There is a petition (which I for one will not be signing as I prefer Barney Frank) calling for Governor Patrick to appoint Marisa DeFranco as interim US Senator. I strongly object to the way that petition initiator described the convention, yet another DeFranco supporter betraying ignorance as to how the process works. I also wish Ms. DeFranco had been an active surrogate for Elizabeth Warren once the latter was the nominee. I saw no such effort though someone can correct me if I missed something. Her own input via Facebook is:
Jean Palmer, a most wonderful supporter of my last campaign started this petition. Thank you Jean! To confirm, so Governor Patrick will know, I would be happy to serve as interim Senator. Thanks to all who have already signed and thanks in advance to imminent (eminent) signers! Please sign. All best and Happy New Year to Everyone ~Marisa DeFranco
I’d sign that petition.
serve as interim senator as well. Feel fee to start a petition.
I assumed this petition was a RMG stunt, designed to spur Round 2 of the DeFranco Follies.
*Deep voice* Why do Democrats repeatedly disenfranchise the consumately qualified Marisa DeFranco?
Hey, Marisa. Keep your powder dry and take on Tierney in 2014! You want to be a firebrand? Here’s a way for you to make a splash.
She might get started by going to Town Hall and running for the Board of Selectmen.
if she wants to, but this petition is as stupid as it is offensive to the Democrats who attended the convention in Springfield.
Either she belongs to the Democratic Party and abides by the party’s rules or works to change them. Those are the alternatives. All the complaints about an anointed candidate and no introspection from a self-anointed candidate (maybe her supporters are to blame?).
I was a delegate at the state convention (for Warren) and that was the first time I had heard of DeFranco. Ditto for several of the delegates sitting in my area of the hall, all of us from the Malden area.
If you can’t get off your behind and reach out to core folks who will be delegates at the convention, it’s hard for me not to conclude that you are a poor excuse for a candidate. This is Politics 101, seriously.
Not to mention, her speech at the convention was one of the worst I’ve ever seen by a candidate in this state. Content, tone, across the board, it was embarassing and cringeworthy and she acted like she was entitled to votes just by virtue of showing up. Um, no. You have to EARN votes. I’m sorry but she is not ready for primetime in my opinion.
And I will say that I received a call from DeFranco’s campaign, but far too late in the game to ever have made a difference.
I had decided to support Warren very early on in the game, so she couldn’t have changed my opinion.
and while I was asked to sign nomination papers at my February caucus (citywide) for State Rep, State Senate, Constitutional offices and county candidates no one from the DeFranco campaign was there with papers. And I never recived a call from her campaign between the caucus and the June Convention.
I was sent to Springfield because I was a Warren supporter and 210 people voted for me to support Elizabeth Warren, and not because they loved me and wanted me to go off in my own direction.
Even if I were uncommitted, I don’t think Ms. DeFranco was persuasive in her campaign, and I wouldn’t have seen any benefit to putting her on the ballot.
I was a delegate, and unless she had a fabulously sophisticated campaign, which linked reading my blog (where I voiced support for Warren) to my being a delegate (very highly doubtful) there was NO WAY to know where my support was.
Yet I never got a call. Nor did anyone else I knew who was a delegate.
If you can’t do the work with a limited number of delegates, then I sure as HELL do not trust you to do the work of running a competitive statewide campaign.
The next two-bit candidate who bitches about being left off the ballot by a “small number of party delegates” is going to have a widely circulated unflattering cartoon caricature drawn by yours truly.
How much of a head start time-wise did DeFranco have over Warren? In all that time, she couldn’t put together enough support to get a solid 15%+ at the caucuses? Sorry, that’s a fail in my book. She has no one to blame but herself.
that she was running on January 28, 2011.
Arlington had 210 people in Town Hall who wanted Elizabeth Warren to be our next senator at our caucus, and we elected 35 delegates for Elizabeth Warren. I was at the door, and I didn’t see a single person for DeFranco.
I don’t know what was going on in the rest of the state (from the evidence at the convention in Springfield – not much) but I didn’t see any effort in my town.
Delegate votes are not some sort of entitlement, and the rules to become a candidate for our party’s nomination are quite clear. The 15% is to demonstrate support in the party, the ability to organize and engage voters, vital skills for a major party candidate.
Nominating papers for town offices are now available.
No presence for DeFranco at my caucus either. In contrast, Elizabeth Warren showed up, spoke briefly, and spent time chatting with anyone who wanted to ask her a question. (And she did the same in Medford and I think a number of other caucuses).
