While speaking to a Franklin County resident the other day, I heard a question I’ve been getting a lot lately: “How am I supposed to figure out which one of these guys would make the better district attorney?”
The fellow asking the question is a regular reader of the Valley Advocate and a person, in my estimation, with a far-above-average political IQ: he serves on the planning board in the town where he lives, is active in local civic and political affairs, votes in every election, follows the issues of the day and does his best to learn what he can about candidates running for office.
But when it comes to this summer’s race for Northwest District Attorney, a contest that will be decided in a Sept. 14 Democratic primary, the man from Franklin County is at a loss. To him, the two candidates in the race, Michael Cahillane and Dave Sullivan, both Democrats, seem fairly similar in most respects. After reading the Advocate‘s coverage of the race, talking about it with friends and picking up bits here and there in other media, the man knew the basics—that Cahillane is a seasoned prosecutor, esteemed by other prosecutors and supported by police and other organizations, while Sullivan is a seasoned, popular local politician and lawyer, supported by many big-name players in the local and state political establishment.
But without knowing either candidate personally, or having seen them in a courtroom—and even if he had seen them trying a case, did he know enough about the practice of law to judge their relative merits?—what was he supposed to base his vote on?
What really had him mystified wasn’t the candidates themselves, but the fact that this DA’s race has become such a marquee event. He looked at the sea of Cahillane and Sullivan lawn signs flooding the Valley and the raft of passionate letters published in the local papers from legions in each camp, and he wondered why so many voters were already decided and apparently vehement.
“I was really hoping you had a strong opinion one way or the other,” the man from Franklin County told me. I heard a mix of surprise and frustration in his voice: if the normally opinionated editor of the Advocate didn’t know which candidate he preferred, how should he?
I had no answers for him, no special insight that might help him decide between the two candidates. It’s not that Cahillane and Sullivan are indistinguishable. In fact, they are very different people, from very different backgrounds and apparently with very different goals in life—beyond both wanting the same office. Each has also run a solid campaign, making a plausible case for his own candidacy and against his opponent. And that may be the problem.
Cahillane frames the race as a choice between a prosecutor and a politician; Sullivan frames it as a choice between the status quo—the continuation of an administration in which his opponent served for 10 years—and reform of a DA’s office that the public has come to distrust. For someone without a personal connection to one of the candidates, or a personal stake in the outcome, such as a possible job or some other form of patronage, both candidates make valid arguments while neither seems to have the perfect resume for the job.
As I told the man from Franklin County, if Cahillane’s advantage comes from being a career prosecutor, he also pays a price for having spent that career working in an office that wasn’t transparent enough to make his accomplishments come alive. (Cahillane also raised questions about his political abilities by first signing a petition to put gay marriage as a civil right to a popular vote in 2005 and then flailing in his effort to explain it in the context of this race.)
Similarly, if Sullivan’s advantage comes from his popularity as a public servant and his acumen as a politician, he pays a price not only for having a generalist’s background in the law rather than a background in prosecution, but for being a politician, a career that triggers ambivalence in many voters.
At the end of our conversation, the man from Franklin County said that, for him, voting in this race seems a bit pointless; try as he might to make the best choice, he just can’t be sure what it is. But then his face brightened as it occurred to him that there might not be a best choice, just two pretty good ones.
