Somebody out there doesn’t like Tom Reilly – and that somebody works for Reilly’s campaign.
How else to explain the front-page, above-the-fold appearance in today’s Globe of a private investigator’s report, conducted for the Reilly campaign, that detailed the full extent of the financial woes that almost immediately derailed Rep. Marie St. Fleur’s bid to be Tom Reilly’s running mate? The report disclosed all of her unpaid student loans, all of her tax liens, all of it. It also disclosed her husband’s legal problems, including a larceny complaint.
And here’s the kicker: the report was in the hands of the Reilly campaign – specifically, the hands of Stephen J. Kerrigan, one of Reilly’s closest confidantes – two hours before Reilly announced that St. Fleur would be his running mate.
When asked by Frank Phillips, who wrote today’s article, about what happened in those two hours, Reilly had no explanation. Reilly told Phillips that he knew the investigative report had been ordered. However, he said “he had never inquired into it, read it, or been briefed on its contents.”
Let’s repeat that: he said “he had never inquired into it, read it, or been briefed on its contents.”
WTF??
OK. First, the description we used over KillerCokeEmailGate for the Reilly campaign – “the place leaks like a sieve” – is no longer apt. We’re now talking iceberg-through-the-hull-of-the-Titanic leakage. The St. Fleuriasco was a huge, huge error, but it was months ago, before most people were playing very close attention to the campaign, and if it had all played out back in February, it wouldn’t have had much lasting impact. But for the existence of this report to come out now, less than two weeks before the primary, and on the day of a critically important debate, is very damaging to Reilly. Someone on the inside seems to be actively trying to hurt Reilly’s chances as much as possible.
Second, in the law there isn’t much difference between “knew” and “should have known.” In many circumstances, if it is proven that you “should have known” something, the legal consequences are the same as if you had actually known it. And there is no longer any question that Reilly should have known about Marie St. Fleur’s financial woes before he announced her as his running mate. All the information he needed was in the hands of his chief of staff in plenty of time to call off or delay the announcement. Yet, apparently, no one did anything. This goes way, way beyond politics “not being his strong suit.” This is about basic competence. And it’s a little scary.
David, I was sure your first post this AM would be on the DP change on income tax issue, followed by hordes of angry DP supporters commenting on how they felt let down.
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Wrong again! Note to self – cut back on gambling.
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As for Reilly-St. Fleur, that merits an above-the-fold front page story? Again?
Please. The person who doesn’t like Reilly may be editor who chooses placement.
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New wrinkle in old story gets front page, while flip on the single most divisive issue is pushed to Metro section?
Geez, gimme a chance. Can’t blog about everything at once.
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“New wrinkle”? A lot more than that. We know for the first time that Reilly’s chief of staff had, in his hands, all the information he needed to go to Reilly and say “we need to stop this, now.” Either he didn’t do it (in which case he’s incompetent or worse and should be fired), or he did and Reilly went ahead anyway (in which case, well, you know). Neither says much good about a would-be Governor.
Here
is that Reilly’s selection of St. Fleur was already widely reported in the media the day before the press conference and the morning of the January 31 press conference, i.e., the cat was already out of the bag.
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For instance, Boston.com and a number or regional outlets prominently carried this Associated Press story on January 30 and the morning of January 31. According to the Globe’s timeline, the report arrived at Reilly’s office at 11:56 a.m. on January 31 – that is clearly after the decision had been made and announced the the media. (See: AP story)
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Should the press conference have been cancelled? Hell ya, but hindsight is 20/20. The campaign should have pulled back 24 hours earlier than it did. However, none of this changes the fact that Reilly had made his decision prior to the reports arrival.
The link goes to today’s Globe story. What did you mean to link to?
I intended to link to this Associated Press story from January 30. That is the story that was already running the day befre and the morning of the press conference.
But if the St. Fleur story was out of the bag the day before he made the announcement, the Gabrieli-as-LG story was out of the bag as early as last December, and that didn’t stop him from scuttling that deal at the last minute.
Huge, huge difference, sco.
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The January 30 AP story confirmed that Reilly had selected St. Fleur. Your link – and similar stories – merely shows that Reilly and Gabrieli had discussions about ticketing, which nobody disputes. The point being: Reilly had already made the St. Fleur selection on January 30 prior to the report’s arrival on January 31. Big difference.