Call me crazy but as a voter and a citizen and an active Democrat, I kind of appreciate being respected by my candidates, ya know? 🙂
DeFranco WAS at the Lowell caucus, her very self.
Cringe-worthy, as usual.
at the caucus I observed. To her credit she did show up and speak, but there was no organization at all. If a town is important enough for you to show up at the caucus, then you have to have had a slate for delegates to support. There’s a heck of a lot more to this than just giving speeches.
At the convention Marissa lacked either the grace or common sense to make a gracious speech and endorse the party’s overwhelming choice, EW. The only reason we still hear her name is that the media, with its addiction to horse-race politics and drummed-up scandal still interview her.
Marissa, take a lesson from the learned scholars at BMG: run for selectman. Better yet, run at your local caucus to be a delegate at the state convention and get a sense of how things work so you can stop making statements that get this treatment.
I know why Emily Rooney loves her (Rooney has so much antipathy for EW) but I expect more from Callie Crossly.
Takeaway from this interview: Is there anyone Marissa DeFranco won’t criticize? Barney Frank, Elizabeth Warren, delegates to the Mass Dem Convention? Why don’t we all see that she is qualified and deserving to be the interim US Senator?
In one way she is qualified ….. she’s very good at putting everyone else down while expounding on her own wisdom.
Not to pile on…but okay I’ll pile on LOL
The other thing that really offended me at the convention and after it was that DeFranco refused to endorse Warren and she was decidedly unpolitic about it, I thought. She acted like it was beneath her or something. That action alone by her felt to me, as a delegate, like a big middle finger to all of us who were delegates and showed up and made our voices heard. If she doesn’t like the choice we made and can’t be classy enough to, again, do the gracious Politics 101 thing of endorsing your opponent in a primary after you lose, then I can only conclude that she doesn’t want a future in the Democratic Party in Massachusetts.
Which is fine with me because I think we have a very deep bench of talented, excellent folks in local offices (state rep, state senate, other local offices) to run for all manner of open seats in the future.
to endear yourself to the party activists…is to denigrate them.
She won’t be running for any other major office any time soon.
But I suspect this isn’t about public service and is more about Marisa DeFranco. Why else is she still trying to attract attention? It’s all about her.
I find that sad, because she seems smarter than that. But she winds up being more better than the big-fish-little-pond-small-mind editor of our local rag the Lowell Sun.
Long long day on 2/3s the sleep.
There does seem to me to be a touch of Romneyesque mememememe disease about her….
Despite appearing on boston.com, DeFranco’s own promotion of this effort on her Facebook page and this promotion on BMG, as of this morning (11:00 AM), this petition had garnered the “support” of a pathetic 104 inidividuals. Looking through the names reveal:
– About a dozen of the signers are from out-of-state (mostly from Pennsylvania where DeFranco grew up).
– Ms. DeFranco herself signed the petition (#7) along with several other DeFrancos.
– At least two of the names are obvious jokes (Balzto Dewal amd Amanda Hugangkis at #60 & #61).
– There seem to be at least a couple of other signatories who are well-known Scott Brown supporters who’s motives for signing this petition are therefore at least suspect (for example, Dan Rea at #74 is a conservative radio talk show host).
had a clue about politics is gone.
Don’t count the presence of this diary on BMG against her. I posted this on my own because I thought it was an interesting discussion piece, but you’ll note that I said I won’t sign because I prefer Barney Frank. I also made a couple of critical points in the diary along the lines of many comments on this thread.
n/t
For today so far, it appears that only an additional four(4) people have signed on to this petition (bring us now very slowly up to an absurdly low total of 108 over three days). Consistent with my comments earlier in this thread, we continue to see suspect signatures. Of the new 4 signers:
– One is “Bruce Tarr” from “Boston MA” (the Republican Senate Minority Leader?)
– One is a DeFranco from North Carolina.
– The other two appear to be legitimate, if a little late to the party, supporters of Ms. DeFranco.
And Governor Patrick gives a crap?
I sure don’t…
The governor doesn’t really care.
That’s why I don’t have a petition running. But I bet I could get more votes on a petition than Marisa DeFranco.
I thought Glen Johnson was generally pretty good, but he’s fallen for the line about party manipulation this time laying the blame at Gov. Patrick’s feet. All he did was endorse her. He can’t control the party and I suspect the outcome would be very close to what it was without his help.