ARCHIVES OF LEAD STORIES
September 2, 2004
Sheriff candidates face off
in debate
Jeremy Schwab
When then-Acting Governor Jane Swift appointed Andrea
Cabral Suffolk County sheriff in late 2002 following a prisoner-abuse
scandal, Swift wanted reform.
As Cabral, a former prosecutor and assistant district attorney,
runs for re-election this fall she is trying to make the case
that she has delivered.
In campaign appearances, Cabral ticks off the reforms she has
made: instituting a rigorous screening process for new hires,
firing 34 employees, most of them accused of giving or selling
contraband such as cigarettes and drugs to prisoners and balancing
the budget despite having to pay a $5 million settlement to the
abuse victims.
“I completely transformed hiring practices,” Cabral
told moderator Joe Heisler during a televised debate with opponent
Stephen Murphy on Boston Neighborhood Network last week. “I
eliminated political decision-making. As a result, some of the
most qualified people in the history of the department are working
there.”
Murphy, an at-large city councilor who applied for the sheriff
post in 2002, has vigorously attacked Cabral’s record, citing
articles in the Boston Herald and Boston Globe in recent months
showing controversial financial maneuvers by Cabral’s administration.
Cabral reportedly refused to pay vacation and sick time to military
personnel employed by her department while they work oversees.
Cabral delayed payment on employees’ state pension funds
earlier this year, a move she says helped balance her department’s
budget. The funds were eventually paid without disruption to employees’
pensions.
Murphy says his experience in the business sector before becoming
a city councilor will allow him to do a better job running the
department’s finances.
“I think I have the leadership and management skills to
turn the department around,” Murphy said during last week’s
debate.
Murphy has promised to create a public-private review committee
to analyze business practices and advise him on a course of action.
Cabral argues that she is a competent and experienced budget manager
and that she has far more experience in the criminal justice field.
After Murphy promised during last week’s debate to hire
a corrections specialist to be his “number two person”
to advise him as sheriff, Cabral dug in.
“This is a department where the sheriff cannot rely on on-the-job
training,” she said. “How can you rely on people who
know their jobs better than you do?”
Murphy, who ran unsuccessfully for state representative and state
treasurer and is serving his third term as city councilor, is
an experienced politician, while Cabral is running her first political
campaign.
Whoever wins the Democratic nomination September 14 is expected
to win the general election, so voters in the little-noticed primary
will likely determine who becomes the next sheriff.
The need to inform potential supporters that the primary is taking
place and to mobilize them to get to the polls puts a premium
on campaign groundwork.
“It really is going to come down to who can pull out their
base vote,” said political consultant Louis Elisa.
Elisa compared the upcoming primary to last year’s
at-large city council primary.
“[Cabral] has to touch base with the people who voted for
[City Councilor] Felix Arroyo, the progressives,” said Elisa.
“The question is whether they turn out in the primary. Remember,
in the primary Felix was fifth and was written off. Then in the
general, he came in second and Murphy came in fourth.”
Cabral recently took on Mukia Baker-Gomez, considered by many
the preeminent campaign organizer in Boston’s black community,
to coordinate field work for her in predominantly black neighborhoods.
Baker-Gomez, who engineered Chuck Turner’s successful election
to the City Council in 1999, Dianne Wilkerson’s ascension
to the Senate in 1992 and Charles Yancey’s successful defense
last year of his City Council seat against challenger Egobudike
Ezedi, joins Cabral’s campaign manager Matt O’Malley,
who ran unsuccessfully for at-large city councilor last year and
has participated in numerous political campaigns.
Cabral has also received endorsements from Arroyo and all of the
city’s black elected officials.
Both candidates are aggressively door-knocking and attending community
events around the county. They both have raised over $200,000,
though Murphy’s campaign manager estimates they have around
$100,000 as of last week, compared with Cabral’s estimated
$45,000.
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