Click the player below for 17 minutes of Boston mayoral candidate John Connolly speaking of the last 15 years to the voting. Weeks in the making, I was pleased to have the other shoe today, the second of the two finalists in next month’s final for Boston mayor, John Connolly. See last week’s show for Marty Walsh.
I can whine briefly here to let you know that the main event, Connolly, starts at 8:30 minutes into the show. He was between campaign events. If you’d like to skip my intro, context setting and blather, drag bar ahead to 8:30 minutes in the player.
I had prepared policy questions, much like with Walsh. Today I scrapped many of those because of the short show and because polls have come out, much money has been raised, and lately many pols have endorsed, most for Walsh.
Listen in as we start with the largely artificial controversy about whether three years full time in the classroom gives him leave to say he is a former teacher. He believes those remain transformative years that inform his work and politics. He jocularly said those who would denigrate that as being like birthers.
For the next few weeks:
- He does not believe the campaign will get nasty or classist.
- He thinks both sides have enough money and staff for a fair race.
- He won’t be changing his approach for the next two debates (tomorrow and the next Tuesday evenings), that “my message will be the same and less about my opponent’s.”
- He thinks that voters will ultimately decide between the candidates’ platforms.
Note: If you’re wondering where normal co-host Ryan has been, be aware he recused himself from the mayoral shows because of political (and BMG commenter) activities that might conflict.
Among other topics we got to was housing. I challenged him on what seemed like spongy lingo in his development planks. Phrases like “As mayor, I would leverage the resources and influence of the Department of Neighborhood Development, the BRA an the Housing Trust” do not inspire me to believe his administration would drive enough of the right kind of housing. Listen in as he talks about how he’d get it done.
Voters can get an earful from both candidates on development, including the BRA, and we can hope that will happen in the next two debates. Connolly wants the existing redevelopment authority to switch to independent planning, get lots of community input, and produce bold visions for housing and other building. He’s big on transit-oriented-development and Indigo-Line projects, as Mike Ross campaigned on during the preliminary.
While he holds vast visions and admits the housing can’t happen in a year, he claims his mayoralty would lead to almost immediate results. He said that incrementally, Bostonians could expect to see improvements constantly.
He also claims that women, those financially struggling and communities of color like his economic plans to do more than bring some jobs. He also wants business startups via entrepreneurial centers. His vision is folks in places like Dorchester and Roxbury starting companies and hiring neighbors.
I may be too cynical. As with Ryan, Connolly also thinks voters will pay attention and decide in their wisdom who is the better candidate for an office. As a Boston election warden, I meet far too many voters who admit total ignorance as they come to the polling place. Here’s hoping that after the calls, porch chats, and debates, folks are paying attention.
~Mike
I’m not sure I’ve heard anything more offensive than Connolly’s birther comment from a candidate in a while. The real birthers have spread false information and spent five years harassing Hawaii officials and denying that records maintained by the vital records authorities are legitimate. They have done so to call into question the legitimacy of the first black president because they don’t like his background.
People calling out Connolly are relying on his actual resume to point out that his experience is not what he presents it to be. There is no comparison.
For that reason I completely reject your characterization of the issue as:
The question is not whether he can “say he is a former teacher.” It’s whether he has deliberately fostered the misleading impression that teaching makes up a huge part of his professional experience, when in fact it constitutes (1) only 3 years’ worth of his experience in the past 18 years; (2) the very first 3 years.
I would not identify teaching as the main background the Teach for America veterans who were my classmates in law school. They taught from 1999 to 2001, now they’re law firm partners. In another 25 years, they’ll still be law firm partners and their teaching days will constitute only the first 5% of their post-college life.
If Connolly can be characterized primarily as a “former teacher,” Tim Wakefield’s a “former first baseman.”
For Connolly, his birther comment was in humor and without feigned indignation. His sincere disposition aside, he can be an amusing guy. The “largely artificial” is mine because there is no evidence that he does claim or has claimed to be a career educator.
Rather he is upfront in saying he had three years of every-day teaching and that it made a huge impression on him. As someone who has had several jobs, non-profit service stints and school periods that stay with me and affect how I view other experiences, that makes a lot of sense to me.
To pillory him for saying that three years was very meaningful doesn’t make sense to me. In particular, alleging he claimed to be a career teacher, when he never has, is indefensible.
In his show today, he did say that he thinks those who ascribe claims he never made likely have policy differences with him. I’m with him i thinking they should address those instead.
Those who don’t like his positions or believe he is anti-teachers’ union or such, should get down with that. He offers a chest of positions to agree or disagree with.
…From Globe
Doesn’t sound too humorous to me.
