So character limits on the pda have been forcing me to truncate my previous post…til a kind BMGer delegate swung by and said, why not just post another post?
Duh!
— Lynne
Ok so there’s a juicy ‘rumor’ through confirmed via two reliable sources that O’Donovan’s ppl, having failed to gain enough percentages to keep him competative with Tara DeChristofaro, were going around claiming Sheehy who did NOT make the 4th ballot, endorsed O’Donovan, when in fact she had endorsed DeChristoforo. (I have just confirmed this with delegates personally approached by O’Donovan supporters in this way.
Sheehy was forced to make an announcement to the lines of delegates waiting to vote that she had NOT endorsed O’Donovan, but had endorsed DeChristoforo.
WINNER: 68 % Tara DeChristoforo!!
O’Donovan made a concession speech appologizing for ‘the confusion’ about endorse.ents.
… before she could post this, but she called me from another phone to have me post the following. “When O’Donovan made his concession speech, he apologized for the endorsement confusion. He sounded pretty sincere. Don’t know what really happened.”
That this means she’s been logged out of my account and I can have it back now?
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p>Wish I could have blogged it proper, but no wifi and no mobile device means I was out of commission.
This was an exciting opportunity for the people of Middlesex County and the Commonwealth!
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p>BMGers know my beliefs concerning Margaret Marshall and the Trial Court. Judges should judge! Elected clerks and registers are responsible to the electorate!
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p>Superintendacy of the courts means on rulings and conduct, not the mechanics!
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p>This confrontation has been building since Mike Dukakis’ “court reform” wrestled the bricks and mortar of the courthouses from the people!
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p>Good luck Tara! Bring the courts into the 21st century. Make us proud of you and the court.
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p>Hold Margaret Marshall and the Trial Court administrative offices. One Center Plaza is bloated!
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p>You know that. You are there.
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p>Make the people proud!
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is Tara DeChristoforo?
Her Blue Mass Group post is here.
If they can have runoffs in their elections, why can’t the public have them (preferably instant runoffs) in ours?
I was a delegate to night. I walked a way feeling better about politics than I have in a long time. I wasn’t a DeChristofaro till the third ballot; but by the end of the nigh I really felt like something special happened.
Good luck to Tara. She does have a Republican opponent [I don’t know if John Lambert is on the ballot as a Republican or on stickers – maybe someone will post the answer, otherwise, it is check with Sec. Galvin’s office in the AM.
I switched to Tara on the second ballot.
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p>I was pleased to see that the crummy ploy of the O’Donovan supporter (who ran through the voting lines falsely claiming that Sheehy had endorsed O’Donovan) backfired.
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p>I wasn’t originally going to stand for delegate, but we weren’t going to fill our slate in our town, so I decided to go. Glad I did. It was a good night.
I was also a delegate tonight. I went in to the caucus with an open mind. Initiially I was leaning towards Katherine Triantafillou due to the resume she posted here on BMG. I had previously stated on leftinlowell that my prime criteria for choosing a candidate was administrative experience especially with automated record management. When I heard Tara’s 2 minute introductory sspeech she became my candidate through all 4 ballots. I have to believe that eventually 302 other delegates came to the same conclusion I did that Tara’s experience as the number two person in thr Registry currently and her management of the technical update slated for rollout next Feb made her the best candidate by far for this office. It was extremely gratifying to see the best candidate receive the party nomination.
After all of the speeches, it appeared clear to me that the choice (among those I thought had a chance) was down to selecting a politician who’d have to learn the job or selecting someone who knew the job but would have to learn the politician part. An easy call for me. I also voted all four ballots for Tara.
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p>My impression was that while some candidates had “their people” in the room to vote for them, Tara won over most of those who came in not having made up their minds.
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p>Good luck, Tara. Post again soon about your general election campaign and how we can help.
Since I actually have to practice in the courthouse, I did as much homework as I could before hand, and then tried to talk to candidates once I was there. I was actually impressed with Sheehy — she had been through some pro se stuff, and knew something about labor relations. I went with Tara on the 4th ballot, since she wouldn’t have a significant learning curve. I saw Sheehy yell “Tara!” in the lobby after I heard about the rumor, and I didn’t want to reward an attempted dirty trick.
My thoughts exactly. I did a lot of homework beforehand, went there with an open mind, like DeCristofaro and Triantafillou, but eventually went with Tara for all four ballots.
From the Somerville News:
People in O’Donovan T-Shirts were going through the voting lines claiming that Sheehy had endorsed O’Donovan. Maybe they were just overenthusiastic supporters, but they were wearing the T-Shirts. I’ll maybe buy that they were confused and spreading misinformation by accident, but don’t tell me they weren’t with your campaign.
