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Once-fired prosecutor, ex-boss in testy race for Plymouth DA’s seat

Democrat John Bradley is taking direct aim at the record of 17-year incumbent Plymouth DA Timothy Cruz.David L. Ryan/Globe Staff

HULL — In 2012, John E. Bradley Jr. was a 21-year veteran prosecutor when his boss, Plymouth District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz, abruptly fired him, citing insubordination and poor job performance.

Bradley sued for wrongful termination, claiming his dismissal was payback for his refusal to contribute to Cruz’s 2010 reelection campaign and his criticism of the office’s use of criminal offenders as confidential informants. He eventually received a $248,000 settlement.

Six years later, Bradley and Cruz are facing off again, this time as political foes. Bradley, who went on to work as a prosecutor in Worcester County, is seeking to oust the 17-year Republican incumbent with a campaign that takes direct aim at Cruz’s record.

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“This isn’t part of some revenge tour on my part,” Bradley, 52, told about 20 prospective voters gathered recently at the home of one of his supporters. “This office really is broken. And it’s suffering from failed leadership.”

Cruz, 59, said his Democratic challenger is running a “very vindictive and personal” campaign.

“He quite honestly has no idea what the leadership has been like in this office because he’s been gone six years,” Cruz said. “This place has never been better.”

The race comes as district attorney campaigns have drawn increased public interest, a movement spurred by proponents of criminal justice reform. While both men in Plymouth lean more conservative than progressive candidates in other counties, Bradley has called for the near-elimination of cash bail, and Cruz has been praised for his work to address the opiate crisis in the county.

Still, he remains a more traditional prosecutor who has received strong support from law enforcement officials and last year fiercely spoke out against certain criminal justice reform measures, such as eliminating mandatory minimum sentences for particular drug crimes.

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Cruz won 67 percent of the vote in 2010 and ran unopposed in 2014, but Bradley has sought to undercut his support by pointing to a series of controversies in the DA’s office.

Cruz faced criticism for his slow response to allegations of sexual harassment against his top prosecutor, who eventually resigned, the failure of a prosecutor to seek the civil commitment of a sex offender who was then released, and his spending of $2.4 million in taxpayer dollars to defend himself against Bradley’s federal lawsuit.

Yet it is unclear if voters will be as eager for change as those in Suffolk County, who in September decisively backed Rachael Rollins, a progressive who ran a reform-minded campaign, as the Democratic nominee.

By contrast, Plymouth County voters typically lean Republican in local races, political observers say.

Cruz “is in a weaker position than he was four years ago,” said Brian Frederick, who chairs the political science department at Bridgewater State University. “I don’t think it’s reached the point where a majority of voters are willing to vote him out of office over it.”

Cruz also has a decisive financial advantage, with nearly $52,000 in his campaign fund as of Oct. 15, compared with about $7,300 for Bradley, according to campaign finance records.

David W. Soper, whose nephew was 20 when he died in 2017 of a fentanyl and opioid overdose after he was abruptly released from a state addiction treatment center, said Cruz helped his family pass a law that requires state officials to contact relatives before releasing someone committed for drug addiction.

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“That really showed me that Tim was from the heart serious about trying to help people through this opioid crisis,” Soper said.

That kind of work should outweigh any perceived missteps, said Daniel F. Conley, the former Suffolk district attorney, who has known Cruz since the late 1980s.

“None of us are perfect, and none of us are going to execute perfectly on all matters,” said Conley, now a senior adviser at ML Strategies, a Boston consulting group with Mintz Levin. “But if you look at the sum total of Tim’s record, I think he’s done a very commendable job.”

Republican Timothy Cruz (right) greeted supporters at Plymouth Town Hall. He calls his campaign rival vindictive. Debee Tlumacki for The Boston Globe

Bradley was fired in September 2012, less than a week after he won a conviction in the murders of two homeless men in Hingham.

Tara Cappola, a former Plymouth prosecutor who knew Bradley as a tenacious prosecutor eager to dive into difficult cases, said employees “were devastated.”

“The secretaries were crying,” she said. “People couldn’t believe it happened.”

Leslee Barbosa, the sister of William Chrapan, one of the victims in the Hingham murder case, said it “was so unfair and unjust for him to be fired.”

“He had just gotten a successful conviction in a very difficult case,” she said. “It was astonishing to me.”

Bradley sued Cruz in November 2013. Cruz’s office paid a Boston law firm, Mintz Levin, to fight the federal lawsuit, even though lawyers from the state attorney general’s office had offered to represent Cruz and his office for free. Last December, a spokeswoman for the attorney general expressed shock at the decision, calling the legal fees “exorbitant.” Cruz said the expense was justified because of the scope of the case.

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The lawsuit revealed allegations that Cruz’s top prosecutor, Frank J. Middleton Jr., had groped a female subordinate during a 2014 conference at the Seaport Hotel. Cruz allowed Middleton to remain in his position for nearly a year before he resigned in 2015.

Asked whether he should have responded faster to the allegations, Cruz said he could not discuss personnel matters.

Cruz said voters he has spoken to are more concerned about a June decision by the state ballot law commission, which criticized Bradley for listing a Plymouth address on his voter registration form when he was still living in Boston.

“The commission will not allow [Bradley] to gain access to the ballot by such a deceptive, misleading and manipulative manner,” the commission ruled.

“Do you want your district attorney to have those monikers in front of his name?” Cruz said.

Bradley eventually got on the ballot through a write-in campaign. He acknowledged he was still living in Boston when he registered to vote but said he had already signed a lease for a Plymouth apartment. He said he was “furious” when he read the commission’s decision, which he described as politically motivated, because the commission’s chairman is a Republican.

Bradley has had some setbacks as a prosecutor. In 2009, the Supreme Judicial Court vacated a conviction in a murder case, ruling that Bradley misstated evidence and made improper assumptions about eyewitnesses in his closing remarks at trial.

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Bradley said any mistakes he made did not justify vacating a first-degree murder conviction. The defendant, Jesus Silva Santiago, was acquitted in 2010 after a retrial.

“This is a case that I will never get over,” he said. “I will go to my grave saying that this was a case the SJC got wrong.”


Maria Cramer can be reached at mcramer@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @globemcramer.