Believe me, I’ve spent months criticizing his policy positions. But the birther comment is still offensive.
Your first question: what’s going to make the difference in the final push?
His answer: It comes down to issues, vision, etc. “I’m hopeful that my experience as a former teacher, as a Boston Public School parent, and really as a city councillor…” As always, he leads with “former teacher.”
Then you basically fed him an answer on the “former teacher” question (par for the course in this softball interview) and he trotted out his birther “joke,” which is meant to associate those who question his spin with the worst elements of the right. Nobody’s said he didn’t “go in to the classroom every day” when he was teaching. People have said, hey, most candidates don’t lead with something they did in their early 20s more than 15 years ago.
If you have the stomach for it, you might catch some other guest shows on Left Ahead. Our style is to let guests make their points.
We’re not a we-report/you-decide site, but we never spring surprise adversaries and don’t ask trick questions. What you think as softball questions are to get at the core of what the guest contends.
We do the same with the occasional winger or GOP candidate (few agree to come on). Even if we don’t care for the guest, the show is about the guest and the guest’s ideas, not us. The shows when we chat among ourselves are for that.
We didn’t try to catch Walsh in any awkward constructs either. That’s been Left Ahead for six and one-half year. We trust the reasoning and intellect of our listeners.
I heard the Walsh show. I don’t expect you to “try to catch [anyone] in any awkward constructs.” With Walsh, you asked straightforward questions. Fine. But I think the questions to Connolly speak for themselves.
In this interview you accused “people places like the Herald and Blue Mass Group” of saying “he never really was a teacher.” Of course, no such allegation has been made by anyone here.
Then the “question” continues: “Of course, you never said you were a career teacher. You said you were a former teacher, you said you did three years and, you know, you said it wasn’t for you. I mean, you’ve been plain about it, in fact the Globe had a nice piece about it, went through all the issues, but I’ve been surprised to see people I know, people who otherwise seem normally intelligent, keep saying, ‘Oh well, he keeps saying he was a professional teacher, and you didn’t. But you had, you said you were deeply affected by the three years you did do.”
Next question (11:40): And I see it, and, well, I’ve known you for years, and you’ve been on here before. I’ve gotta say, you know, I don’t think people are aware how much work you put it, not only to your plans, some that worked and some that didn’t, I mean you wanted a longer school day, you didn’t get that in the contract, but anyway, things you were pushing for, the assignment plan, and I’ve gotta say, you know, I have said before, watching you run the Education Committee those years, and going to all those damn meetings, and reading those piles and piles of reports, and hearing everyone say, ‘My school’s getting shortchanged, why can’t I, why isn’t this fair?,’ well, you put up with a lot of junk and worked real hard at it. I mean, I think that’s another education part that I’m not sure people are aware of, and that your website doesn’t stress.”
All three of my kids went through BPS. There’s an 11-year gap between son 1 and son 2, which meant we endured, tried to comprehend, fought against, and eventually prevailed with numerous superintendents and several assignment plans. During those times, I attended various schools, the School Committee, the City Council and the Council’s Education Committee hearings and meetings.
Not long ago, I went to a Latin Academy meeting where Connolly discussed the system budget with the headmaster, other faculty, parents and a few students. It was grim. It was paranoid. It was contentious. This school or another has this offering, this many art classes and teachers, this big a budget. Everyone was whiny and proclaiming the unfairness of it all. They were getting cheated; what was he going to do about it.
Connolly was not defensive or angry or dismissive. He knew the points for each accusation and question and addressed them for several hours. I barely had the patience to finish the meeting. Fortunately coffee was available.
He told me directly and later in a show how he loved the details and really wanted people to understand the complexities and trade-offs, as well as identify where the BPS should improve and be responsive to student needs.
Were I in his campaign, I’d want people to know that aspect of Education John. I’ve seen him manage the analysis and communication aspects of the budget and the priorities as presented by the School Committee for years. That’s certainly more complex and nuanced than, “I taught school for three years,” eh?
Well, Connolly’s composure and command of budget detail are impressive. But I’m struck by your harsh characterization of the people at Latin Academy, who have every right to feel hard done by, not just in recent times but for years. You seem to have a real distaste for confrontational, pugnacious, or emotive expression of any kind (you recently called my pro-Walsh pieces “emotional,” e.g.). This, I think, makes you something of an outlier in Boston public life, at least in the neighborhoods. It does explain why you admire Connolly’s style. Others, though, including some at City Hall, find him to be condescending and worse.
but I don’t have a problem with your the style for the most part. It’s fine to be calm and not looking to play “gotcha.” The typical interview I’ve heard is respectful and conversational. This one struck me, as exemplified in the examples I cited, as the interviewer spending half his time making the case for the candidate and belittling his critics.
