Go Tom, Go !!!!

[GeepNutt]

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/02/01/reillys_pick_delinquent_on_taxes_loans/

[TrailBate]

Doh!

[off piste]

Sounds like she'd make a perfect State Treasurer to me.......

[GeepNutt]

This is the woman who also sponsored the bill to give "illegal immigrants" the same in state rates at public colleges as legal residents.

[Rych]

This is why she'll have no problem raising our taxes...she's not going to pay them anyway.


Why does this always seem to happen to democrat pols? It must happed to republicans too, are their any examples?

[kernel crash]

You would like to think that this would just about kill any chances that Tom has of seeking elected office, but in this state....
Is there a bigger fool or idiot in this state right now? Now this guy really scares me. He could get elected.

[heckler]

How else can dems guarantee the continued string of republicans in the corner office? They have to work really hard at it in a state like this.

[Mr_Cheeze]

I think it was Slider who scoffed when it was recently suggested that Reilly's judgement can be brought into question after the mini scandal involving the AG and the teen drunk driving fatality.

And then there was his yammering about Ameriquest... until it was discovered that he accepted political contributions from the troubled company.

Now this:
Sudden shift from Gabrieli stunned campaign insiders
By Brian C. Mooney, Globe Staff | February 2, 2006

For a month, Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly and Christopher Gabrieli had an understanding that Gabrieli would be his running mate. They had booked a location for a Monday press conference, a prominent fund-raiser was working on a list of people for an advance telephone alert, and they had even conducted a poll to gauge support for Gabrieli.

But the plan suddenly unraveled over the weekend, when Reilly, a Democratic candidate for governor, abruptly shifted course, according to a chronology pieced together from interviews with several individuals with direct knowledge of the events. On Saturday, Reilly contacted state Representative Marie St. Fleur, and by Sunday, in a meeting at Gabrieli's Beacon Hill home, Reilly began to backpedal.

Now, with his choice of St. Fleur blowing up on the launch pad, Democratic insiders are stunned by Reilly's decision-making process and shaking their heads in disbelief that his latest gaffe could undermine what had been a front-running campaign for the governor's office.

Yesterday, there were reports from Reilly operatives and others around the state that they expect the fiasco to hurt Reilly's performance against his primary opponent, Deval Patrick, on Saturday when thousands of party activists across the state gather to elect delegates to the June endorsing convention. Even before the running-mate problem, the Reilly campaign was downplaying expectations for the caucuses.

''There's shrapnel everywhere," said state Senator Steven C. Panagiotakos, a key Reilly supporter from Lowell. ''On the eve of the caucuses, it's bad timing for this. It takes the wind out of our sails."

The Patrick forces, already better organized than Reilly's, now have a chance at winning more delegates on Saturday in Lowell, a city where Reilly has always run well, Panagiotakos said.

''This shows that Reilly is inconsistent and doesn't have the right people around him to advise him," said Michael Donoghue, former Worcester County treasurer and a veteran of more than 30 years in central Massachusetts politics.

Donoghue, uncommitted in the governor's contest, said Reilly was already hurt by questions of loyalty in the area after the local favorite, Mayor Timothy P. Murray of Worcester, one of four Democrats already seeking the nomination for lieutenant governor, said publicly that Reilly had promised him earlier this year that he would not anoint a running mate or do anything to hurt Murray's candidacy. Murray was the Worcester-area coordinator of Reilly's close 1998 victory over the better-known Lois Pines in the attorney general's primary, Donoghue said.

Reilly's decision-making in choosing a running mate, which began some months ago, has been a series of missteps, according to five individuals familiar with the process. The individuals, none of whom would agree to be identified, offered the following chronology of Reilly's decision.

The campaign began to weigh the value of designating a favored candidate for lieutenant governor months ago, even though Reilly's choice would have to win a primary, independent of Reilly, in a race that now includes four other Democrats.

A team from Reilly's campaign reviewed a number of potential candidates, including St. Fleur, before settling on Gabrieli, who was the party's nominee for lieutenant governor in 2002 and had run unsuccessfully for Congress in 1998. Reilly and Gabrieli met more than a month ago, the first of a series of meetings that extended to Sunday, which included detailed discussions of what Gabrieli's role would be and plans for a formal announcement Monday of this week. In January, Reilly's campaign even conducted a poll that showed that Gabrieli had much higher name recognition and would be leading the other four Democrats in the race by a significant margin.

