We’ve got a real “When did you stop beating your wife”- type of headline today in the Globe: “Reilly says he was unfamiliar with controversial delegate.” Remember that retired cop who gamed the system for a $140 large pension? Well, turns out he was elected as a Reilly delegate for the convention.
Campaign aides said Reilly had no idea that Lincoln had been elected a delegate for him from the town of Middleborough. Nine delegates were elected from Middleborough, all of whom supported Reilly. They said that though Lincoln was a delegate, he still was “not associated with the campaign. Tom doesn’t want him associated with the campaign,” said spokesman Corey Welford.
Good gravy — the candidate doesn’t personally choose all his delegates. If you want to blame someone, blame the caucus voters in Middleborough — and even that’s a stretch.
The article does include some back-and-forth about whether Reilly would prosecute the case: “[Reilly] said he is waiting for the state Public Employees Retirement Administration System to determine the facts before taking action.” Sounds like Reilly has played this down the middle from the beginning. So file this under “goofy coincidence”, but not “unsavory connection,” please.
I’m frankly baffled by the kinds of things the Globe seems to think are important in evaluating candidates: Killer Coke, Taj Deval, and now this. Maybe they’d get their circulation back up if they started to treat their readership like adults, and reported on the ways that the next governor will affect their lives.
We don’t need baseless attacks, nor Barbara Walters-type “profiles”
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Does the Globe usually have a week-before-the-election issue series? Side-by-side comparisons of the candidate on education, the Big Dig, taxation, etc.? That could make up for a lot.
This one?
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I didn’t think that was fluffy — it seemed relatively balanced. You can quibble with who got the last word, but that’s what the man found. If you want to bring his corporate background up, I think that’s the way to do it — thoroughly, and not just hit-piece by hit-piece, he-said she-said.
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More to the point, it’s the proportion of hit-pieces to forward-looking pieces that troubles me. Like most newspapers, the Globe has been quite lame at tracking, vetting, and investigating the candidate’s actual views, and what they’d do from 2007 to 2010. I sense strongly that that’s what interests most voters — appropriately.
Never know for objectivity, The Globe again runs the “guilt by association” stories. They wait until just before to the primary or election to run the really juicy stuff. I wonder what they have planned.
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I’m sure Tom or any other candidate wants to stay away from the Retirement system problems. Too many important people have stakes in that to upset the applecart.