For the record, since people are taking different positions, I don’t have a problem with Connolly saying he is a “former teacher” per se, even if he wasn’t certified, etc. The overall impression of his campaign materials and statements out of his mouth, though, is highly misleading. He elides, as Ryan says below, the past 15 years of his professional experience. Calling himself “an attorney and former teacher” would already be a good start. But a look at his website would give one no impression that he was a practicing real estate attorney all the way to 2013. It looks like he was a teacher, then he became a city councillor.
On the substance: I think it’s awful that Connolly says BPS should have instituted its final offer unilaterally and made a longer school days without any additional pay. BPS teachers work many hours outside of school and are often in the building until late trying to support their students. They spend money they can’t really afford to buy supplies that are standard in suburban and most charter schools but nearly impossible to come by in the BPS. They deal with over 30% English Language Learners and don’t have the option charter schools have to show problem students the door and wash their hands.
His associations with some of these “reform” groups sends up a huge red flag to me. He cites the Trotter as a success story and so it’s worth unpacking. As I’ve stated here before, the Trotter’s new classrooms and new library show that, once a school adopts a “reform” agenda, the spigots open on Beacon Hill and in Washington and at the corporate foundations. Soon Target is paying for your new library. The stories of people wondering, at committee meetings, why their school can’t get this or that relate directly to that.
Bingo! This nails the problem, as I see it. His bio (and the way his surrogates often speak about it) is misleading, pure and simple.
And I hope it does.
The people belittling Connolly for referencing his brief stint teaching as something that has profoundly informed his personal, social and political worldview are the same folks who go about touting Walsh as someone who’s led a gritty, proletarian life informed by his experience working in the building trades. Yet, as far as I can tell, Walsh has spent the bulk of his professional career as an extremely well payed union officer and politician (simultaneously, of late). Nothing wrong with that. But how many years has the guy actually spent working with his hands, hm?
Walsh doesn’t call his work as a laborer his most important experience, in fact he hardly ever mentions it. He always leads with being a state rep and also talks openly about being a labor leader.
Connolly always leads with having been a teacher and I’ve never heard him mention his years as a practicing lawyer.
Tim Wakefield is a former first baseman. John Connolly is a former teacher. Birthers are people who perpetuate falsehoods. In the context of BHO, that means perpetuating the falsehood that he wasn’t born in the US. In the context of Connolly, that means perpetuating the falsehood that he has misrepresented his teaching experience. He has always been completely upfront about his teaching experience (including in the audio clip). Wakefield pitched for longer than he played first; a well-known fact. Connolly was a city councillor and lawyer for longer than he taught; another well-known fact. What Connolly has said, and rightfully so, is that his thinking on how to improve Boston public schools is shaped by teaching, serving on the education committee and being a PBS parent. I bet that TFA shaped the views of your lawyer friends even though they spent more time practicing law than they did in TFA. Connolly’s teaching experience helped to shape his views on education. John Connolly has never said that in his professional life that he was “primarily” a teacher. You said that. And, by doing so, you perpetuated the falsehood that Connolly has misrepresented his teaching background.
to make a comment on Blue Mass Group that isn’t bashing Marty Walsh (or comparing his intelligence level with that of Sarah Palin) or blowing sunshine at John Connolly. Until then I’ll feel free to take your for a Connolly campaign sock puppet.
What you say are “well-known facts” are not. I have friends in Boston who thought Connolly was a current BPS teacher, so frequently does he mention that he was a teacher. His own campaign website says:
Not a hint of Ropes & Gray in there. That is not by accident. The TFA people I attended law school with did their teaching to burnish law school applications and spend the next five decades whispering at cocktail parties about how, of course, they know the troubles facing the poor children in the cities. “Didn’t you know, I was once an inner-city teacher?” Among their friends this makes their views unassailable.
Fenway, is not a good way to win friends and influence people. 😉
… if untrue.
If true, saying so is, in fact, an excellent way to win friends and influence people… As well, it’s a valuable public service. If true…
is downrating every single comment with which you don’t happen to agree, Kosta.
Whining about downrating is childish.
For someone who doesn’t hesitate to launch ad hom attacks against other commenters you are awfully sensitive.
about the downrating. It’s just rich to have someone who hits the minus button 20 times a day lecturing me.
Or else you wouldn’t bother to go click on the downrates to see who made them.
And like I said, given how quick you are to falsely call people “sock puppets”, I don’t see that you are in the position to lecture anyone either.
I’ve always clicked, not because I’m hurt about the downrates or need the uprates for my ego, but out of curiosity over who stands for what.
