For four miserable years, Jim “Jones” Lyons operated the Massachusetts GOP the way his namesake, the Rev. Jim Jones, ran his suicidal death cult in the 1970s.
Now, less than a year after his ouster as capo di tutti frutti, it’s time for the bust-out Republican loser to begin composing his final words to his toothless, destitute followers.
And it seems only appropriate that Lyons should use the message of his namesake, the original Jim Jones, when he urged his Kool Aid Kult in Guyana to drink deeply of the poisoned chalice:
“Take our life from us. We laid it down, we got tired. We didn’t commit suicide, we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world.”
An inhumane world – that is exactly how the Kult would describe the forces that are driving them off the political cliff.
Their last hope for salvation – in this veil of tears, anyway – was to reclaim control of the state’s GOP state committee in the primary elections in March and reinstall Lyons long enough to finis off the Republican party once and for all.
But now the official nomination papers are out from the Secretary of State’s office. And it appears that not only has the Kult failed to nominate enough zombies to oust their foes, but many of the card-carrying Kult members have fled into the bush rather than guzzle the Kool Aid.
Lyons’ state committee incumbents are not even waiting to be crushed by the forces of normalcy — you know, Republicans who actually want to win elections.
Among those state committee members who have fled the field where they have lost so many recent elections are Amanda Orlando, the campaign manager for Geoff “DoorDash” Diehl, the worst candidate for governor in the history of Massachusetts.
Patricia St. Aubin, “the cat lady” from my district, is gone. Ditto, the rabidly anti-gay Deb Martell. And Deb Dugan, who voted to retain Lyons as chairman even though she’d posted her sign on social media saying “Home Sold,” meaning she wasn’t even eligible to vote.
Also calling it a career is Eleanor Green, who owns some bars in Boston with a substantial gay clientele. Now she won’t have to answer for those demented anti-transgender tweets the state committee posted on Lyons’ watch.
Eleanor’s even odder male counterpart, Brendan O’Connell, is also finished. No doubt he’ll misses the washroom facilities at party headquarters in Woburn where during the Kult regime he occasionally performed his daily ablutions like, you know, shaving.
Others in the Kool Aid Kult seem doomed to defeat. Maria Collins, who signs on to Jones’ frivolous lawsuits, is being opposed to the very popular mayor of Taunton, Shaunna O’Connell.
You see, in the mayor’s election last month which she won handily, O’Connell found that her opponent had been endorsed by DoorDash Diehl, one of Lyons’ top stooges.
DoorDash, an Uber driver by trade, now works for 1A Auto. That’s Rick Green’s company. Green has only personally lost one race for office but he’s backed also-rans John Kasich and Ron DeSantis for president.
Lyons was counting on running one of Diehl’s coworkers at 1A, Dean Tran, the ex-senator, for state committee. Sadly, Tran was just indicted for committing welfare fraud while employed by Green. That was a federal rap, on top of two earlier state indictments.
Here’s just one indication of the electoral prowess of the Kool Aid Kult. Last year Tran, in a photo finish with multiple grand juries, got 36.4 percent of the vote in his Congressional run.. Diehl, his coworker at 1A Auto, only managed an even more pathetic 34.6 percent of the vote.
What goes around, comes around. Consider Todd Taylor of Chelsea, who is not only on the Committee but was also on Jim Jones’ committee payroll, for “voter outreach.” Taylor certainly did a bang-up job – just ask DoorDash and Tran, among so many others.
But Taylor had qualifications beyond being on the state committee. His wife Regina is likewise a member. Wives seldom vote against the guy who employs their husbands, not if you know what’s good for your bank account.
But now Taylor (who was himself crushed in his run for state rep last year) faces an opponent named John Olds. The interesting fact about Olds is that he was the campaign manager for Rep. Lenny Mirra, who lost his reelection campaign by a single vote – one vote, in a disputed recount.
If the Kool Aid Kult mounted even token opposition to the Democrats in the elections last year – if Diehl had been able to manage even 35 percent of the vote — there would have been no recount, because Mirra would have been reelected.
And Olds might not be running.
Kathy Lynch, a dreadful old lady who bizarrely poses on social media holding gourds, will be crushed by Beth Lindstrom, the former Senate candidate.
Committeeman Steven Fruzzetti is a professional dog walker from Milton. He was a Cruz guy in 2016, like Lyons. They hated Trump. Now he’s running against a former Braintree city councilor, Sean Powers. My prediction is Fruzzetti is going to have a “ruff” time winning another term.
Dennis Galvin, a charter member of the Kool Kult and a retired state cop grabbing a $94,623-a-year pension, is going to lose to Mark Bodanza, a six-term city councilor from Leominster.
Bodanza has never lost a fight. That’s why the Kool Aid Kult hates him.
Only losers need apply to the Kool Aid Kult. Among their heroes are Jay McMahon (four-time loser from Plymouth) and of course Door Dash Diehl (three-time loser).
The Rev. Jim Jones Lyons himself is another three-time loser — once as a Republican, and twice when he was a Democrat when Reagan was president. His fourth drubbing came when he ran for reelection as party chairman last January.
Now, at age 69, he keeps filing ever more frivolous lawsuits. Jones-Lyons is thisclose to becoming one of those shuffling, stumbling old cranks who files their own complaints – pro se, as it’s called, usually handwritten in pencil on legal pads.
By the way, Jim, how’s that $70,000 lawsuit that UPS filed against your little tree-stand coming along? Have you filed a response yet?
March 4 – election day – is going to be a lot of fun. Don’t worry, Kool Aid Kult, you’ll be hearing a lot from me before then. You worthless losers can run but you can’t hide.
As for you Jim Jones Lyons, start rehearsing that little exhortation you’re going to have to make to your disciples very shortly:
“Take our life from us. We laid it down, we got tired….”
But not as tired as the rest of us got of you and nasty, loser antics.