Monday, October 15, 2007

Murphy's Law

Burlington state rep Charles Murphy is anxious to grab off a few votes in the magickal suburb of Arlington during this, the fourth Middlesex special state senate election.
So anxious in fact, in his current mailer he makes it very clear he wants to work "to ensure the historic Jefferson Russell House remains a historic treasure of Arlington".
There is one problem with that promise, there is no "Jefferson Russell House" in Arlington.
None
Zilch
Nada Senor.
Rep. Murphy must no doubt have in mind the "Jason Russell House", which contains a very fine museum devoted to part played by Arlington (then called Menotomy) in the Revolutionary War. For the record, Humble Elias can discern no great threats to this "historic treasure" that would require the intervention of the Massachusetts state senate...but it's nice to have friends in high places I guess.
If former Arlington selectman Charlie Lyons really wants to help his pal Murphy out, he can start by QA-ing all the Arlington centered mailings for howlers like the above noted item.

That by the way also points to another intriguing and seldom commented upon aspect of this race, the apparent division of the democratic "regulars" in Arlington.
Charlie Lyons, once a wheel on the Board of Selectman has lined up with Burlington representative Charles Murphy. On the other hand the current wheel on the Arlington board, Diane Mahon and senator Havern's longtime familiar spirit George Laite have lined up behind the novice candidacy of ex-firefighter Kenneth Donnelly.
It will be interesting to see how much business Lyons, Laite & Mahon can drum up for the candidates.
Splits like this in the party are bad things generally, but this does leave the liberals, progressives and independents to be potentially scooped up by Jim Marzilli...and there are a lot of those in Arlington.
Whether or not that can swing the primary Jim's way remains to be seen.

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