Meatball Jr. throwing in for Norfolk DA

The hack du jour is Greg Connor, who is seeking to succeed his hero and mentor, Michael “Meatball” Morrissey, as district attorney of Norfolk County.

Connor is thisclose to the bloated septuagenarian Meatball, who until very recently had Connor on his hack-infested payroll for $181,220 a year.

In return for that fabulous paycheck all those years, Connor always did the right thing by his political godfather. Over the years, he’s handed Morrissey $2,500.

Greg Connor – just call him “Meatball Junior.” Or maybe Mini-Meatball.

After a happy half-century of gorging and burping at the public trough, Meatball Sr. is retiring due to ill health – the voters got sick of him.

In the wake of his second failed lynching of Karen Read last year, a poll found that Morrissey had a glittering 4 percent favorability rating among likely Norfolk County voters.

After a hackerama-wide search for a successor, the Norfolk Crime Family decided to throw in with Connor, a career coat holder’s coat holder, a hack’s hack.

To stay on the pay roll of the DA, any DA, you must kick back. It’s all perfectly legal, of course. And you know that Meatball Jr. knows how to play the game, because he got his job under the prior DA, Bill Keating.

Keating in return pocketed $375 from Connor

Judging by his own personal campaign contributions, Connor would seem to have been more obsessed with a judgeship than being a prosecutor, even though DA pays more — $223,442 a year vs. $207,855 for a judge.

Plus, DA puts you in the Group 4 pension group – for cops. It’s sweetens the pension even more. But on the other hand judges don’t have to run for reelection….

These are the issues that hacks argue about – which is the softer job? — as they’re knocking ‘em back bigtime at the Nickerson Post in Squantum.

But being a judge is such a lure, especially to a lawyer who can’t make a living on his own. That’s why as early as 2014 Connor was handing cash to judge-appointing would-be governors — $125 to Martha Coakley.

She lost to Charlie Baker, so Connor switched to the Republican, giving him $500 in 2020.

Alas, Connor’s casting bread upon those waters did not bear fruit. By 2023 he realized that there was no way that a guy like him (heterosexual, native, double Eagle etc.) would ever get a judgeship from blow-in Gov. Maura Healey. Not as long as there were ex-galpals and transgenders to take care of….

So Connor resigned himself to finishing out his lackluster career in the Norfolk County hackerama. Say what you will, it still beats working.

In 2024, Connor gave $250 to the ultimate county hack, Walter Timilty, a third-generation layabout who wanted to become clerk of courts… after flunking the bar exam six times.

Meatball Jr. probably would have snoozed his way to retirement shuffling papers for Meatball Morrissey. But then Karen Read happened. The Meatball enterprise was shattered, and somebody in the crew had to try to pick up the pieces.

And thus was Greg Connor anointed. The job needed the man, and the man needed the job.

Considering how toxic the Meatball label has become, Connor’s only chance is to slide through a multi-candidate primary field with maybe a quarter of the vote – all the hacks who “work” at the golf course, the ag school, at Quincy City Hall etc.

He doesn’t seem to make it to too many candidates’ nights. Recently he went on a cable-access TV show in Stoughton and was asked about Sandra Birchmore, the pregnant 21-year-old murdered in Canton, allegedly by her cop boyfriend, whose DNA was found on the murder weapon.

Meatball’s crack sleuths immediately ruled her murder a suicide, despite 32,000 text messages between Birchmore and her cop boyfriend.

The feds had to step in and arrest her boyfriend. It was a no-brainer, except for the Meatball mob.

The Stoughton interviewer asked Meatball Jr. if he really believed, like his political hero, that Birchmore committed suicide.

Connor replied: “I don’t know.”

He doesn’t know? Are you kidding me? Could Connor possibly be a bigger hack?

But with no other options, the hackerama has fallen in behind him, according to OCPF records. Given Meatball Sr.’s yeoman-like efforts to frame Karen Read, the McAlberts of Canton absolutely worship his fawning protégé.

Connor’s contributors include John Connolly, the ex-selectman and Meatball lookalike from Canton, as well as Kevin Reddington, Jen McCabe’s sometime lawyer who has an office in the same building in Brockton as Brian Albert, the capo of the McAlbert clan.

Also, James McDermott, the assistant clerk magistrate in the Dedham courthouse for the Read trials. Like Reddington, he gave Meatball Jr. a grand.

Connor likewise has both the pinky-ring and the nose-ring unions backing him to the hilt, which tells you everything. All the NAGE locals, not to mention the Ironworkers, IBEW, Roofers, multiple Laborers locals and the Elevator Constructors.

Those thugs must all be looking for some more good government, right?

Then there’s the hackerama from Meatball Sr.’s personal rotten borough, the city of Quincy. Former state reps like Bob Cerasoli.

Dodgy state reps like John Rogers of Norwood, who once tearfully compared convicted felon Speaker Charlie Flaherty to Jesus Christ. These are the core constituencies of both Meatballs – Morrissey and Connor.

One Quincy state rep, Tackey Chan, used to work in Morrissey’s state Senate office. Tackey’s committee gave Connor a C-note. Another Quincy state rep is Bruce Ayers. His brother Chuck gave $50 – he owns a body shop just down the street from the aforementioned Nickerson Post, where Meatball has been known to take a drink under extreme social pressure.

Connor’s got at least nine of his fellow hacks from the DA’s office, as well as a bunch of lawyers – not the white-shoe types from downtown. No, Meatball Jr. is backed by the kind of guys who have an office and a shingle and spend their days in the district courts, handling OUIs, A&B’s and 209A’s.

These jack-leg lawyers don’t need to be pissing off a DA, any DA. Their notations on the OCPF forms are all basically the same:

Atty. Joe Blow, from Braintree-Randolph-Stoughton-Milton-Canton, $100, employer: the Law Offices of Joe Blow….

If you liked Meatball Morrissey, you’ll love Greg “Meatball Jr.” Connor.

The tradition continues.