Connolly or Walsh: Who Is The Bigger People’s Pledge Hypocrite?
The people of Boston surely have many weighty things to consider in choosing their next mayor, but none more consequential than independent campaign expenditures.
No, wait, I phrased that incorrectly; what I meant is OH MY GOD CAN YOU TWO SHUT UP ABOUT THE PEOPLE’S PLEDGE?
John Connolly called a press conference and issued a release today to challenge Marty Walsh to sign a People’s Pledge. Walsh quickly released a statement and held a press conference to point out that Connolly was for accepting outside campaign expenditures before he was against it. Connolly’s campaign quickly fired off a statement that Walsh was for a People’s Pledge before he was against it (a reference to this video I posted in July). I am awaiting the retaliatory claim that whereas representative Walsh is surely rubber, councilor Connolly is demonstrably glue.
Voters, incidentally, certainly didn’t seem to care much on Tuesday about candidates’ fealty to the Pledge. First and third place went to candidates who openly rejected the Pledge and accepted, if not encouraged, supportive organizations to spend money on their behalf. Second place went to someone who, as noted above, was keen on outside support up until the moment when he feared it might upset the status quo that had him coasting toward a final spot without any help.
By contrast, the two candidates who made the most hay of rejecting the Pledge, Rob Consalvo and Dan Conley, didn’t seem to get any boost from displaying their clean hands.
I get the politics at work here. I also get that this is happening so soon because those outside groups can start pummeling the airwaves now, while the actual campaigns have to raise a new pot of gold first, $500 at a time. (I also get that Connolly is using the spectre of Walsh’s big-money IEs to prompt his supporters to give; his campaign sent out a money plea with this argument somewhere in the middle of today’s back-and-forth.)
But come on. We’ve got better things to talk about, don’t we?
