Left In Lowell

Accusing his rivals of trying to keep him off the ballot.

One complaint cited? “Reilly accused Patrick of actively working to challenge the credentials of several Reilly delegates and said he is touting that he has a lock on the convention.” Never mind that delegate credentials are challenged locally by other local delegates (and if I recall, can only be challenged directly from a campaign or from someone from your district). Patrick has said they were not going to do any challenges; and as a town coordinator, I have heard of no such directive from the campaign for us to do so as proxies.

Gabby’s spokesperson also has similar words for Patrick: “It has been well-reported that Deval Patrick has taken steps to keep us off the ballot. I think that is interesting considering (Patrick’s) campaign is about inclusion and the politics of hope, and not being an ordinary leader.”

Um, huh??

Look, Gabrieli, your tactics have been very sneaky in using the delegates’ lack of knowledge of a rules change last year by saying to people, “you can vote Gabrieli on the first ballot and Deval on the second.” There is no second ballot, not in the way there used to be, but far be it for Gabrieli robocalls to say so. The second ballot only kicks in if no one hits the 50%+1 Democratic endorsement threshold. Sure, I suppose what Gabby’s doing is legal and if I were as desperate as the Gabrieli campaign, I might do the same, but don’t you dare accuse Patrick’s people of shenanegans when all we’ve been doing is having our delegates who committed to us vote for Patrick on every ballot like they said they would. People in glass houses…

It’s OK for Gabrieli and Reilly to play every semi-dirty trick in their arsenal to get their 15% of delegates, but the guy who did all the hard work to actually get delegates the old-fashioned way is the one to blame. Hey, if you don’t like the rules…you should have spoken out last year when they changed. I’m so sick of this. This is exactly how our party gets fractious and unwilling to help out the winner. The bad taste that Reilly and Gabrieli have left in my mouth will make it harder for me to work for them if they do win the nomination. I was plenty ready to do so, if my guy doesn’t make it, but keep this up and once again, the corner office will remain Republican in November.

It’s one thing to play dirty politics within the rules, trick delegates into turning away from their commitment for Patrick. Fine. But do not, do not throw accusations around that you can’t back up.

[HT: Adam.]