Like the phoenix rising from the ashes … here comes Chris Asselin again?
No, it’s not an early April Fool’s gag—fresh off an 18-month stint in prison on federal corruption charges, the former Springfield state rep, dropped the bombshell yesterday that he’s considering running for the 9th Hampden seat that voters tossed him out of six years ago. Asselin’s loss at the polls came not long after federal agents raided his home, part of a larger corruption probe that snared a number of members of the extended Asselin family, including patriarch Ray, long-time head of the Springfield Housing Authority.
In the end, several members of the family and their associates were convicted for an elaborate scheme that included everything from taking bribes from SHA contractors to stealing quarters from laundry machines in elderly housing complexes. Ray Asselin was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Chris Asselin pleaded guilty to theft and fraud, including accepting gifts from SHA contractors who did free work on his house and swimming pool and paid for some of his campaign materials.
Asselin made his announcement on CBS/Channel 3. In an article in this morning’s Springfield Republican by Jack Flynn—the headline of which refers to Asselin as a “tarnished lawmaker”—the former rep made a stab at beginning the hard work of making amends. “First I want to say that I’m sorry; I know I disappointed a lot of people, and I disappointed myself,” he told Flynn. “I’ve had people come up to me and ask me to run—they say they liked my style, the way I operated, the way I was responsive to them.”
Should Asselin’s successor, Sean Curran, start quaking in his shoes? Curran, typically a man of few words (at least it seems to me; I can’t get him to return my calls), offered a succinct, and stinging, response to the Republican: “I thought he was still in prison,” Curran said. “Isn’t he still on probation?”