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Today’s Boston Globe story does everything possible to obfuscate that fact.
If I recall correctly, Reilly even scheduled a press conference. His people leaked it out, not that there were discussions, but that this was a done deal. If he can cancel that one, why not the St. Fleur one?
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Here’s The Globe’s story on it from January.
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That said, January Reilly is a lot different from September Reilly. I don’t think the St. Fleurasco matters much at this point.
Sco, how can you not recognize the difference?
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Even this story falls short of saying that Gabrieli was a done deal, which is what the AP story reported about St. Fleur. It is the difference between “Reilly was expected to formally ask” (Phillips’ column) vs. “Tom Reilly chose” (Johnson’s column). Different verb tense and, ultimately, a different result.
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All of which gets further and further from my main point which is that the Boston Globe completely ignores the fact that Reilly’s selection was public before the press conference.
Anyway we can go around and around with this forever, in the end we’re just debating the meaning of “is”.
no offer was ever made or accepted.
No reason Reilly couldn’t have pulled the plug, regardless of what AP reported. So the AP said it was “confirmed.” Big whoop. Things change, and no one in the real world would have given a rat’s bum about an AP story that said Reilly and Gabs were having “discussions” about a ticket vs. Reilly and St. Fleur as a “confirmed” ticket. Until he’s out there in front of the cameras making the announcement, it’s all whispering.
Honestly?
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If you read the Globe story, you would be led to believe that Reilly made the St. Fleur decision with all of the facts in hand, which is not true. The AP story shows conclusively that Reilly made his decision and announced it to the media on January 30. His campaign followed through on the press conference with the information in hand (all of 2 hours old), but the decision had already been made a day earlier.
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Could Tom Reilly have backed out of his decision at any time after 11:56 a.m. Sure, and he would have been better off for it. However, somebody obviously decided to follow through with the press conference and then sort through the issues after the fact. However, that is not how the story is presented in the Globe. Phillips makes no mention that the campaign had already publicly committed to St. Fleur by the time the report arrived.
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Inside baseball? Sure, I guess, but isn’t that what BMG is 99.9% about? How many people are having this conversation to begin with?
Your comment that somebody decided to go through with the press conference and sort the details out later is really frightening. It’s a variation on shoot first and ask questions later.
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p> As I have argued before, the Governor makes really important decisions that affect the daily lives of the citizens of the Commonwealth. I have also argued, this was not merely a mistake by Reilly, but showed negligence on his part. Today’s article adds more fuel to the fire (I made the assumption before that he merely knew of problems but not the specifics, but here either he knew, or should have known, the extent and severity of those problems).
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I don’t want my governor to ignore incredibly important and pertinent information when making a decision. I don’t want my governor to make a decision based on incomplete information (especially when he know other information is out there and chooses to either not look at it or ignore it completely) and then try to figure out the details later.
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Why some argue that this is inside politics, I think the story is way more important than that. Here we have an insight into what kind of leader Reilly will be and how he goes about making important decisions. And what do we have? A case of complete and utter negligence. This really scares me a lot.
Even as Deval supporter, I just am sick of hearing about this. He messed up last winter. He paid the price at the caucusses. It is ancient history. Move on.
the Deval story is a non-story. This has more-or-less been his position for as long as I have been following things. So, he may have phrased it a little differently. Who cares? It is substantively the same position. I may disagree with it, but is it news? No.
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Seriously, why is the Boston Globe running with these stories on the morning of the debate? And please don’t tell me that the Globe doesn’t have an agenda of their own.
They seem to be in the muckraking business this morning.
and just about everybody is getting hit with the mud. . .just about. . .
Well.. achem…
To me, the most interesting thing about this story is what Reilly said in the interview. If it was just a fuckup on the part of a member of his staff, that’d be one thing. But there was a very short time between him deciding not to pick Gabrieli, and his deciding to pick St. Fleur. He can’t have been too distracted thinking of other things at the time; his LG choice had to have been at the top of his mind. If, during that time, he 1) did know that he had asked for an investigation of her background, but 2) did not inquire about whether it was complete, or ask to see the report… I think that undermines the strongest part of his image, that he’s a basically competed Attorney General who does a good job with attention to detail, even though his political skills may be rough.
Reilly’s explanation for the Fleuriasco at the time was that “politics is not my strong suit”… Apparently neither was reading critical reports!