Reilly Stabilizes For Now

First the facts: Conte connected the dots Reilly needed connected and if there is any more media follow-up, the focus now shifts to the behavior of Northborough Police Chief Mark Leahy.

A quick summary of past events for those who need to catch up: Three teenage girls bring alcohol to a house party (no point giving names, we all know the names…but I’m all for stopping the ongoing suffering of the family as much as possible).  The driver is apparently drunk.  She and her sister are killed in car accident and the friend is seriously injured.  The Northborough Police Chief essentially tells the media that he can not get the actual reports to determine if the driver was drunk, because Reilly called DA Conte and told him not to release them because Reilly was a family friend of the dead girls’ father (who also gave a whopping $300 campaign donation).  The implication of this charge is that Reilly used his political influence to obstruct a criminal investigation into whether the hosting laws were broken.  Reilly contends he heard the autopsy reports may be made available to a reporter, a violation of the law, and called Conte on his own to remind Conte of the law and in NO WAY did Reilly interfere with an investigation.

The AP story hit the wires airing Leahy’s contention on Wednesday night, right before Reilly had a scheduled appearance on Emily Rooney’s Show on WGBH.  By the accounts I read, Reilly in his usual soft-spoken approach, repeating basic talking points, convincing no one. 

On Thursday morning, the story hit all the papers and the sh*t was beginning to hit the fan. 

Almost simultaneously, the talk radio stations were running with the “Reilly squashes drunk driving investigation” meme, and Mitt and Muffy turn up the heat by contrasting their position on drunk driving (we’re against it) with Reilly’s (he apparently is for drunk driving).

Naturally Reilly is mad and then makes a mistake.  He holds an amateurish press conference that was poorly staged (no podium, just Reilly standing in front of a microphone stand in a bare room with reporters stretching their arms toward him to pick up sound) and poorly messaged (“it’s the media’s fault and I think I’m going to cry”).  Reilly sinks further in the Friday morning papers and the talk radio rant is taking a grain of truth and spinning it into huge lies (Reilly can be bought cheap; obstructing justice…).

Finally Conte to the rescue (or for today at least), who takes an infinitely better approach to managing the press circus than Reilly (who is spending a lot more money, both state and campaign dollars, paying people to manage the media than Conte).

Instead of calling a media circus…err media conference and then start whining and crying, Conte gave private press interviews to key press people: the Globe,the Herald, NECN (find clip on the Globe link) and I don’t know who else.

Among the facts Conte gave: Chief Leahy had the toxicology info he needed to determine if the driver was drunk.  And most importantly, Chief Leahy could have filed charges on his own, if he wanted.  (This is true; any individual can file misdemeanor charges in district court.  So if any yahoos want to push this…they can file charges against the “host” of the party and see what happens.)

Conte contends that filing charges against the host would be a stretch and I understand why.  If the alcohol was supplied by the “host” of the house, this would be a strong case, but that didn’t happen, the girls brought the booze with them.  The other aspect of the law indicates the host can be charged if the host provided a safe haven for the underage kids to drink, which he did.  IF the host was in control of the house.  And that is a stretch.  The “host” was a 20 yr son of the homeowner (who apparently was not home or they would face the “host” charge) and, on the face of it, was not in control of the house…hence the “stretch” Conte referred to.

While not in the stories, I would have to assume if the parents of the 2 girls or the injured girl were pushing Conte (or the police) to file charges, Conte may have “stretched” things and prosecuted.  But they didn’t and so Conte didn’t.

So from a substantive point of view, the focus should now be on Chief Leahy.  Leahy needs to answer Conte’s charge about already having the information and why, if he thought a crime was committed, did he not file charges…like he is empowered to do?  Instead he throws the DA and AG under the bus and potentially gives the Republicans 4 more years of power in the Governorship.  Chief Leahy, you got some explaining to do.

But the potential good news here (Conte backs up Reilly and blames the Police Chief) still does not outweigh the damage this has done for Reilly…who will be haunted with this.  Nor does the managing of this crisis speak well for Reilly and his people’s ability to handle the big time.  They can learn a lesson from Conte.

Please share widely!

0

0