Before there were the Romney sons or the “Jon2012 girls,” there were the Cahill daughters.
Political reporters as well as supporters of former state treasurer Timothy Cahill literally watched them grow up through the family picture that adorned the Christmas card his campaign committee mailed out each year.
The informal challenge was to identify Cahill’s youthful wife, Tina, amid the four girls arrayed around her and her husband.
The youngest of them, Kendra, is credited with creating her father’s catchy “Tim for Treasurer” campaign mantra.
Well, time passes, and the girls are now women. And the eldest, 28-year-old Makena, got married Saturday. Her new husband is Gregory McSweeney of Scituate.
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Anyone following Tina Cahill or any of her daughters on Twitter got a taste of the family excitement that built through the prewedding shower and this weekend’s nuptials.
“Chipotle is part of a solid pre-wedding diet, right?” Makena asked last week. “According to Lilly the tailor, water & salad only. ‘You be all set,’” her mother replied.
The wedding also presented a happy family diversion as Timothy Cahill continues through the court process after being charged with running $1.5 million in taxpayer-funded state Lottery ads to boost his 2010 gubernatorial campaign.
In an e-mail, the Quincy Democrat expressed a father’s pride.
“We are all very happy and proud of them,” Cahill wrote.
Brown ads show Democrats in name only, critics charge
Senator Scott Brown’s latest round of TV ads, featuring Democrats who have endorsed him, has prompted a flood of complaints from political observers arguing that the first two people featured — former Boston Mayor Raymond L. Flynn and former Worcester Mayor Konstantina Lukes — are Democrats in name only.
They noted that Flynn is also backing Republican Mitt Romney for president, endorsed Republican George W. Bush rather than Democrat Al Gore in 2000, and dinged 1998 Democratic gubernatorial nominee Scott Harshbarger by showing up at a Boston bar with then-Republican nominee Paul Cellucci.
Lukes’s husband ran for office as a Republican and she has a son who was a Republican State Committee member.
“That’s a lot of nonsense,” Flynn said by phone as he baby-sat some of his grandchildren.
The former mayor noted his support of, and donations to, Democrats such as US Representative Stephen F. Lynch, state Senator Jack Hart, and state Representative Nick Collins, all of whom come from South Boston.
“I’m a loyal Democrat, faithful Democrat, but I’m an old-fashioned Democrat,” said Flynn.
As for Lukes, don’t question her Democratic credentials unless you’re wearing a bombsquad suit.
“That’s exactly what’s wrong with government: blind party loyalty,” she said, voice rising. “Anybody who is showing any independence or freedom from those rigid loyalties is labeled. The gridlock is preventing anything from getting done.”
Lukes, a lifelong registered Democrat, said she grew up in a household with Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s picture hanging in the hall.
She also called out her critics and offered to compare liberal Democratic bona fides, noting that she has served as a commissioner for the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, director of Worcester’s civil liberties union, and “for God’s sake, I started my career as a legal services lawyer.”
Obama campaign toying with ‘Americans first’ idea
Last year, President Obama channeled Elizabeth Warren’s stump speech when he peppered an economic address in Kansas with references to the middle class and its economic struggles. Now, it sounds like he may use one of Scott Brown’s favorite lines.
Politico reported last week that Democratic National Convention planners are considering outreach to Republicans on the final night of the party gathering, perhaps including an appearance by former US senator Chuck Hagel .
“This segment would speak directly to independents, noting we are all ‘Americans first,’” convention documents say.
Brown has used that “Americans first” line in his own speeches and in one of his recent “Radio Reports” as part of his cross-party pitch.
Of course, Obama burst onto the national political scene in 2004 with a convention keynote speech that used a similar theme..
“There is not a liberal America and a conservative America. There is the United States of America,” he said then.