Last week I reported that a substantial chunk of Martha Coakley’s campaign for Governor of Massachusetts is hypocritical of past behavior and rhetoric surely intended to bolster her bid for Beacon Hill. On Friday, the Boston Herald may have helped to seal her gubernatorial fate and put to rest her misguided desire to succeed Governor Deval Patrick in the State House. Essentially, the Herald was able to compel Coakley to admitting to have undertaken the same hiring practices she accused former Commissioner of Probation Jack O’Brien of doing.
Jack O’Brien faces a federal trial at the end of the month on charges of running a supposed corrupt and rigged hiring scheme within the Probation Department. Coakley and the Attorney General’s office levied similar charges against O’Brien, alleging that he coerced constituents and subservients to donate to political fundraisers of his peers in exchange for granting jobs in his department to friends and loved ones.
O’Brien was subsequently acquitted in what turned out to be an embarrassing loss to Coakley.
On Friday, a video interview with the Herald revealed by Coakley’s own admission that she accepted campaign contributions from the family of three women whom she personally recommended for jobs in, of all places, the Probation Department.
“This is something I’ve always done as District Attorney and Attorney General. When young people come to me, particularly women interested in law enforcement who are looking for a recommendation and I believe they are qualified for the job, I’m always going to write a letter of recommendation,” Coakley told the Herald. “I think it’s not contradictory at all.”
Translation: If I do it, it’s okay but if someone else does it, it’s not.
The women in question were neighbors of Coakley’s and while she notes that two of the three didn’t receive the jobs she lobbied on their behalf for, between 2005 and 2013 the Quinn family donated thousands of dollars to Coakley, per OCPF data, in what can only be construed as her selling jobs to close friends.
“It’s unrelated to any of the cases being brought,” noted Coakley, though how she could possibly contend that defies pure logic simply because her reasoning is exactly the same as that of O’Brien’s.
Jump to the 1:55 mark in the video and check out the look on Coakley’s face when the Herald reporter asks bluntly what the difference is between what she did and what O’Brien did.
And in response Coakey digs her own grave, admitting that she knew the people she recommended for hire and thought were qualified after the family had contributed thousands of dollars to her campaigns. How she thinks that admission is any different than the accusations against O’Brien is beyond reason.