The guy in question has 0 posts and 6 comments in a history that dates back to Friday. All 6 comments denigrate Walsh or praise Connolly. If we see this person chime in on other topics, or at all after the first week in November, I’ll be happy to take it back.
they don’t seem like the kind of things that a sock puppet would say.
Just seems like a guy that likes Connolly better than Walsh.
Would you assume that someone that only posts pro-Walsh, anti-Connolly comments is also a sock puppet? Because I think there have been some people fitting that description as well.
for years, Fenway. Obviously, you didn’t take a very close look. Take your sad little turf issues back to the tot lot.
I was talking about Dasox1. He’s the guy I said seemed like a sock puppet. You’re the one who downrates excessively. Sorry for the confusion.
hadn’t noticed how much i’d downrated stuff. A cranky streak, I guess. But you’re right. I’ve been acting snippy and stand chastened. Friends?
I’ve been pretty cranky too, I’ll admit it.
I just love it when BMG brings people together! 😀
if by sock puppet you mean an emissary of the Connolly campaign, nope, sorry, not I. I don’t think that they would want the likes of me shilling for them. But, truth be told, I’d rather be a sock puppet than a birther. Wow, you went to law school with some really upstanding folks. I thought people did TFA for altruistic reasons. I do think that Walsh has under-reported his haul for the last reporting period (we’ll see) because he’s concerned that it looks like he’s bought and paid for by big-labor. And, I also think that it’s highly questionable to introduce legislation that benefits interests that are paying you $170,000 per year.
Did he get certified? Does he have an MED? Did he actually put in the time
And effort to become a real teacher? It’s deliberately misleading and calling it out as such is not birtherism. Obama actually was born here. Connolly was
Not a real teacher. We have tons of real teachers here who find that line of his questionable and not all of them are Walsh supporters.
I had friends go through the grind of the U Chicago certification program which sends teachers to some of the worst schools in Chicago. The school I tutored in (and I would never deign to call myself a teacher even though I tutored for almost as long as Connolly) had such bad gun violence Obama spoke there. It had metal detectors and armed guards. My friends who taught there got graduate degrees and certifications and continue to teach.
Connolly is the equivalent of a TFA alum claiming to be a teacher. The fact that he backs charters, opposes unions, and feels he was a teacher in spite of not being one shows the low regard he holds that profession in. My sister in law has a JD and passed the bar, arguably more of a claim to be a lawyer than Connolly does to being a teacher since she went to a professional school and got state certified, and she still calls herself a former lawyer since she hasn’t practiced in a decade, and practiced for longer than Conolly taught.
To use the baseball analogy, its as if Connolly played for the PawSox and then claims to have “played for the Sox for three years”. Big difference between the majors and minors. Big difference between a resume padding and a vocation people take seriously.
A junior, inexperienced teacher to be sure, but a teacher nevertheless.
I really think this issue is getting really tiresome. I think it is better to spend time attacking Connolly’s ideas rather than these resume criticism attacks.
In any case, I don’t think having tons of education experience automatically means that someone knows how to fix our schools or else our schools would already have been fixed by now, so I never paid much attention to Connolly’s teaching background. Better to look at the ideas for their own merit or lack thereof.
it’s only because Connolly hasn’t satisfactorily addressed the issue — much as my cohost may disagree with me here.
Connolly needs to be up front about the fact that his career has been spent at the likes of Ropes and Gray doing real estate law with wealthy Boston developers. Preferably he should provide voters with a list of former clients (just as we demanded of Mitt Romney and Gabriel Gomez), if he wants to win the trust of voters, since the potential conflicts of interest abound.
It’s a simple matter of disclosure and clearing up the facts.
His experience mostly volunteering in the classroom is no doubt a valuable life experience, but not so valuable that any voters should be confused into thinking it was a career in the classroom that would give him any kind of expertise in what Boston Public School teachers live and breath everyday.
That misconception has grown like a well tended garden and I would not insult Connolly’s intelligence by suggesting he could be ignorant of this. These issues should all be relatively easy to move forward on in the campaign, but they won’t and can’t go away until that air is cleared. That makes it all the more imperative for him to be very clear about his career — doing so could only help and enhance his campaign.
A detailed press release on his legal career, the sorts of things he did and the clients he had would easily suffice — those are the questions we really don’t have answers to that every Boston resident deserves to know. Performing that simple task would also clear up any lingering confusion on these classroom misconceptions that have been allowed to fester.
I don’t think saying any of this makes me a neo-birther. Just an observer of the facts that has drawn what I and many others have deemed a sensible position after a great deal of thought.
As always, my words are mine and mine alone.