The review of a number of candidates basically was a ''thorough and thoughtful" assessment of assets and liabilities of each candidate but did not include deep background checks of the kind that would have revealed St. Fleur's chronic and serious tax and credit problems that were reported yesterday by the Globe. In that informal balance sheet on the various potential candidates under consideration, St. Fleur was nowhere close to being the strongest contender. Gabrieli was a consensus choice, one Reilly adviser said.

The Globe reported Friday that Gabrieli appeared to be the leading candidate among four finalists. The list included St. Fleur, but she then said she would not run because she had already pledged her support to Deborah Goldberg, a former Brookline selectwoman, who was already in the race. The others, state Senators Therese Murray of Plymouth and Mark C. Montigny of New Bedford, also said they had no plans to run for lieutenant governor.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston and Ralph C. Martin II, former Suffolk district attorney, urged Reilly to consider St. Fleur, who has risen to a leadership position in the House, the Globe reported yesterday. Neither returned calls yesterday.

Reilly campaign spokesman Corey Welford declined to comment on the process. But both Reilly and St. Fleur told the Globe Monday that the attorney general contacted his former assistant Saturday about the possibility of joining him.

The legislator told the Globe Monday that she had informed Reilly that she had ''some financial issues . . . some struggles," but that he did not press her for details.

''We did not talk numbers," she said. ''He didn't ask me how much. He just wanted to know, 'Are you taking care of them?' "

Reilly's decision to back off Gabrieli and shift to St. Fleur was made without consulting or even informing a number of his key advisers, most of whom are much more experienced than he is in high-level political campaigns, according to the individuals interviewed for this article.

It is not the first time he has ignored political advice and paid a price. Last month, Reilly, in a series of interviews, kept alive for days the story of his role in a case involving a car crash in which alcohol may have been involved in taking the lives of two teenage girls from Southborough. Reilly defended the call, saying he was concerned about the privacy of the victims' parents, one of whom had contributed to his campaign.

But after the St. Fleur development, many of Reilly's closest supporters and advisers were stunned by his behavior. One called it a ''knee-jerk decision," reflecting complaints among several Democrats yesterday that Reilly acted rashly without conducting a diligent check of his choice.

Another supporter said it is ironic that Reilly, so disciplined in so many aspects of his life and work, made such an ill-considered decision. Others said it is consistent with Reilly's makeup, a natural aversion to the cold calculations of politics and a desire to seem independent of them.

By many accounts, Reilly, the son of Irish immigrants, likes to surround himself with people whose life story resembles his own, rising from poverty and adversity to achievement and success. St. Fleur, who came to this country from Haiti as a child, struck a chord with him.

Walter V. Robinson of the Globe Staff contributed to this report.



© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company


Still think Reilly has what it takes to play big time politics?

[off piste]

Hey -- canyou post the link to that? I couldn't find it on the Globe site. I want to post it on another forum I'm on to add to the belly laughs over there......

Thanks

[catbbq]

I just went back and re-read the original article that spurred this thread. It never mentions the politcal party of the tax dodger. Don't get me wrong, I avoid taxes everywhere, and I don't fault anyone for that. But I do it legally.

Then, thanks to the cheeze, I see the dodger is a democrat. I thought they loved taxes!

[Mr_Cheeze]

Hey -- canyou post the link to that? I couldn't find it on the Globe site. I want to post it on another forum I'm on to add to the belly laughs over there......

Thanks


It's the front page article. Here is the printer friendly version.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/02/02/sudden_shift_from_gabrieli_stunned_campaign_inside rs?mode=PF

[off piste]

Thanks

[off piste]

How could someone this incompetent even be considered a viable candidate?!? It's like the Democratic equivalent of the George Bush fiasco, in miniature!! Is this the best that the "Big Two" can do? Looks like the two party system is a huge joke:

http://makeashorterlink.com/?K1FB2529C

Reilly blames poor political skills for running-mate fiasco


Reilly blames poor political skills for running-mate fiasco

By Glen Johnson, Associated Press | February 2, 2006

Attorney General Tom Reilly on Thursday blamed his poor political skills for the spectacle in which he tapped a state lawmaker to be his running mate, only to see her withdraw a day later because of her many financial problems.

