Reilly goes third, but not without a fight

Alex Bloom

A year and a half ago, Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly was the only legitimate Democratic contender for governor.

A well-known prosecutor who tackled the sex abuse scandals of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, the tobacco industry and healthcare providers, Reilly enjoyed more name recognition and credibility than anyone outside of Gov. Mitt Romney.

But 18 months later, Reilly would finish a distant third in a race that was his to lose. For the majority of the campaign, Reilly simply came up short, from political moves, to ideology to debating.

“We gave it everything we had, everything we had,” Reilly said in his concession speech. “It didn’t work out for us. [Deval] Patrick ran an outstanding campaign and I think all of us owe him a round of applause. It’s time to end 16 years of Republican governors and I will help him do that.”

It didn’t start out that way. For the first time in Reilly’s life, things were too good to be true. An August 2005 poll showed Reilly winning a potential election against Romney, 51-38 percent. And when Romney bowed out in December, the race appeared to be Reilly’s. He had an estimated $4 million in the bank and a healthy lead in most polls over a hypothetical November face-off with ordained Republican candidate Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey.

“There were not a lot of other leaders in the Democratic Party who are natural candidates and his early fundraising was just terrific,” said Jeffrey Berry, a political science professor at Tufts University. “Some potential candidates may have gotten scared out of the race. He also placed himself right in the center of the Democratic Party ideological spectrum.”

But as Reilly would later state in a February 2006 press conference, politics has “never been my strong suit.” Unfortunately, he was right.

The downfall started in the beginning of 2006. He withstood accusations from Romney and Healey in early January that he tried to block the release of an autopsy detailing the blood alcohol levels of two teenage girls killed in a Worcester car crash. Reilly admitted to placing a phone call to Worcester District Attorney John Conte asking him not to release the results. The girls’ father, Christopher Murphy, had donated $300 to Reilly’s campaign, according to campaign records. Both Reilly and Conte denied any illegal action.

Illegal or not, the telephone calls gave political rivals ample fodder to substantiate their claims that Reilly was a political insider.

The “strong suit” statement, though, came after Reilly botched his choice for lieutenant governor. Instead of tapping wealthy businessman Chris Gabrieli, Reilly chose state Rep. Marie St. Fleur of Dorchester as his running mate on Jan. 30. A day later, the Haitian-born lawmaker withdrew her candidacy after the Boston Globe reported that she had $40,000 of delinquent debt in student loans. For an attorney general and former prosecutor, Reilly did a poor job of investigating and researching his choice’s record.

“The problem was he looked incompetent,” said Berry. “It was such a head-scratcher as to why he would offer the position to this woman. Despite whatever virtue she has, she was clearly a liability. Any dispassionate observer would have said that you don’t put somebody on the ticket that has serious financial issues.”

The move proved even more costly less than three months later, when Gabrieli announced his decision to run for governor.

Political miscues continued to haunt Reilly as the campaign progressed. While Reilly spent the first few months of 2006 amassing support from state politicians, Patrick worked tirelessly to build a statewide grassroots network to reach Massachusetts voters. Patrick’s hard work paid off in the Feb. 4 Democratic caucuses as he won delegates to the state convention by a 2-1 margin over Reilly.

Almost immediately after the caucuses, Patrick and Gabrieli attacked Reilly’s waffling positions on issues like gay marriage and the death penalty. May polls showed the three candidates in a dead heat as the state convention approached. Patrick won the state endorsement handily on June 3, taking 58 percent of the delegates. Reilly took 27 percent while Gabrieli eked his way onto the November ballot with only 17 votes more than the required 15 percent. Reilly was officially in a three-way fray, and losing ground.

Reilly worked to stay on message over the summer, pushing advertisements across the state and regularly mentioning in his stump speeches that he was the lone candidate in the race who could relate to Massachusetts’ blue-collar voters. He boasted of his 30-year residency in a rented Watertown apartment while Patrick and Gabrieli, both millionaires, lived in mansions.

Berry noted that Reilly’s ad near his apartment was one of the more effective ads of the campaign.

“As governor, I won’t forget where I live and I won’t forget the people I work for, people like you,” Reilly said in the ad.

Yet after July 10, Reilly could not keep pace with the two political outsiders. When ceiling panels in an Interstate 90 connector tunnel fell on and killed 38-year-old Milena Del Valle of Jamaica Plain, Reilly took heat from the public for not doing enough to bring Big Dig contractors Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff to justice, with allegations surfacing that Reilly would have let the firm walk away with an $85 million settlement removing their liability.

Gabrieli launched an ad on July 21 accusing state politicians of not ensuring public safety in construction and Patrick submitted an editorial to the Boston Globe detailing his frustration with what he deemed the “Big Dig culture” on Beacon Hill. As the man in charge of recovering costs on the $14.6 billion project, Reilly had a target on his back.

Reilly lost ground in August as Patrick took a slight lead in a CBS4/Boston Globe poll, garnering 34 percent to Gabrieli’s and Reilly’s 30 percent each. Desperation set in for the attorney general, which led to perhaps his largest miscue of the race in a Sept. debate.

All three Democrats had been arguing the feasibility of adhering to voters’ wishes from a 2000 ballot initiative to roll back the state income tax to 5 percent from the current level of 5.3 percent. Reilly had a chance to define his position on tax policy in the Sept. 7 debate held at Harvard with the opening question, but immediately launched an attack against Gabrieli, accusing his campaign chair of leaking information about St. Fleur to the Boston Globe.

“What does it say about the character of the person who is running for governor that they will use something like this for a political gain and advantage?” said Reilly during the debate.

Reilly also took shots at Patrick for his ties to Ameriquest and Gabrieli for spending in an attempt to buy the governor’s mansion, telling him “it’s not for sale.”

“Both of my colleagues were working for and taking millions of dollars from large corporations,” Reilly said. “I was on your side fighting every day.”

Reilly the bulldog prosecutor went to work during the debate instead of Reilly the politician who desperately needed to demonstrate statesmanship as well as solutions.

“He needed to be aggressive,” said Berry. “He was behind. It was time to take a risk, but that wasn’t well calculated.”

In the end, Reilly’s blue-collar image was not enough to overcome Patrick, who proved to be very good at politics.