And in the end, we learned nothing new about either candidate...Jack Hurd or Ken Donnelly.
We can just run down the list of fourteen questions asked, Hurd and Donnelly had more or less the same answers for twelve of them.
1.) State relief of the MBTA's debt?
Both favor the action.
2.) Casinos
Hurd opposes, Donnelly approves both seem to think the issue is a dead letter for now.
3.) Police details:
Both support Governor Patrick's current reform.
4.)Ballot Question #1 (Repeal of the income tax)
Both men violently oppose the passage of question one.
5.) Keeping state annuities policies gender neutral.
Both men are in favor, though clearly they hadn't given the idea any thought til last night.
6.) Election day voter registration.
Both are for it, hammer and tongs.
7.) Promotion of alternate energy sources....
Both men were long and loud in praise of alternate fuels...they both drove home in cars run by internal combustion engines designed a hundred years ago...but they still love their Karo syrup fuels...in theory.
8.) A progressive state income tax...
Donnelly loves it the way a dog loves a fresh bone.
Hurd likes it on the condition that the funds be earmarked for education and infrastructure.
9.) How to get more local aid to a growth-strapped community like Arlington?
Hurd calls this his #1 priority and bangs the pots for the Governor's municipal partnership acts with it's proviso for local restaurant and hotel taxes.
Donnelly the same likewise. Neither man wants to over promise where this touchy issue is concerned.
10.) Revision of 40B
Both wanna do it to give localities more flexibility in housing decisions...again neither man delved too deeply into this complicated issue.
11.) Raising the cap on charter schools...
Both men are staunchly opposed.
12.) Decriminalization of marijuana....
Donnelly is for it, Hurd opposes.
I skipped recapitulating two other questions because their responses meandered interminably or else their core views had been stated earlier in the questioning.
Well there you have it, two nice white Irish liberals from the suburbs one a former manager at Polaroid the other a former fire-lieutenant...the primary is Tuesday and as yet even this late in the game not much distinguishes either man in an ideological sense.
Neither sounds particularly adventuresome, one doubts either Hurd or Donnelly has any William Jennings Bryan-ish crusade in them.
Can't imagine either man at the podium of the state senate standing at Armageddon and battling for the lord.
Jack Hurd for all his low key charm is no Deval Patrick in the eloquence department, Ken Donnelly's speechmaking will never make anyone forget Barack Obama.
If elected both men will return all their phone calls, zealously answer all roll calls and smile...a lot....other than that folks, Hail freakin' Mary.
The conventional wisdom still sez it is Donnelly's race to lose, he has once again raised most of his money from out of district unions and PACs and his firefighter volunteer base is poised to project power deep into the precincts on Tuesday.
For all that Hurd still exudes that weird confidence that could come from the Harry Truman Zone or the battered shack where the shade of Henry A. Wallace hides from the noon sun.
Yet some of the boys in the back room are muttering about a tight race with a 50-50 percentile in Arlington. If that is the case then the decision gets exported to Lexington, Billerica, Burlington and Woburn and the mission gets awfully hinky. That I know of, neither campaign has gone the hard core voter ID route so exactly WHO is gonna show up in the other communities of the distrct on primary day to vote for WHOM is a mystery.
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