State Rep. Marie St. Fleur quit the race for lieutenant governor a day earlier amid a storm of revelations about unpaid taxes and student loans. Her announcement came just 27 hours after Reilly, a candidate for governor, formally introduced her as his choice for running mate on the Democratic ticket.

"The process certainly could have been better," Reilly told reporters after he addressed an economic forum at a downtown hotel. "More complete. More thorough. And you learn from these experiences and you try to make sure that they don't happen again."

Reilly blamed the gaffe on his own weak grasp of politics.

"I have to work and improve on the politics of this campaign," he said. "This is a whole different level of politics and it's never been my strong suit, and I have to improve upon that."

Reilly said he routinely hires people who have financial problems to work in the attorney general's office, and he previously did the same as Middlesex district attorney. He said many law school graduates are saddled with heavy educational debt.

But he felt that St. Fleur had to leave the ticket because of the ongoing nature of her $12,000 federal tax debt and $40,000 in delinquent student loans, as well as unpaid excise taxes that prompted the Registry of Motor Vehicles to prohibit her from renewing her license. The Dorchester Democrat graduated from Boston College Law School in 1987 and is now paid an annual salary of $70,569.

Reilly, 63, said he hopes voters would judge him on the full span of his career in state government.

"This is one episode," he said, "one set of experiences in a career that goes back a long time."

He reiterated Thursday that he would not choose another running mate to replace St. Fleur.

"I'm moving forward with my campaign right now," he said, "and there will be no lieutenant governor. I learned that."

Reilly selected St. Fleur as his partner on Sunday evening, just hours after talks broke down with Chris Gabrieli, a millionaire businessman with whom he had held repeated negotiations in prior days.

Campaign spokesman Corey Welford said St. Fleur told Reilly she had financial problems when they met over the weekend to discuss running in tandem, but the attorney general did not know the full scope before making his announcement on Tuesday.

In Massachusetts, candidates for governor and lieutenant governor run separately through the fall primary, but Reilly attempted to pair with St. Fleur by anointing her as his running mate.

While other Democrats had branded the move presumptuous, given that Reilly has yet to win the gubernatorial nomination, any embarrassment over St. Fleur's financial problems was softened by the simultaneous disclosure of tax problems by Deval Patrick.

The former Clinton administration official is challenging Reilly for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.

The IRS placed a tax lien on Patrick's home in 1996 when he missed payments in an installment plan arranged after he was hit with what he said was an unexpectedly large tax bill in 1993. Patrick and his wife then retired the remaining $8,778 debt in five months, he said.

The IRS similarly placed a lien on St. Fleur's Dorchester home in 2003 for $12,711 in unpaid taxes. The city of Boston twice this decade placed liens on her property for delinquent taxes, and St. Fleur said she was late in repaying $40,000 in federally back student loans.

In addition, the Registry of Motor Vehicles issued an order in December not to renew her license because she had failed to pay automobile excise taxes in 2005.

In announcing her decision to drop out of the race, St. Fleur said: "This year the race for governor is more important than any one individual."
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[GeepNutt]

Incompetent yes, but what is more worrysome is the fact that he rushed to add a woman of color to his campaign with the underlying hope that it would somehow energize the masses.

[Rych]

So the question is, when is Reilly going to prosecute St. Fleur.

Richard Hatch was convicted, so when will Maria be convicted.


Answer: Like the Southboro family, Maria is a FOT. There will be no prosecution.

[GeepNutt]

I would think as soon as Tom is done chasing down Diane Wilkerson....

[Rych]

I believe Diane was prosecuted. She receive some ankle jewlery.

[Slider]

I think it was Slider who scoffed when it was recently suggested that Reilly's judgement can be brought into question after the mini scandal involving the AG and the teen drunk driving fatality.

And then there was his yammering about Ameriquest... until it was discovered that he accepted political contributions from the troubled company.

What I said was that the drunk "scandal" involved no ethical lapse, and the Ameriquest thing was nothing more than smoke. They have nothing to do with the St. Fleur fiasco.

He definitelyshould have vetted his proposed running mate more closely. I mean, who would take a referral from Menino, no questions asked?

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