~Ryan
He used to teach for a couple of years – so what if it were at a charter? If you are responsible for teaching children, planning lessons, etc., you are a teacher. Yes, that includes TFA folks if they were the adult instructing children they were a teacher – period. If he were claiming to be certified when he wasn’t, that would be a problem.
Shouldn’t imply they were in the majors, or hide that they play golf professionally.
re: certification.
Most TFA folks, for example, are not similarly certified as, say, Boston Public School teachers. They do not study education in school beyond a class or two and are often granted what amounts to a waiver to be in the classroom — one that isn’t and can’t be extended indefinitely. Were I a parent, I would be incredibly wary having a “teacher” for my child with little to no educational background and who had no intentions of having a career in teaching.
All that said, I don’t have a problem with him saying he’s been a teacher in the past. That’s not the cause of this brouhaha. The issue is 1) he’s neglected to mention his much longer career in real estate law at top Boston firms that deal in Boston’s wealthiest developers for almost the entire duration of this campaign, and 2) the fact that he wasn’t up front during the campaign that his teaching experience was limited and mostly volunteer work. Volunteer work is great and should be rewarded, but it is not the same thing as a longstanding professional career.
Had he been more upfront about these issues, they never would have amounted to anything.
The people that can look at somebody who spent three years in a classroom teaching, and then claim that that person wasn’t a teacher, has the same warped sense of reality that birthers do.
You’re entitled to your own opinions, you’re not entitled to your own facts.
No one’s said anything about anyone not being a “real” teacher that I’ve seen. The question is if the misconception was created that he was a career teacher.
You are entitled to your own opinions, but not entitled to pretend others have different opinions so that they’re easier for you to argue against.
jconway states quite clearly his opinion that Connolly is “not a former teacher”. So sadly, this is clearly not a straw man.
I am stating he was not a professional teacher. I am stating that the experience he did is akin to the 2 years I tutored in the CPS, and the tutoring program I am starting now. Am I engaging in teaching? Am I in the front of a classroom getting paid (in both cases) to teach students? Yes. But I am not certified, I am not doing this full time as a profession, I am not in the union, I don’t have a masters, and no public school in IL or MA would hire me as a teacher.
It’s an insult to my friends, family members, and former teachers who went through the process, got MEds and certifications and paid the money and put in the time to be teachers.
I was also a paralegal for three years, should I go around saying I ‘practiced law’? When I have no JD and no license? Technically I gave legal advice over the phone, filed bankruptcy cases, and drafted briefs, but I was NOT a lawyer in the basic definitional sense of the word. When he is a) hiding his true profession b) exaggerating his former profession to gain credibility with ignorant voters as the ‘education mayor’ and c) insulting/blaming the BTU for calling him out on his bullshit he is engaging in a bit of a lie. Hillary really wasn’t shot at, Bush didn’t really serve in the military, Warren didn’t really endorse Clark. These things may not matter much to us cynical politicos online who are hyper aware but to the voters making last minute decisions and just paying attention now I shudder to think of the low income parents thinking they are sending a humble teacher to City Hall to fix the schools.
but you also used the words “he’s not a former teacher”. If that is not what you meant, then why did you make that the title of your comment?
Someone just glossing through the thread is going to see that title and take it as the summary of what you were saying.
someone would gloss through the website and the speeches and the debates and take as the summary of what John Connolly is saying that he’s a teacher.
Sorry, I’m really not trying to start problems with you but couldn’t resist.
he’s made them clear in the past, too.
I just really don’t think you’re going to find anyone here who will say that Connolly was never really a teacher ever. You may be able to pick at a comment or two here or there out of the past context that person’s written or without clarification, but the facts are pretty clear: Connolly may have taught, mainly in a volunteer capacity, and was thus a “teacher” in the broadest sense, but he was never and is not a career teacher, certified and with a great deal of experience in the profession.
What he did was great, but calling himself the Education Mayor and letting the misconception hang that he’s been a professional, career teacher who understands classrooms, what teachers need and what students go through with any level of expertise is not so great. It’s misleading.
Is what he’s doing the worst thing any politician has ever done? Nah. But the other candidate in this race could not possibly be more open about his life, from his professional experience to the obstacles he’s gone through, even to the point where he’s admitted he’s overcome issues of addiction in the past. The differences in transparency between the two are glaring, which I think speaks volumes.
rye said that no one is claiming Connolly was not a “real” teacher, and then jconway goes on in detail to explain why he thinks that Connollys experience doesn’t really count for anything. That is very close to saying he was not a real teacher in my book.
BTW, I am not at all disagreeing with the point that he doesn’t really have all that much teaching experience. He clearly doesn’t. Although it really isn’t clear to me that having such experience would necessarily have produced a better education plan in any case.
