To Whom It May Concern:
When evaluating candidates for any office I look for several KEY factors: intelligence, backbone, sober-mindedness, where they are from, what they have done prior, why they might want the job, where they stand upon the political spectrum and whom it is they have hired to run a campaign.
Unfortunately the generic pabulum you, the current crop of MA Senate candidates, have ALL posted on your individual websites provides no insight, whatsoever, to any of these characteristics. We are thirteen months away from the election: time enough to get into spats, scuffles, debates and dirt, but we seem to be glossing over civil introductions of any clarity or efficacy.
Some of you list advanced degrees as positive indications of your intelligence, but the cavalier manner in which you splash generic positions and inflammatory language leads me to question either your intelligence or your understanding of my intelligence. I’d like to know why you chose a specific focus of study and if it has been efficacious for you. I’d like to know what that experience will bring to the US Senate on my behalf. The language on the websites is sufficiently generic as to be interchangeable; That is to say specifically and clearly that nothing distinguishes one candidate from another because none of the websites are distinguishable from the others… much as television ads are equally vividly vague, indistinguishable and useless.
I’m not particularly impressed with any of the websites and cannot but beg the question if any of you has the backbone to break out of the bland and unctuous mold that the campaign “professionals” have poured you into. The internet is not TV and a sound bite on a web page merely highlights the vast expanse of things you could have said, and at your leisure, but did not.
For instance, were any of you born in Massachusetts? If not, what is it about Massachusetts, other than the possibility of an open Senate seat, landed you here? Our own Hon. Deval Patrick is quite free with his biography often noting his Chicago birth and Massachusetts education as formative of his character. Well, what’s formative about your bio? So you are here? How did that happen? So you say you know ‘first hand’ about the middle class. I want cold hard facts. What year were you born? What year did you first come to Massachusetts? What about Massachusetts politics, if anything, lured you in? What’s been your experience with ‘middle class’ salaries? Have you ever had to scrape by on unemployment? Have you ever felt the urgent need to change jobs merely for a higher salary? What’s your present salary? Will the Senate position represent an increase in pay? Or a decrease? Cold hard facts. I’m not Colbert. I don’t do “gut” checks.
Of equal importance is some indication of the size and scope of your campaign staff. Who is your campaign manager? Who’s fundraising for you? How much money do you have? How much do you think you will need? Why can’t I find this information by going to your website? Why is this important? Because I want to know the extent of involvement with what other campaigns your staff/funders have undertaken. These are not secrets and I can find out with diligence elsewhere, but I’d prefer to hear about them from you, clearly and comprehensively. Cold hard facts. You can add analysis to the facts and let me decide. If, however, you merely provide pabulum as analysis and hide the facts what am I to conclude?
These are questions and you are no longer constrained by either the print or television media in providing answers to them. Will you do so?
…that you’re setting yourself up to be disappointed? I happen to think most of the websites are at least good starts. Keep in mind only people like us are paying the slightest attention at this point. There’s just a touch more cynicism in your tone then I would like and if I were a candidate reading that I’d wonder if anything I might say would satisfy you.
I think it is one good start repeated over several candidates sites which leads me to believe it is a commodity third-party effort. Change the names, swizzle the colors, Insert standard verbiage. What a waste.
If WGBH up and said to the candidates, “we’re going to give you each twenty four hours of uninterrupted coverage to do with as you please…” Do you think any one of these websites would suffice?
When some reporter at Channel 5 asks a question and a candidate says “go to my website for the full answer…” would any of these websites suffice?
You could start by answering the questions. If I ask you A) where were you born? and 2) what has brought you to Massachusetts and kept you here? You could straight up answer the question. If I want to know the particulars of your campaign staff and fundraising, you could give them to me. They are real questions. My cynicism, such as it is, stems from the altogether unseemly notion that IT IS I who’s asking the painfully obvious questions with plainly missing answers: we’ve been making use of the internet for some time now and this sort of basic information ought to be de rigeur. But whatever cadre of campaign pros there is that thinks the internet is just a billboard writ large is selling it, and us, short. It’s not a question of dis-satisfaction: no amount of cynicism on my part de-legitimizes the questions.