It’s 11 days until the election, and local bloggers are getting revved up.
At the Springfield Intruder, Bill Dusty has a Q&A with Mike Franco, the man who will lose to Mike Albano in the race for the 8th District Governor’s Council seat. Franco talks about the importance of that usually overlooked position, criticizes the body for acting historically as a “rubber stamp” for the governor, and tells Dusty what he would bring to the seat.
I’m not a particular fan of Franco’s positions—he’s too Tea Party for my taste—but he certainly deserves credit for being forthright with voters about what he stands for. And it’s a crying shame that Albano—who left Springfield in a fiscal and ethical mess—will walk back into office, with the backing of organized labor (who, frankly, should demand more than a candidate who opportunistically shows up at a few pickets as Election Day nears).
Meanwhile, at Western Mass. Politics and Insights, Matt Szafranski offers an endorsement of Elizabeth Warren, citing her economic policies and her support of working people and of women’s rights. “[I]n her we see the concern for and dedication to our fellow man and woman, a humanity we greatly need in our politics today,” Szafranksi writes. (He also has plenty of things to say about Scott Brown, none of them flattering.)
WMPI also has a new election guide, which lists all the contested races in the region along with some background about the candidates. (Did you know that Ben Swan has a competitor in the 11th Hampden state rep, district? Me neither, although I guess I shouldn’t be surprised; Swan always has competition. Some years, they put up real campaigns (think Bud Williams, Chelan Brown); some years they don’t bother. And every time, Swan handily wins re-election.)
I’m still waiting for Tom Devine to post his endorsements on his Valleyist blog. In the meantime, I’ll have to content myself with his primary coverage, which includes such morsels as this, about Albano’s victory that day: “Apparently Mike Albano got bored spending his pension money in local bars and pretending to run his false-front ‘consulting’ firm, so he wants to relieve his boredom by going to Governor’s Council meetings in Boston. He got his biggest vote totals in the city he trashed, proving once again that Springfield still has the stupidest electorate in the Valley.”