It doesn’t produce a better education plan, so why bother lying? Because low info voters who make snap decisions will just lump teacher, school, and kids together and make their choice. Bush served in the national guard-he did not serve during a war. Connolly’s implication that he is a former teacher and obfuscation about his current occupation serve to paint a false narrative just as Bush’s claim to service or Blumenthals’ during his race in CT. I am saying he is a former teacher if we define “teacher” so broadly to include
Anyone who taught in front of a classroom. By that definition the 2 hour ACT prep class I taught on Sunday makes me a teacher. I think we all really know the true definition is far more narrow and Connolly knows this and continues to exaggerate his experience in that manner.
George Krebs who was a friend on my high school football team, Peyton Manning and Johnny manziel are all football players, they would all be telling the truth if they said they were. But only one of then is a professional football player and that is a HUGE distinction that dasox and to a lesser extent you are glossig over. If either of you can’t make that basic concession than your as dumb as DFW.
Where did he say that? This is another straw man, basically the same you’ve engaged in several times now. You are putting words in people’s mouths that is not accurate so as to knock them down, instead of rebut their real arguments. Stop it.
Jconway had a nuanced and detailed view that you’ve ignored. It’s easy to understand why you don’t want to discuss that at length and instead want to rehash “not a real teacher!” again and again, but it’s just not worthy of BMG.
If you’re not willing to engage in the nuance, then you’re not contributing to the conversation.
Moreover, your accusation doesn’t even make sense. If jconway was indeed trying to make the point that Connolly’s teaching experience counted for nothing — that it was worthless — he’d be describing that of jconway’s own work, as he made clear.
That work has value or jconway wouldn’t be doing it.
It just doesn’t make him even a tiny bit more qualified to be the mayor of a city of 600,000+ people. Were jconway ever to run, he would be making a mistake to allow that experience to be inflated beyond what it truly was, intentionally or not, and/or use that experience as a key part of his campaign.
Yes, well books do allow us to imagine quite a bit. Nothing wrong with that, but the ‘passage’ your stuck on here is simply not what is happening and it’s time to move on to the next page.
You repeating that you think it’s happening — that it’s “very close” to happening — doesn’t make it so and is an obfuscation of the greater issues.
The real story is, of course, that Connolly hasn’t been transparent about his career. His emphasis on his teaching experience is not only misplaced, but is an obfuscation, steering people away from the fact that he’s been a high paid real estate attorney at Boston’s top law firms.
That’s what people have a right to know, but until Connolly discloses his past clients, it’s probably not going to happen, so voters will continue to live with the mask over their eyes, thinking the guy was a teacher instead of a well paid real estate lawyer working for some of Boston’s wealthiest developers at Boston’s top firms.
I mean, heck, even a sensible guy like David, who’s worked at some of these firms, agrees that this is at least partially what has gone on. Whether Connolly has meant for this to happen or not, it has and the people have a right to know what Connolly’s done in his career, who he’s done that for and who’s benefited from that.
We all know those answers about Marty Walsh — it’s been incessantly covered throughout the campaign. Now voters deserve to get the same answers on John Connolly. Period.
This makes me sad. In a country that ignores, bashes and belittles the teaching profession, when teachers should be the north, south, east and west when it comes to what we should be doing to improve our schools, your quote here makes you part of the problem.
Our fundamental issue with education in this country is we’ve let a bunch of suits who’ve never been professional teachers take on the mantle of “reform” while they’ve simultaneously portrayed teachers as untrustworthy enough to even be allowed a seat at the table.
You’ve done that right here by implying experienced teachers don’t have the expertise that “would necessarily have produced a better education plan in any case.”
They do. Experienced teachers on BMG like Sabutai have made it clear that not only do they have that expertise to offer ideas that would improve our schools, but that their ideas are far superior to the ones that have led our country down the wrong path and that go against the grain of what all the countries in the world do that are tops in education.
The teachers are at the literal and figurative head of the classroom when it comes to using real facts and figures to explain just why the “ed reform” movement has been incredibly damaging to this country, damage that will only grow worse.
Our country should continue to ignore, bash and belittle professional teachers at our progeny’s peril.
I think folks don’t really have a sense of what a junior associate does in a law firm, and if they did, they might attach less importance to this part of John’s CV than they have been doing here.
I was a junior associate at a law firm. Connolly was not just that, he was also a founding and name partner at a law firm, albeit one smaller than Ropes & Gray.
