As a follow-up to the helpful post about the primaries in the Governor’s Council races, I wanted to draw attention to the primary in the race for Clerk for Criminal Business in the Suffolk County Superior Court. The two candidates are Maura Hennigan, the incumbent, a former city councilor who won the job as a sinecure after being defeated in the 2005 mayoral election, and Bobby Dello Russo, who was an assistant clerk for several years.
I was struck by what seems to me to be a real imbalance in endorsements. Dello Russo is endorsed by several retired superior court judges, including Judge Hinkle and Judge Zobel; by the clerk for civil business, Michael Donovan, by Sheriff Cabral, and by the clerk of the SJC for Suffolk Couty, Maura Doyle. In the material I’ve received in the mail, Hennigan was endorsed by a Chelsea city counselor and, if I’m remembering right, a volunteer in the health care field. To me, this suggests that the people who actually know how the clerk’s office works don’t think much of Hennigan. This isn’t surprising, considering that her attendance at the courthouse is spotty, she is under investigation for campaign law violations involving misuse of public employees, and her office mistakenly released a man accused of murder. I am sure Hennigan has good qualities, but she strikes me as among the hackiest of the hacks. I am going to vote for Dello Russo.
(In the long run, I think that the office of clerk of courts should be professionalized and should not be elected, but that’s for another day!)
My experience with Maura Hennigan is counter-factual to these allegations and the charge that she is the “hackiest of hacks.” I find her to be an open, accessible, diligent and dedicated politician.
Hennigan comes from a political family and is properly characterized as a professional politician (despite 7 years of service in the Boston Publlic Schools). But she is no hack. Her long record of excellent service as a Boston City Council earned her the endorsement of the progressive Boston Phoenix for her mayoral run saying, in part, that:
As far as hacks go, it is Dello Russo that takes a back seat to no one. When hired as an assistant clerk in 1999, he lacked a college degree of any kind or any experience working in a clerk’s office. What were his qualifications for the position? It’s clear Dello Russo’s hiring was a favor for Speaker DiMasi for whom Dello Russo “worked” part time at the State House (“Bobby and I have been friends for many years, growing up together in the North End, he worked for me for a long time at the State House” said the now-jailed former Speaker in introducing the candidate in the 2006 race). Unlike Hennigan, Dello Russo has never been elected (rather than hired/appointed) to anything in his life and has never had to be accountable to an electorate.
Finally, on a personal note, I would think that you especially, tedf, would respect Hennigan’s efforts on behalf of the plaintiffs in their successful suit against the Boston City Council for repeated violations of the Open Meeting Law (Henngian submitted a crucial affidavit and joined Arroyo, Yancey and Turner in boycotting the closed door meetings in question and calling for open transparent government).
LoquaciousLiberal, I have no personal experience with Hennigan other than seeing her at all the Roslindale Day parades I can remember—I only know what I read. If you have reason to think that the news stories I cited are incorrect, I would be happy to hear it!
The “hackiest of the hacks” comment really stems from the bad taste Hennigan’s first run for the office left in my mouth. Her run for the clerk’s office seemed to me a pretty clear and classic case of the establishment “finding someplace” for a longtime politician from a longtime political family who had lost an election and would be out of work but for what I’ve described as the sinecure. Really, what qualified Hennigan to be a clerk magistrate? What motivated her to run for the office, other than the fact that it was an open seat? By the way, I give much of the blame for this kind of reverse patronage (if I can coin a term?) to voters. If there’s one thing that I really dislike about the Massachusetts political scene, it’s our citizens’ loyalty to political families.
As to your points about Dello Russo, I don’t have any personal knowledge of how he performed as an assistant clerk magistrate. But this is a case in which I think endorsements matter. The workings of the clerk’s office are opaque to voters, and even to lawyers, and so endorsements from those who interact with the clerk’s office in important ways are relevant to my decisionmaking.
Of course I agree with you about advocates for compliance with the Open Meeting Law.
Hennigan does a good job herself of alternatively refuting, explaining and apologizing for the allegations addresed in the new stories you cited in this article: http://advocatenews.net/news/clerk-magistrate-hennigan-clears-air-scurrilous-attacks/1579/
To summarize (and from what I’ve read and know about the allegations):
Hennigan responded that this news story was primarily the result of Dello Russo supporters who “would call the news stations whenever she left the office.” Hennigan has said she was attending a funeral and a doctor’s appointment. Though this is the weakest of Hennigan’s defenses (see the other two non-issues below), I do think that the I-team report you cite is overblown. Of course, politicians who hold elected office also spend time campaigning for re-election (and/or for higher office). The same is true of almost all of them during an election year. To me, this story says more about the campaign process (thank goodness Clerk’s don’t need to run every 2 years like those poor Reps and City Councillors) than Hennigan’s work ethic (which as never before been challenged and which I’ve seen personally is stronger than most).
This is a minor issue masquerading as some sort of major ethics issue. What Hennigan’s employees did here (stuffed envelopes with invitations to a campaign event at the office during the work day) was wrong and the $2,000 fine paid by Hennigan’s campaign was justified. But it’s unclear and seems unlikely that Hennigan authorized their actions. as she said in the above article: “”I didn’t give permission for it. I didn’t ask them to do it. But there were people who did do something they shouldn’t have done. It’s an unfortunate mishap.”
This allegations has always been the silliest to me. It seems unclear who was really responsible and the errors seems to be primarily the result of under-staffing. It appears that the DA’s office and/or the Sheriff’s department may be at least partially to blame for the screw up. Either way, Dello Russo is unfairly exploiting this incident in a way that reminds me of Willie Horton but in a case in which there was no actual decision to release a person. A simple mistake with no actual consequences (the guy was quickly found and re-incarcerated).
If this is the best they’ve got (and I’m pretty sure it is given my experience), then I’m still with Hennigan.