After they were rebuffed by a Hampden County judge, losing bidders for the $2 billion deal to build a new courthouse in Springfield are turning to the court of public opinion.
Springfield auto magnate Jeb Balise and real estate investor Dinesh Patel launched an ad campaign imploring the public to pressure Governor Maura Healey to scrap the state’s selection of one of their competitors to replace the city’s aging, mold-infested courthouse.
It’s taken a few steps to get here. The state in July picked a bid submitted by Liberty Junction, a group with a roster of politically connected Boston names, including John Barros, the interim head of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, and Conan Harris, the husband of US Representative Ayanna Pressley. The general contractor for the team is Suffolk Construction, whose chief executive, John Fish, is a political heavyweight.
Barros has since said he’s divesting from the deal, which has been criticized by local Springfield officials, Healey’s political opponents, and of course, those whose bid the state didn’t pick.
Balise and Patel’s attempt to make their case in court hasn’t been successful so far after Superior Court Judge David M. Hodge denied their request for a preliminary injunction to pause the project.
So now they’re making a PR and political campaign-style pitch, painting the procurement process as one that smacks of a shady behind-the-scenes bargain.
The 30-second ad hitting TV and digital platforms this month accuses “Beacon Hill insiders” of steering the lucrative deal to their “political cronies,” including the “husband of a congresswoman,” a male narrator says as a picture of Pressley and Harris flashes on the screen.
The ad closes with an appeal to viewers to call Healey’s office. “Only she can fix this,” the narrator says.
Balise’s company already spent $12,000 on an ad in the print version of the Globe, according to a filing with the state’s Office of Campaign and Political Finance.
Balise on Thursday didn’t say how much the opponents of the bid are willing to shell out, but he said they’re willing to spend “as much as it takes to get the message out.” He and Patel have already put upwards of $100,000 into the publicity campaign, which will also include billboards in Springfield and West Springfield and radio ads.
Balise said his motivation is to get “a fair playing field for everybody, and I want the stakeholders in Western Mass. to be listened to.”
The losing bidders are running a familiar play, one that (sort of) worked for the company that lost out on a lucrative deal to redevelop more than a dozen highway service plazas.
In that case, after the state awarded a 35-year lease to rebuild and operate 18 highway plazas to Irish retailer Applegreen, an alternate bidder, the Waltham-based fuel supplier Global Partners, launched an aggressive public relations campaign implying that the selection process had been tainted by backdoor dealing.
After months of lobbying, a lawsuit, and scrutiny from lawmakers, Applegreen ultimately backed out of the bid. But Global Partners didn’t emerge from the wreckage of that deal with the contract in hand. Instead, the state issued a new request for proposals — and has yet to select another bidder.
There’s another political complication hanging over the Springfield courthouse fight: Healey’s reelection campaign. Her Republican challenger, Michael Minogue, was quick to turn the losing bidders’ questions about the deal — and their allegations that Healey’s administration favored political insiders — into fodder for one of his own TV ads.
Balise supports Healey, stressing that his motivations aren’t political — and that Minogue is not helping bankroll the bidders’ campaign.
But the messaging blitz is already irking the governor’s office, which has argued that the Liberty Junction bid was the lowest-cost option and was favored by state Trial Court leaders.
“No amount of money spent on misleading ads will change the fact that the winning bid, Liberty Junction, had the team with the strongest experience building courthouses and had received national awards for its courthouse construction,” Jacqueline Manning, a Healey spokesperson, said in a statement. “We will not let this get in the way of delivering this project and all its benefits for Springfield.”
What’s your take on the courthouse controversy? Drop a comment here.
STEALING A HEADLINE: Spotted in Minogue’s latest campaign ad: a print edition of the Boston Globe. Well, a fake one, at least.
The Hamilton Republican released a new spot Thursday highlighting his call for a “gas tax holiday” when gas prices top $4 per gallon, one of a slew of proposals included in the wide-ranging policy platform he rolled out last week.
The ad, part of an existing seven-figure buy, cuts between footage of Minogue at the pump and drivers on the road. At one point, the camera lingers over a copy of a doctored version of the front page of the Globe from Saturday with an all-caps headline: “MINOGUE: ENACT GAS TAX HOLIDAY.”
The Globe never ran that headline, in print or online. A Minogue campaign spokesperson said the faux front page wasn’t AI-generated, but was created through “graphic design.”
