I don’t live in the 3rd Congressional district. I was not involved in anyway during the recent election in which now Congresswoman Trahan’s won a multi-candidate primary by only a handful of votes and just 22% of the primary voters.
Given the Boston Globe’s full throated endorsement and judging by some of her TV appearances, I was pretty much settled into respecting her tenure and looked forward to the possibility of supporting her for higher office. But not before she does some serious explaining about her basic integrity. Of course many at BlueMass are aware of some potential funny business and her inability to explain how hundreds of thousands of dollars suddenly appeared for her to use as personal funds during the critical closing days of the Democratic nomination for her Congressional seat. (BTW, this is a bipartisan problem.)
And as we wait for that explanation, The Intercept outlines in an article the carefully parsing of words the Congresswoman’s spokesperson used to distinguish between “Corporate PAC money” which Trahan promised not to accept and PACs connected to trade associations that represent that corporations that she refuses to take money from. So in the closing days of the campaign, this parsing of the english language allowed Trahan to accept money from the trade association “The Food Marketing Institute” that serves the interests of Walmart and other mega-grocery stores (Stop and Shop perhaps?) and at the same time, allowed her to tell Democratic activists that refuse contributions from Walmart’s corporate PAC. To me that is just part of the typical con game politicians of all stripes play with voters. Particularly base voters, who WANT to believe in their candidates and don’t look harder at the answers they want to hear.
This kind of behavior is particularly galling when the Congresswoman Trahan positions herself as a champion for “fixing” our political system,when she wrote:
“As part of the largest Democratic freshman class elected to the House since Watergate, this Congress — and particularly my freshmen colleagues — have a mandate to fix problems in our political system, to unrig our democracy, to unmoor the entrenched special interests in Washington, and to usher in a new standard of ethics and integrity that ensures that public servants serve the public, not line their own pockets.”
With her silence about the sudden surge of personal money into her campaign during the closing days, coupled with her parsing of words to hide her intent to take money from the “entrenched special interests” that run Washington DC, Congresswoman Trahan has some explaining to do. But I doubt she will. In the three months or so she has taken office, she was racked up an impressive record of hypocrisy. There is nothing “new” and “refreshing” about the Congresswoman, just more of the same blah, blah, blah that is undermining the foundations of trust in our political system.
I hope progressives and Democrats don’t give her a pass. She needs to be pressured into explaining her behavior.
Thanks for beating me to it, pogo! Now let’s see how long it takes for us to be accused of being purists over this…three…two…one….
She seems to have a voting record solidly within the mainstream of the Democratic Party. I am not aware of any significant votes in which she has bucked the party line. I’m less concerned about campaign finance as long as it’s legal.
Your comment reminds me of the responses I get from many Trump defenders. While they may be uncomfortable about some of the things he says, they generally support his agenda and as long as everything he does is “legal” it’s OK.
When did our political norms get so low that the standard is “as long as it’s legal”? There was a time when our political norms would never allow Congresswoman Trahan to parse words like this and let her get away with it. (Never mind what Trump gets away with.)
As long as we have blind loyalty to “our team” (as you comment, “She seems to have a voting record solidly within the mainstream of the Democratic Party” exemplifies) and not loyalty to a higher moral sense of right and wrong, we are screwed as a society.
This attitude is closer to Machiavelli’s “the ends justify the means” than the ideals and values on which our country was founded. Sad.
I frankly don’t have much of a higher moral sense regarding the minutia of campaign finance. Please tell me you did not just compare Lori Trahan to the Dangerous Unqualified Misogynistic Bigot who currently resides at 1600 Penn! Yes, I do generally learn to like our nominees even when they were not my primary choice (Trahan wasn’t), unless they really are DINOs or horrible human beings.
I did not compare her to Trump, rather you with Machiavelli.
That’s pretty insulting too. I’ve actually read Prince and it’s not pretty. Trump is Machiavellian; I most certainly am not.
What I heard from you is the “ends” of having “a voting record solidly within the mainstream of the Democratic Party” to justify the “means” of Trahan parsing words to hide the fact that she is indeed taking money from the very corporations that she promised to to take money from.
If I’ve mischaracterized this, please clarify.
Well, I usually associate Machiavelli with harsher means than the mere parsing of words. The reason people are usually concerned about the sources of campaign funds is that the legislator might be tempted to do the bidding of said sources with her votes. What I’m saying is that if her voting record is good anyway then her sources of funding are a moot point. I also believe that we should take people very literally and exactly, which I guess is why I’ve so often been asked if I am or wish to be a lawyer.
I’ve been thinking about writing a whole diary about this “so long as it’s legal” canard.
I think there’s a fundamental philosophical error at the heart of this assertion, having to do with what we see as the proper role and scope of government.
If we accept a standard that says “… as long as it’s legal”, that standard implies that each and every act that we find morally or ethically objectionable must be made illegal. In my view, that demands a government that is FAR more intrusive than I find proper or desirable.
We have already learned that the flagrant nepotism and job-selling of the Probation Department scandal was legal (the corruption counts were dismissed).
It was still offensive and corrupt. “Legal” corruption is still corruption and I want no part of it.
Couldn’t agree more. We really don’t need any more laws. We need to restore the social norms we use to operate on. Like when the “appearance of a possible conflict of interest” disqualifies someone for a job involving public trust. But instead we operate to the very bottom of social norms, where “”it not illegal” is the standard. But is trying to restore the old social norm about as likely as coal jobs coming back?
Ugh! I absolutely HATE “appearances” of a conflict of interest. I’ve said for as long as I can remember don’t argue to me that it “looks” bad; prove to me that it IS bad. In this particular case, I want to see a voting record on Trahan’s part that shows she is doing the bidding of these trade associations, especially if it deviates from the way Dems vote generally before we complain too loudly. I’d love a constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United and if I had my way only individuals could contribute to campaigns or we go entirely to public financing, but until we do I don’t want to unilaterally disarm either.
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
Well argued /s
I think the reference to the appearance of a conflict of interest about the Probation Department scandal. That scandal WAS bad. I think I am not the only Massachusetts voter who views the dismissal of those convictions as a triumph of legal corruption over obvious common sense.
It was obvious to every observer that the conspirators in the scandal were flagrantly corrupt. The court ruling that reversed the decisions only demonstrates how deeply the corruption permeates our legal system.
In the case of Ms. Trahan, I think the apparent campaign finance violations are worth watching.
And I likewise recall not being nearly as upset as you were over the Probation matter.
Indeed, my recollection is the same. You and I have VERY different standards for what we demand of our elected officials and for what we call “corrupt”.
So far as I’m concerned, any official who offers jobs to clearly incompetent candidates in explicit exchange for political favors (such as budget approvals) is corrupt. I get that to you this is just patronage.
So far as I’m concerned, “patronage” is a synonym for “bribery”.
Republicans tend to stay in the deeper (national) end of the pool and the Democrats stay in the shallower (local) end- but it’s the same cesspool.
Perhaps. I think some of that is just statistics, though.
As much as I would like to believe that Republicans are more likely to be corrupt than Democrats, I suspect that what we’re seeing is just the dominance of Republicans nationally and Democrats locally.
Put another way, I suspect that there’s just as much local corruption in a Red state, and that local corruption is probably among local Republican office holders.
That is as telling as it is disappointing.