Tom Reilly says he had no idea what his staff was up to when they were setting up Mr. Killer Coke with PR consultants, media contacts, and otherwise trying to make sure Killer Coke’s anti-Deval Patrick project received as much exposure as possible. “‘I did not know anything about that,’ Reilly said yesterday evening after a campaign stop in Taunton.”
As we’ve already noted, the Reilly campaign’s activities may constitute “coordination” with Killer Coke, which may in turn implicate it in the receipt of an illegal in-kind campaign contribution from a corporation.
Tom Reilly seems remarkably unconcerned about the whole thing, despite the AG’s office’s alleged interest in enforcing campaign finance law. His position: Patrick should release his tax returns.
AOOOOGAH! AOOOOGAH! Non sequitur alert in sector 4! AOOOOGAH! AOOOOGAH!
Being serious here. It does not appear that this Killer Coke/Reilly thing is gonna get a good burn in the public eye. It seems the voter just does not care. Globe wrote about the primary’s lack of interest or excitement. The interest is what is lacking.
How does that transcend to the primary? Helps Deval most likely. But November will be so many more and different thinking people voting.
Will this campaign grab peoples attention in the weeks after labor day? Who knows? much depends on world and national events going on at same time.
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Ugh! That is the most frustrating part about this: Reilly’s campaign constantly demanding Patrick to discuss this stuff publicly; the Sunday Globe runs a front page story and interview with Patrick on his corporate history, makes the same vague demand. If Reilly (and others with questions about this) is not happy with the responses he keeps getting, start asking specific questions. Patrick’s campaign seems to be as open as possible (or as could be expected for a political campaign) and I have no idea what they could do to make the critics happy, and I doubt they do either.
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Reilly is correct that Ray Rogers raises valid questions, and I raised the same questions myself about a year ago. But the campaign has been very open to clearing up questions on this matter. The mystery is how Reilly didn’t know his campaign was coordinating this attack.
I offered my own criticism of Reilly’s comments earlier in this morning on the “Reillygate” thread, but they’re as relevant to your post as to that one. So, with apologies for the redundancy, I repost here (with corrected grammar):
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It was Hunt and Liddy’s Idea?
So now we know: Reilly claims, at least, not to have not known anything about this before getting Joan Vennochi’s call over the weekend. He seems untroubled by what his staff are up to, but then he won’t really comment on it, either. He’s says it’s legit…but evidently not so legit that he wants to be closely associated with it. He wants some distance…but without acknowledging that–or why–there’s good reason not to be identified as authorizing such actions.
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I know that some thoughtful Reilly backers were disappointed when this sordid little story broke, as they believe it’s not really representative of the broader pattern of the man’s character or conduct. They may be right, but that would be easier to accept if Reilly would show some recognition that this kind of sleaze is neither honorable nor, for that matter, any way to run a Democratic primary. (Thus ends the original post, but David’s comments remind me that the question is not just one of “honor” but legality, something one might imagine would be of interest to the state’s chief law enforcement officer…)
I make the argument they aren’t that different, really.
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Either Reilly is not in control of his campaign or he’s a liar. Neither reflects good on him.
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I think the reason this didn’t get traction is that no one reads the Globe…or Frank Phillips at least.
was intended to keep “big money” out of politics.
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Maybe this Killer Coke guy is “employed” by the corporation BUT is doing this on his own dime? That would be entirely legal under campaign finance law.
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IF that is true, then you have the issue of the lack of an individual’s name on the handouts.
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I think the intent there in Campaign Finance was to eliminate anonymous flyers. This flyer is hardly anonymous with the web page address and the e-mail address and the Globe article detailing who the guy is.
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So then you are left with the actions of the campaign.
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Kind of like dropping a dime and tipping an “interested” party of to to info that might be helpful.
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If you believe that I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn…”
Nope. He told Bob that Corporate Campaign, Inc. paid for it:
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You can’t just lay that egg and walk away from it. How do you figure he was acting “in his own capacity?”
