What sort of person dreams of becoming the next Tim “Crash” Murray?
Or, for that matter, the next Pay to Play Polito? Or Muffy Healey? Or Jane Swift? Or Evelyn Murphy? Or Tommy O’Neill?
Lieutenant governor of Massachusetts — it’s an express lane to political oblivion, and speaking of oblivion, please don’t tell me about John Forbes Kerry. He may have had a cup of coffee as LG, but his real day job has always been as a gigolo.
Right now, the state’s Democrats are anxiously waiting for a decision from current Attorney General Maura Healey about whether she will run for the open governorship.
That would create a vacancy in the AG’s office — which is even more of a dead-end position than LG.
No definitive word on which way “Hold It” Healey is leaning. But the other day, a Democrat officially filed to run for AG, one Shannon Liss-Riordan, who briefly ran for the U.S. Senate against Ed “Mr. Frosty” Markey two years ago. Does she know something?
Liss-Riordan’s credentials in the modern Massachusetts Democrat party are impeccable, beginning with that hyphenated last name. She has two degrees from Harvard and, even more significantly, she drifted into New England from Texas.
Judging from recent elections, local Democrats prefer their candidates — especially women — to be blow-ins, untainted by any deep ties to the state, like being born or raised here. You think I’m kidding — the fake Indian was born in Oklahoma, Michelle Wu and Ayanna Pressley come from Chicago, and Rep. Katherine Clark is from even further away, Colorado.
Healey herself was born in New Hampshire, which is a bit too close for comfort for local Democrats. But they’re willing to make an exception because of Maura’s other, uh, qualifications.
Another candidate for attorney general is one Quentin Palfrey. You may not remember (I know I didn’t) but he was the Democrats’ candidate for LG back in 2018.
Palfrey has a few drawbacks, though. He was born in Southboro and his family has been here since the Mayflower. If you don’t believe me, just ask him — or check out his Wikipedia entry, which seems to have been lifted straight from the Social Register.
We are informed that his father is one John Gorham Palfrey III, although Dad is “also considered John Gorham Palfrey IV or John Palfrey VI.” So what happened to John Palfrey V? But wait, there’s more.
Palfrey’s grandmother was a Roosevelt, “a daughter of Kermit Roosevelt, sister of Kermit Roosevelt Jr., sister of Joseph Willard Roosevelt, granddaughter of Theodore Roosevelt, first cousin, once removed of Eleanor Roosevelt, twice removed, of Franklin D. Roosevelt….”
As the late Boston City Councilor Freddy Langone used to say whenever John Winthrop Sears would muse on his impeccable blue blood roots, “But what have yooze done for us lately?”
With Palfrey running for AG, that leaves the LG’s fight open for, among others, state senators Eric Lesser and Adam Hinds, both from the 413 area code.
It used to be said that only two things could happen if you ran for the Boston City Council, and both of them were bad. Number one, you could lose. Number two, you could win.
Same thing is true of the state Senate, and the prospects are dimmer still if you’re from 413 land.
At least they have money — Hinds is sitting on $217,962, and Lesser has $630,756. I’m guessing Lesser especially is circling Rep. Richie Neal, age 72. Will Richie want to hang on if he’s no longer a House chairman after the mid-terms?
My guess is, yes. I mean, it’s not like Neal is a Type A personality or a titan of industry. He’s a hack’s hack, a layabout, and my prediction is he plans to hang on for another decade or two. Which is maybe why Hinds and Lesser are thinking about up or out.
Hinds, by the way, has an impeccable resume — he’s “worked” for John Kerry, the United Nations and John Olver. If that last name doesn’t ring a bell, Olver was Stanley Rosenberg’s mentor in politics. Dumb? Olver is one of the few human beings at risk for contracting Dutch elm disease.
You know, people used to run for the Legislature so they could get no-show jobs for their family and friends. Now, after the Panic, the Legislature itself is a no-show $100,000-plus job. But some of the natives still get restless.
Another state rep who’s running for LG is one Tami Gouveau of Acton. She only has $17,648 in her “warchest,” but she’s got impeccable credentials, starting with the fact that she was “outraged by the election of Donald Trump.”
That fun fact is promoted on her website. I also learned that she has two pets — Papaya and Tater Tot. Tami appears to enjoy not just Tater Tots, but fried potato treats of all kinds.
Then there’s Dan Koh. Marty Walsh is his hero — he followed “Walshmarty,” as Biden calls him, from City Hall to the Department of Labor. Koh would be a perfect fit for the job of LG, with its arduous 5-minute work week presiding over the Governor’s Council.
Meanwhile, as Maura dithers, the Democrat race for governor continues. The present field includes two state senators, Sonia Chang-Diaz of Roxbury and Ben Downing, who didn’t run for re-election a few years back. (Not that anyone noticed.)
Sonia Chang-Diaz is a POC, but she didn’t go to Harvard, nor did Downing. Plus, they were both born here — in other words, they’re unelectable, at least in a Democrat primary. (Did I mention that Downing also carries the Olver brand on his backside — he’s not a member of MENSA, in other words.)
The pre-Maura frontrunner on the Democrat side has to be Danielle Allen. She’s black, a professor at Harvard and she was born in Maryland. How can she possibly lose?
As for the rest of us, that’s a different story altogether.