Fenway49, I like your posts, you’re an excellent writer. We disagree about the mayor’s race and that’s okay. I’ve posted on the mayor’s race because it seems to be the big issue at the moment, not because I work for Connolly (I don’t). What’s not okay is perpetuating (as jconway, ryepower12 and you are doing) an erroneous claim that Connolly has mislead anyone about his background. He has not. Yet, people continue to say “he hasn’t addressed it” or he’s not a “real teacher.” It’s nonsense; and, yes, it’s similar to saying over and over again that the president hasn’t proved that he was born in this country. Connolly has mislead no one about his experience. Working at Ropes & Gray isn’t the foundation for Connolly’s campaign, so there’s no reason for him to focus on that. Of course, it’s no mystery that he’s a lawyer–everyone on here seems well aware of that. Deval Patrick didn’t run around talking about being General Counsel of Coke because it didn’t form the foundation of his gubernatorial campaign. Education is the foundation of Connolly’s campaign, so that’s why he talks about teaching and working on education related issues as a city councilor and PBS parent.
Governor Patrick thoroughly addressed his job at Coke, explained it and what he did there and made a point to address it in a prominent way during the campaign.
Connolly hasn’t done that. For example, we still have little to no understanding what he has done as a lawyer and what clients he’s worked for.
It would be as if Governor Patrick made reducing crime the cornerstone of his campaign and said “as a former law enforcement officer, I support X’. As an Asst. AG he technically was a former law enforcement officer, but the implication is that he was a long time beat cop who then decided to run for office. Similarly, Connolly looks like a teacher who ran for office. I thought that when I first heard of his candidacy because that is how he is selling himself.
Partly because i lile your writing and we agree on other issues and candidayes elsewhere, but I really feel you are stretching the realm of factual credibility here. Fine, he is a “real” teacher in so far as we define that term so broadly to include any Tom, dick, and Harry who has taught in front of a class. But to use sports, there is a huge difference between the high school QB and Tom Brady. One is a professional with a ton of skill, experience, and certifications and the other is an amateur. Can we agree he is implying he is a professional teacher to run as the “education mayor”? Do you honesty think that’s not what the average voter read into it? It’s honestly what I read into it when I first saw him announce and come on here. You can’t honestly believe he is doing anything but claim that.
You are engaging in a relentless campaign of character assassination.
by the guy who does all the voice overs for advertisements in summer blockbusters.
Character assassination? Come on, man. That’s just over the top.
someone of lying to be barred from this site?
So John Connolly like
Associates may not be in front of clients or making decisions, but in their heavy workloads they are intensely enculturated into the goals and strategies of their firm and the practice area they’re in. This is the kind of process that for whatever reason did not take with Connolly in his time teaching. And this is why some teachers take such umbrage at his way of talking about his experience: they are looking at it from the other side of having committed wholly to the career and internalizing it as an identity, with all the financial limitations and public disrespect that goes along with it.
Is a shameful insult aimed at people like me that dislike John Connolly, think he has been a mediocre city councilor at large, and call bull on his teaching credentials. I am not a teacher or member of a union and am not ill informed. I am however appalled at Connolly’s exageration of his credentials. To compare people like me to “birthers” is appalling.
“dislike” How helpful. Connonolly’s bio is straightforward and readily available. Get along now.
he was a professional teacher before joining council then he corners the market on being most passionate about education. BTW Passion does equal success.
Connolly has been forthright about his background and career from the beginning, and he puts forward what is important to him. What’s the beef? He IS the most passionate candidate about education, whether you like the focus of that passion or not.
WTF does that mean anyway. LIke, “hey man, nobody loves Black Sabbath more than me.”
Really.
I think it means “I love education more than i love teachers and their damn union.”
spelling goof
I was becoming very curious about what he has said about his experience. His website does seem to be heavy on the teaching, but does mention that he later became an attorney. While I can see why some see the emphasis as disproportionate to his actual career I can also understand it. The top of his website says, “Our future starts with our school,” and the first sentence of his bio which I linked says, “[H]e is running for Mayor to transform our public schools…” The rest of the page seems to elaborate on that theme. Since he seems to be running to be the “Education Mayor” it probably makes sense to him to emphasize the education-related parts of his background. I therefore conclude that I do not fault him for that as much as some do.
to omit (almost completely) his actual career and only talk about his time teaching — which happened a long time ago, for only a short while and was mostly in a volunteer capacity.
But we call these things lies of omissions.
“to omit (almost completely)… ” Oxymoron much? To translate, he hasn’t omitted being a lawyer.
If I were running on a platform of improving our infrastructure, I’d consider it disingenuous to lead everything with my three years working for a transportation engineering firm from ages 22 to 25 and barely mention the totally different career I’d had for the most recent 15 years.
Why shouldn’t you do that?
