Today, the South End News endorsed Andrea Silbert for Lt. Gov. Click here for the link:http://www.southendn…
and text below:
For lieutenant governor
In the race for lieutenant governor, there are three appealing candidates. One, however, stands out. Businesswoman Andrea Silbert, who founded the Center for Women and Enterprise, is smart, savvy and poised to add depth to the team of whoever wins the Sept. 19 primary. Silbert has made economic development and ending homelessness among families the two prongs of her campaign. She knows a thing or two about economic development, having created more than 14,000 jobs since 1995 through the Center for Women and Enterprise. Former Brookline selectwoman Deb Goldberg is terrific; shes also won the backing of the smartest man in Congress: Barney Frank. But her experience is thin: two years as chair of the Brookline Board of Selectman. The same can be said of Worcester Mayor Tim Murray. Hes appealing, but Worcester has a weak mayor form of government. The position, basically, means that Murray won the most votes for councilor.
Silbert, by contrast, has been out in the trenches building businesses and creating jobs. She also knows a thing or two about taking an unpopular, but righteous, stance. Silbert, a Cape Cod resident, favors the Cape Wind project. Although the project is favored by a majority of state residents, it is deeply unpopular with residents of the Cape. With scientific consensus nearly unanimous around the problem of global warming, anything we can do to reduce our carbon footprint just makes good sense.
The notion that Andrea Silbert and Dorie Clark have been hawking only works with small staff strapped papers…that the Mayor of Worcester is JUST a city-council chair…nonsense.
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Today Worcester Magazine broke it’s own tradition by endorsing in a primary…they chose Patrick-Murray ticket and made very clear what Tim Murray had accomplished in Worcester:
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QUOTE FROM WORCESTER MAGAZINE ENDORSEMENT OF PATRICK AND MURRAY….”Few outsiders will understand how much Murray made of his elected seat in Worcester, a city in which the mayor has little true authority. Through confidence, savvy and good sense, he has promoted a progressive agenda that has turned this city around in ways that only a few short years ago would have been nearly unimaginable. He could have served better only if he held the same post in a strong-mayor system of municipal government. As it is, he bestowed authority on the position with his bare hands, then applied it to the betterment of the citizens of this city.
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Consider just these three initiatives, all driven by Murray personally: The replacement of a moribund mall with a proposed, mixed-use private project of such ambition, it will be the largest development in state history to be built outside Boston; the replacement of an ineffective, unimaginative city manager and administration with the hard-driving Mike OBrien and his team; and the forceful promotion of increased commuter rail service, a position that seems practically prescient in the light of increased fuel prices and one that has served to place this issue in the forefront of the statewide dialogue.
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Those who know Murray know he will remain true to values of inclusion and economic progress. He cant help himself; his impatience with incompetence and flat refusal to dissemble on issues are intrinsic to his character. Here is an unabashed labor advocate, with an impressive record on that score, without whose support the city administration would not have been able to achieve its revolutionary record of new, progressive contracts with municipal unions. Murray is both an idealist and a pragmatist, with neither facet of his political character compromised by the other.”
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Enough said.
NOT. That article was a stroke job as bad as ever there was.
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You’re usually pretty on the level, but just because your guy didn’t get the endorsement because he’s a city councilor, no need to whack ’em. Face it, he’s a city councilor. A damn fine one at that, but still a city councilor.
These two rags probably cancel each other out anyway. Everyone in the South End reads the SEN (cuz it’s free) and everyone in Worcester reads WM cuz it’s free.
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These endorsements are fun to tout, and I’ll keep doing it, but they won’t make a lick o’ difference compared to the TV ads that are running.
Deb Goldberg’s ad avalanche has kept Andrea Silbert stuck in third place…her goal was to be the “woman in the race”…I guess $2.5 million can do that…but as long as Tim Murray can keep Deb trapped in the margin of error, she hasn’t bought the office yet.
I Finally agree with Hoss on something