When pundits saw Richard Tisei on the verge of knocking US Representative John Tierney from Congress, the union members working phone banks at the home of Local 201 in Lynn noticed something different.
As they started making 26,690 calls to affiliates of the unions in the North Shore Labor Council, they recorded a roughly 3-to-1 edge for Tierney, no surprise given his long alliance with labor. But as the election neared, Tierney’s union edge widened to 5 to 1.
Comments
Tisei lost by about 3600 votes. Fishman got 16,668. I won't try to explain the "principle" (sarcasm here) vote, but the others used him as NOTA -- none of the above. If he hadn't been there, it's really hard to imagine that enough more of those votes wouldn't have gone to Tisei instead of Tierney. I understand losing to the Democrat machine, or to those who reward constitutent service, or to liberal ideology; this is "what is", part of the ongoing battle. What is unnecessary is attention-seeking spoilers, who can't raise the money, won't do the hard work of running a real campaign, just want to get into debates. Aside from causing the candidate most like him on issues to lose, what did Fishman accomplish? Let the truth keep future Fishmans off the ballot.
Certainly Fishman was the spoiler. There will always be attention-seeking 'Naders' in elections.
Are there any intelligent people living in the 6th district who are not embarrassed by this result?
bostonshepard said it best,
"We truly have crossed the Rubicon, where the political elite and the public employee unions have created an insurmountable patronage-driven, taxpayer-financed political feedback-machine. Too many paychecks now are printed by this system for elections to matter."
This comment has been removed.
I have cut & pasted the comments of 'Bostonshepard' because I couldn't say it better:
"We truly have crossed the Rubicon, where the political elite and the public employee unions have created an insurmountable patronage-driven, taxpayer-financed political feedback-machine. Too many paychecks now are printed by this system for elections to matter."