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Great News
Also a great time to make some changes to the idiotic system where a rep elected by a few thousand voters has almost unlimited control over what bills get passed in a state of almost 7,000,000 people
Don't you think that's a bit
Don't you think that's a bit of an oversimplification of the process?
Hmm...
Let me check my math here...
Nope. Seems about right.
There's a reason the last few speakers left in figurative handcuffs.
Is his husband leaving for BU
Is his husband leaving for BU then?
Wrong chamber
You're thinking of former MA Senate President Stan Rosenberg (& his handsy hubby, Byron Hefner).
That's a big deal and it
That's a big deal and it couldn’t happen a moment too soon! Not sure what he is going to teach at Northeastern. “How to abolish democratic rules and make yourself speaker for life” maybe?
If you think that I am exaggerating, Boston Magazine had an enlightening article on the guy earlier this year. Deleo managed much of what Trump was trying to achieve, but in MA, we gave him a free pass.
Selected quote from the recommended article:
Once the state’s political reporters were gone, the doors were closed and members voted on a rules package that would make any autocrat smile, abolishing the very term limits that DeLeo had reinstituted just six years earlier when he first took over as speaker. After the votes were tallied, only 11 Democratic members disagreed with the rule changes and voted against letting DeLeo become Speaker for Life. Later, when reporters asked DeLeo to explain his change of heart, he said that his thinking on the issue had simply “evolved.”
https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2020/03/06/robert-deleo/
Yep
He's not been tied to anything nefarious but he was very bad for the state by further solidifying the anti-democratic (small D, don't @ me) nature of Beacon Hill leadership. Him and his cronies were only out for very broadly Democratic goals but largely just served their paymasters in the MA industries which are set up to enrich stakeholders at public expense. The liquor distributors, race track operators, etc...
At the end of the day we're good to be rid of him, even if he's not as big a PoS as that crooked crybaby DiMasi or perhaps just not as stupid.
There’s a solution to that
And it involves a certain political party that is not held in high regard on this website.
At the end of the day, when maybe 20 of the 160 seats in the body have any kind of competitive elections every cycle, the results are predictable and not so democratic.
Make Massachusetts Great Again
Print up the red hats!
Maybe Eric will move to Dover and he and Curt Shilling can primary Baker and Polito in 2022?
The number of registered Republicans in Massachusetts totals about 11% of all registered voters. Maybe the party that wants to position itself as a solution to mediocre (and some objectively terrible) Democrats should spend less time self-radicalizing its MAGA wing and figure out how to grow that 11% and work to appeal to and win more sane voters in more districts.
There is good reason the GOP is not held in high regard; and the onus is not on the voters to be forgiving to a weak party with bad candidates, rather it’s for the MA GOP to Baker-ize themselves and meet more voters where they are. Instead, current MA GOP leadership is expecting voters to tolerate QAnon conspiracies, paleoconservatism, MAGA bigotry, Proud Boy white nationalism, and unquestionable loyalty to malignant, spiteful, and dishonest national leadership in the form of Trump, McConell, and McCarthy et. al.
Today’s MA GOP is not an attractive solution.
Sadly
The alternative party in Massachusetts has been in the news as of late attempting to get the courts to disregard the democratic process entirely. Kinda hard to support people that don't even believe people should be able to elect their own reps.
My state rep faced a moderately formable candidate in the primary from an actual progressive. She lost but not by a whole lot.
Or, you know
Primaries, third parties, independents, etc - and the bonus there is that you don't have to associate with a national political party who literally set their 2020 platform to "whatever Trump wants, plus added racism/sexism/xenophobia if we think that plays well".
What will he teach?
Good Government?
According to today’s Globe
Not quite, but maybe.
Unindicted
Co-conspirator.
https://www.wbur.org/news/2014/07/14/feds-deleo-obrien-trial