So what stories did the campaign paper over?
The fake front page also includes a story about Boston Medical Center nurses striking, a real Globe story that appeared on the front page that day. The stories occupying the spots where the campaign dropped in its new headline, according to the Globe’s archive, were about a lawsuit involving Steward Health Care and family and friends remembering loved ones lost on 9/11.
ROLL THE CREDITS: ‘Widow’s Bay’ won big at the Emmys. But these productions won big with Mass. tax credits in 2025. by Matt Stout, The Boston Globe: More than half of the $47 million in taxpayer-funded incentives issued in 2025 went to two projects, preliminary data show. The 2024 film adaptation of Stephen King’s “’Salem’s Lot” received nearly $13.5 million in tax incentives, while $11.3 million flowed to the production of “Boston Strangler,” the 2023 Hulu crime drama based on the murders of 13 women between 1962 and 1964 and the work of reporters Loretta McLaughlin (Keira Knightley) and Jean Cole (Carrie Coon) covering the killings.
IN THE AI OF THE STORM: After pressing federal officials to put some safety guardrails on AI development, Healey is turning her attention closer to home: the Massachusetts lawmakers now weighing whether to impose some of their own.
“We cannot allow this technology to move faster than our ability to put appropriate safeguards in place, and we can’t let the responsibility for managing these risks rest with technology companies alone,” Healey said in a statement, echoing warnings she issued Monday after a wave of ominous headlines about the rapidly advancing technology. “We need strong action on both the state and federal levels.”
The first-term Democrat sent a letter Thursday to the lawmakers negotiating different versions of a sweeping economic development bill, including language the state Senate passed that would, in part, require larger AI companies to submit to stringent independent safety evaluations.
Healey’s office said she, indeed, wants the bill to require “independent safety evaluations,” in line with the Anthropic-backed provision. She’s also urging lawmakers to require major AI companies to report serious safety incidents “sooner.”
DONNYBROOK: ‘He’s doing everything he can to lose it.’ Republicans lament Trump’s decisions ahead of the midterms. by Jim Puzzanghera, Tal Kopan, and Sam Brodey, The Boston Globe: As President Trump delivered a campaign speech in North Carolina on Wednesday night, he spent some time speaking about the three Republican candidates he was there to support. But mostly he talked up everything he’s done in his second term on the economy, immigration, and foreign affairs. And that, for many Republicans, could be the problem.
CENTER OF ATTENTION: Kennedy family members slam closure of Kennedy Center, Trump’s threats to rip it down by Chris Van Buskirk, Samantha J. Gross, Camilo Fonseca, and Bryan Hecht, The Boston Globe: Former US representative Joseph Kennedy III on Thursday accused President Trump of appropriating the legacy of his late great uncle after Trump said the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts would close for safety renovations in the wake of a federal ruling that the president’s name could not be returned to the venue. Kennedy joined other members of his family in sharply criticizing Trump’s push to add his name to the performing arts center, with some accusing the president of political “hostage taking.”
FINE PRINT: Mass. parents’ story about child’s gender transition complicated by court records by Martha Bebinger and Ally Jarmanning, WBUR: On Thursday, the Trump administration announced the Department of Education is launching an investigation into a Massachusetts school district, after a Southborough family claimed that their local school seeded — and the state of Massachusetts is facilitating — their child’s gender transition. But court filings and statements from school officials suggest the child was removed from the parents’ custody following allegations of a violent incident.
Robert Kraft’s move to block Macklemore from performing at Gillette has drawn a reaction the billionaire didn’t see coming by Mark Shanahan and Michael Silverman, The Boston Globe.
Inside House Democrats’ behind-the-scenes food fight by Andrew Solender, Axios.
Primary care fix may wait until after the election, negotiator signals by Alison Kuznitz, State House News Service.
On Fall River’s waterfront, the debate over market-rate housing unfolds by Hallie Claflin, CommonWealth Beacon.
Second crash at Mission Hill intersection has neighbors, city councilor demanding answers by Andrea Perdomo-Hernandez, WBUR.
Thanks for reading The Scrum.
This newsletter was edited and produced by Matt Stout.
Have a question for the team? Email us at thescrum@globe.com.
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Kelly Garrity can be reached at kelly.garrity@globe.com.