I mean, really? I wanna know.
John Connolly is straight up not lying about being a teacher nor doing something that is not done in almost every big campaign. He was a teacher (briefly) before he went to law school and into politics, he says that time shapes his view, big whoop, get over it. Arguably, he’s over emphasizing one aspect of his background to a comic degree (especially if you’re following things closely). But, it’s well within common discourse. Remember the man from Hope? Son of a mill worker, anyone? No doubt there is more to Marty Walsh than the scrappy street kid who clawed his way up ™ that his campaign is trying to distill his image into, so what?
Move on to other things…
very much 🙂
It’s not that he’s “overemphasized” one job, it’s that he’s overemphasized one job + almost completely ignored the rest of his career.
Yes, well, the person who’s said that has also been incredibly up front about his entire career, as well as personal issues from earlier in his life.
Bringing up Marty Walsh in this regard doesn’t help your point; it helps mine.
Few politicians have ever been so transparent as Marty Walsh, while John Connolly’s been in some ways even less forward coming than Mitt Romney, who at least spoke about his career and brought forward at least some of the companies he was tied to through Bane at various points in his political career.
I mean, really, can’t John Connolly do better than Mitt Freaking Romney on transparency in regards to his professional career?
this is Bane:
and this is Bain:
Both are grave threats to our way of life.
Maybe it’s not strategically useful to dwell on it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not significant. Especially in light of the failure to disclose law clients, compared to the relentless focus on who Walsh has represented (workers).
That who Connolly’s clients were is a big question mark that he doesn’t want to talk about. Every additional day/blog post/newspaper article/debate question spent on the teacher silliness is one not spent on that.
I just waded through 73 comments, most of them about whether or not he distorted his experience.
I asked this on another thread: Does he know the difference between Boston and Cleveland? Kevin White did. Tom Menino does not.
Does Mr. Connolly know the difference between Boston and Cleveland? How about Mr. Walsh?
What Boston/Cleveland contrast are you talking about? What does it mean that White could tell the difference, but Menino can’t?
Here is the Wikipedia summary of the episode (I remember it, and I remember finding it hilarious at the time):
It means, to me, that there is a gestalt that separates Boston (and, for me, New York and San Francisco) from “flyover” cities like Cleveland, St. Louis, Rochester, Houston, and a gazillion others. That gestalt is very hard to measure or quantify — and that difficulty is, in my view, a reflection on the limits of measurement and quantification.
When I walk the streets of Boston, it just feels different. It’s an intangible essence that for me has to do with the color of the sky, the smell of the ocean, the way the Charles sparkles in the sun. Kevin White understood that — Quincy Market, in its original incarnation, made the difference tangible. That’s why the many imitations of Quincy Market (such as, for example, in Baltimore or Seattle) never had the same vibe. Kevin White’s Quincy Market was uniquely Boston and uniquely marvelous.
I see zero evidence that Mayor Menino ever had any appreciation for such things at all. In my view, it really is a kind spiritual awareness — some people hear the music in a symphony, and some people don’t. For some people, an evening mass is a sequence of hymns, prayers, readings, and ritual. For others, it is an experience of diving into spiritual depths like a skin diver turns downward in water.
I long for a time when the city of Boston has a Mayor who demonstrates an awareness that Boston is more than standardized scores, vacancy rates, and commercial property investment totals.
Not to beat on Mr. Menino too much, but I’ve walked around the “Innovation District” or the “Seaport District” — just as I walked around Quincy Market in about 1980.
There is no comparison.
developing the Seaport District, but not at all thrilled with how it’s been done. I find the architecture generally uninspiring and the neighborhood not all that pleasant to walk in, which to me is a key part of what makes an urban neighborhood great. Water views aside, there’s nothing of interest to see there.
Even as all the parking lots are filled in, it doesn’t strike me as the kind of place people will really enjoy walking around. They’ll just build more blah mid-rises. It’s more like Stamford than Boston. It will never be Newbury Street or Davis Square. I’d rather be in the “old” downtown any day of the week. I’d almost rather be in downtown Cleveland, which has some nice buildings though hardly any pedestrians.
Since we know Connolly volunteered for two years and taught for one in a school where no Mass certification was required — so no student teaching or specific academic credentials — did he take any education/teaching courses at all at Harvard?
While he was a partner at Schofield, Campbell & Connolly did he have any clients — development or otherwise — that had business with or needed approval for development in the city of Boston? Here is link to current client list to the new iteration of the firm, which took his name off in October 2012. http://schofieldlg.com/?page_id=43 This is important no matter what Bernstein says.
OK, three. Are his income disclosures for other election years public record? If so we could see just how much of his work really was pro bono.