A new Channel 4 poll conducted by Survey USA seems to confirm the results found by State House News earlier this week: Deval Patrick is the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for Governor. Among 417 likely Democratic primary voters, Patrick was chosen by 37%, compared to 27% for Chris Gabrieli and 26% for Tom Reilly. 10% were undecided, and the margin of error is +/- 4.9%. Full results are here. A note of caution, though: Tom Reilly will likely get a bump in the polls as a result of handling the Big Dig disaster well. It’ll be interesting to see whose hide that bump comes out of.
OK, number crunchers: go to it!
Please share widely!
on the radio. He sounded like a complete moron. This thing is such an embarressment.
Obviously, music to the ears of this Patrick supporter.
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BUT! Hello?
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I seem to remember that several weeks ago, Deval called for an independent investigation of the entire project and all its players. The AG is not about to investigate himself, and unless the role of his office is included in any such probe, it just won’t have credibility with the public. I’m not trying to imply that the AG or his staff did anything improper along the way, but since he was given oversight by the legislature (as I understand it), any investigation into what happened (or didn’t happen) cannot be credibly carried out by the overseer. Who will guard the guardians, and all that.
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Eileen McNamara certainly sees it that way:
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So how do you come to the conclusion that Reilly will benefit from this tragedy? I don’t see it that way.
Free media matters when people don’t know who you are — once they know who you are they need a REASON to vote for you. People know who Reilly is, and stories about how his office got serious about this only after someone was killed are not going to help him. So they had a report from 1999 and did nothing? Oh yeah, sure he’ll get a bounce. Maybe as big as his Marie St Fleur bounce!
if voters get to see him being all decisive and in charge and executive.
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There are pitfalls, obviously, but Reilly has a role that none of the other candidates share or can touch. Doubly now that he has framed this thing (properly) as a criminal investigation.
Reilly is not likely to come out of this unscathed. If he is wise, he will immediately call for a special investigator and remove himself from the process. He has been AG throughout the years when a special investigation into contracts and cost overruns might have prevented this disaster from happening. He had the opportunity to take the lead on this from the legal perspective. To my knowledge, he has not addressed this problem and has steered clear of challenging the legislature. Just as he recently decided not to join Rhode Island in going after the paint industry, I fear that he is not going to really go after those responsible for this disaster.
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The media will not be kind to him if he backs down or waffles on this one. Reilly is going to be slapped around quite a bit as evidence emerges. He is in a losing political position. I almost feel sorry for him, but not quite.
Suddenly he comes out today and says that he JUST FOUND a 1999 report stating that the bolts had failed…. yippee.
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The level of proof required in a civil suit is lower than beyond a reasonable doubt. It won’t take that much effort to go into the TV and newspaper archives and get quotes of Reilly stating that he wouldn’t sue Bechtel etc. because he didn’t think he could prove enough harm to make the suit worthwhile–despite Cerasoli’s 1999 report and the 2005 Ginsberg Commission reports which found PLENTY of stuff wrong.
Good news, better news, and more good news!
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Actually, two good surveys came out this week, both show Deval Patrick to be the voters’ choice.
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See our analysis here:
http://www.devalexperience.com
Tom Reilly gets the benefits and the burdens of being the incumbent AG. Do you think either Patrick or Gabrieli wanted to have to decide the ballot question certification? No. They much preferred sitting on the sidelines and taking their shots. Heck, Gabrieli STILL can’t formulate a position on that issue.
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Now something comes along that happens to fall within Reilly’s purvue and he’s more front and center than the other guys. Suck it up. Get over it already. The man still has a job to do. Neither Patrick nor Gabrieli have to worry about that, do they?
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I don’t blame them for NOT having a job, so stop blaiming Reilly for having one. Most of us do.
I agree with MavDem. It’s a little callous to be looking at the polling of the tragedy in the first place. Also, Reilly will do the job of AG that he’s always done. I don’t think he’d be the best governor, but I’m confident that he’ll do the job he’s always done — no better or wosre– as AG over the years and people will see that. Whether that will boost his polls or lower them is really up to the voters.
we probably agree on 80-90% of the issues. It’s just that campaign and blogs tend to higlight differences, so it just seems that we disagree all the time.
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We all often forget that even the candidates agree with each other most of the time.
Calling for an investigation doth not equal “handling it well.”
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It means doing his job.
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You can’t know for sure whether or not he’s handled it well until months and months from now, when there are actual results, suits and cases brought up – and if he helps ensure, in all his legal capacity, that it won’t happen again (including suing for the costs of repairs if it’s found the tunnel, as a whole, isn’t safe and this wasn’t just a freak accident). But we can’t know any of that stuff until, in all likelihood, after the race is over – at least the primary.
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In any event, I think he should have had a spokesman handle the press. I’ve never been fans of candidates running for a different office while they’re supposed to be doing their job… they should step down, be it Tom Reilly or Bush when he was a Governor. But that’s just my personal opinion – and what I think I’d do, unless being an Attorney General isn’t a hard, full-time job?
Tom Reilly may not be able to resign from his position because he may not be able to afford to do so. Obviously, he has made a good salary as DA and AG for the past 15 years, but he clearly does not have the kind of resources that either Chris Gabrieli or Deval Patrick have in order to campaign full-time without a job.
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Deval Patrick made nearly three times as much as Tom Reilly last year by simply sitting on Ameriquest’s board of directors. He was also paid $2.1 million by Coca-Cola in 2005 after resigning in 2004 in return for a release of all claims against the company as well as non-compete and non-solicitation agreements. In total, Patrick made $3.8 million last year, presumably more than enough to coast through 2006 as a full-time candidate.
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As we are all well aware, Chris Gabrieli appaears to be infinitely wealthy.
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What you are suggesting would basically make it impossible for any non-millionaire officeholder to run for another office without incurring major financial liability. Since resigning for Tom Reilly might mean not being able to pay his daughter’s college loans or something to that effect, I don’t think he can be blamed.
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Basically, your resignation argument is highly beneficial to the Patricks and the Gabrielis of the world, but completely impractical for the 99.99% that don’t have those kinds of resources but still want to make a difference in government.
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As for using a spokesperson on an issue of this magnitude rather than stepping up to the plate, that would be unacceptable. If Tom Reilly were not front-and-center on this investigation, he would be criticized for ducking it. He is still the Attorney General, whether those who support his primary opponents like it or not. But his job is not to make those people feel comfortable. The rest of the public still expects him to do the job that they re-elected him to do in 2002.
He’s running for Gov’t. He’s not poor. If I were him, that’s what I’d do. Furthermore, I’m pretty sure candidates can actually pay cost of living expenses through their campaign war chests. Yet, more importantly, even if he resigned – and lost – he’d still have easy access to a huge number of positions that would pay Deval Patrick kind of money (easily) – including positions where he could essentially sit on his butt.
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So I don’t buy it. We’re not talking about a Joe Schmo running for state rep, who’s never ran before.
and Sheriff Tom’s pursuit of the bad guys is a day lost to Patrick and Gabrielli in terms of TV face time. There is nothing better or worse than being the lead story on the 6 o’clock news. As long as it is positive news and not continued bashing about judgement such as the St. Fleur fiasco early this year, Tom’s handling of the tunnel disaster with daily press conferences on a potential criminal prosecution will be huge in terms of free air time. The public wants blood, and if he plays his cards right he can deliver it to them every evening on TV . Being the AG has its advantages and disadvantages,
P.S. he also has 4 million in the bank. I wouldn’t do the seating arrangement for that victory party in Copley Square quite so fast.