unseated the GOP nemesis of two generations. It had national visibility, and attracted national money.
I don’t think a down-ballot contest in a Democratic primary is comparable. I suspect that it will be hard to find more than about 37 people who even know what the “Attorney General” does.
I think the people who are likely to vote in this race are either immune to or repelled by the kind of advertising that the People’s Pledge suppresses.
That’s why I think this is more distraction than substance.