Facts: RR in New York owns a corporation incorporated under the laws of NY. Said corporation collects money, prints ads, owns assets, pays salary, all within NY.
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RR takes a trip to Mass and promotes his killercoke activist agenda, an agenda that RR has promoted in his own name and not his corporation’s name on many public webpages.
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In Massachusetts RR rails against Coca-cola, its affiliates and one Mr. Patrick, who is likely (but not certainly) currently in a contractual arrangement with Coca-cola.
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Question: Was RR acting in his capacity as an employee of the corporation and was the “corporation incorporated under the laws of or doing business in the commonwealth” as is envisioned within Chapter 55, Section 8 of the Mass General Laws?
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Discuss.
he told us the corporation paid for the fliers – his biggest expense. The “doing business in the CW” issue is jurisdictional, not merits-related, but my guess is that by spending $$ on the fliers and then traveling here to distribute them (regardless of who paid for the rental car), that’s enough for MA to assert jurisdiction over the printing of the fliers.
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I really don’t see what the issue is here. It doesn’t matter whether RR was acting in his capacity as employee of the corporation. The prohibited act, if prohibited it was, occurred when corporate funds were spent on printing fliers, which fliers constitute express advocacy, and which fliers were subsequently distributed.
It’s not clear. This is not the purpose of that statute.
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I don’t dispute your conclusion, but there is a (very) strong rebuttal, particularly in the area of closely held corporations where it’s difficult to distinguish between the actions of the owner and the actions of an employee of the company who happen to be the same guy.
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His website doesn’t solicit in the name of the Corporation.
but since the money solicited for KillerCoke actually goes to his private corporation – something that the donor is never told – it strikes me as borderline misleading. The whole KillerCoke website is couched in traditional nonprofit terms – a social justice sort of cause, a “.org” domain name, etc. – except when you start to look closely, when you notice that there’s no information about being tax deductible, etc.
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Look, I don’t dispute that Corporate Campaign, Inc. is probably not the type of corporation that the architects of campaign finance regulation had in mind when they wrote the laws. But a corporation is a corporation. And as you know, if he starts blurring the line between his corporate entity and himself, he’s creating a big pile of trouble for himself. No doubt he’s created this thing to insulate himself from personal liability. (That’s why everyone creates corporations, right?)
Ernie has kind of a point. It is funny what people consider important. The Reilly/Killer Coke “scandal” is the sort of thing that gains traction on these boards, and maybe the Op-Ed page, but the undecideds Deval’s looking for are still reading the front page, if at all, and the evening news, if at all. The only way this story makes page 1, in my opinion, is if the candidate gets up and says, “Hey, Reilly’s not operating above board.” Then maybe you’ve got something. But Deval won’t do that because: a.) It keeps Killer Coke on the front page, and b.) for whatever else his detractors think of him, his campaign has been resiliently positive thus far. And from what I hear, he’s not far from pulling the trigger on his media buys, which helps put this entire business behind him even further.
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The biggest effect all this would have, I would think, would be for Reilly supporters, rather than independents. I’d like to hear an honest assessment from Reilly people: at this point, how can you not have serious doubts?
…that Reilly didn’t know what Guarino, et al. were up to with their e-mail strategizing over how to best leverage Roberts’s anti-Deval campaign for the Reilly campaign’s gain.
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I’m wondering just how much time Deval spends cloistered with his advisors, mapping out campaign strategy, compared to the amount of time Deval spends on phone-time to his big money-raisers, field events all around the Commonwealth, and the one or two fund-raisers per day that most candidates attend at this point in the campaign.
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I think that the Deval supporters here are being a little disingenuous when they start invoking Watergate-style “What did Reilly know and when did he know it?” queries here….
…whenever Tom Reilly claims to be ignorant, I think we can all take him at his word! ;>)
;>)