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p>But that was why O’Donovan only moved a handful of votes between ballots three and four.
The O’Donovan delegates are all political whores from the lovely city even Howie Carr loves to hate. Those O’Donovan delegates who spread that rumor are some of the finest employees Secretary Galvin and Mayor Joe Curtatone have on the payroll. They would never even dream of making false statements.
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p>Congratulations to Tara and all the delegates who voted with their intellect and instinct.
That there were some people I really respect that were pulling for O’Donovan — like Will Brownsberger for example, along with some characters that I don’t particularly consider my political soulmates, to put it charitably.
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p>I voted for Tara on the first ballot because I assumed she’d not make it through the balloting. I figured the caucus was an insiders game and she didn’t have a shot. Shows what I know.
…for running a truely impartial, well organized, and democratic caucus.
…This was a very inspiring event. Tara did a great job and deserved the outpouring of support. It was breathtaking to see someone rise based on merit and qualifications, not a political machine. I was in the hallway when the O’Donovan supporters were shouting that Sheehy was supporting O’Donovan. Then to her everlasting credit Maria Sheehy came into the hallway to deny that she had endorsed O’Donovan. It was an outrageous tactic and it clearly backfired on O’Donovan because in the end Tara got almost all the votes from Sheehy supporters. I look forward to helping Tara in the general election against whoever the Republicans managed to get on the ballot.
It is late and I can tell you that I can not sleep because I am riding such a amazing wave of excitement.
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p>I went into tonight’s caucus hoping for the best and planning for the worst. I am deeply humbled by the support I received tonight. I have every hope of living up to your expectations of me.
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p>I believe I was supported because I proved that it is possible to be elected for the job that you do, not just for the position you seek.
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p>I am proud to have been supported by such a committed democratic contingency as you who are participants in the BMG. I know that my reaching out to you made all of the difference in my success tonight. I will continue to do the work I have been doing for the last five (5) years to serve Middlesex County and never forget that doing the job is more important than having the job.
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p>Thank you again.
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p>Tara DeCristofaro
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p>P.S. Remember to vote for me in November!
Tara — congratulations on the win!
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p>One of the frustrations for those of us who practice in the outlying ‘burbs is the Cambridge-centric focus. For those of us with families, it’s not always fair to expect us to haul an hour each way into Cambridge for a bench/registry/bar meeting.
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p>It would be great if you could commit to coming out to deepest Metrowest and other outlying points and have a discussion with us about our needs and our observations about how the court could work better.
Tara — congratulations on the win!
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p>One of the frustrations for those of us who practice in the outlying ‘burbs is the Cambridge-centric focus. For those of us with families, it’s not always fair to expect us to haul an hour each way into Cambridge for a bench/registry/bar meeting.
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p>It would be great if you could commit to coming out to deepest Metrowest and other outlying points and have a discussion with us about our needs and our observations about how the court could work better.
Excellent speech last night – and thanks for your willingness to dialog here. One thing you can do is regular [say every other month?] news from the Court posts both here and on your web site? Just a suggestion. Most attorneys these days do use the internet, after all and as you can see, many who dop use MPFC are participants here at BMG.
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p>So let us know when and where your campaign kickoff will be and I bet a lot of us show up!!
For trusting me to use his account to post on the front page. Obviously, I could easily have used my own account and put up a user post, but his temporarily-granted access to the front page made it a much more timely exercise.
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p>Apologies to the constant editing down on the previous thread, as I said I ran up against an apparent character limit on the PDA’s version of browser forms and tried to squeeze out as many characters as I could in the initial thread (before afertig had the brilliant idea to start a new one – shows how intensely focused I was on trying to post stuff, LOL). Also sorry for the use of “registrar” instead of “register” – it’s hard to read comments on the PDA, and I definitely cannot POST comments (David, you need soapblox to look into PDA browser compatibility for their sites, oy!) so I missed that correction. I guess we’re so used to hearing “registrar of deeds” around here, it just seeped in to my lexicon.
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p>Thirdly, posting via the PDA keyboard is a slow process, and I didn’t get to type every observation I wanted to. But, it was better than nothing I guess!
Congrats to Tara for the nomination! I look forward to voting for her on the November ballot. I posted my own thoughts about last night on my blog – I really do think the best candidate rose to the top here.
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p>It was a lot of fun and I’m glad I went to cover it, even if I did only get home at 2am after hanging out in Waltham bars with some other local Dems I hadn’t had a chance to see in a while. 🙂