Forget about whether Attorney General Tom Reilly did the right thing. The question now is whether his candidacy for governor is damaged goods.
If you watch TV or read the newspaper or listen to the radio, you know that the would-be Democratic nominee starred in a political mini-scandal earlier this month. The flap centered on a November call Reilly made to John Conte, the Worcester County district attorney, about a one-car accident that killed Southborough teens Shauna and Meghan Murphy back in October. Reilly reminded Conte that, according to state law, the Murphy sisters’ medical records — which may show they were drinking the night their vehicle crashed into a utility poll — shouldn’t be released to the press.
Taken in isolation, this call might have been unremarkable, if a bit unnecessary. (After all, does a district attorney really need to be reminded to follow the law?) But certain details complicated the situation. The sisters’ parents know Reilly personally. Mark Leahy, the Northborough police chief, publicly questioned the Worcester DA’s decision not to press charges in connection with the case (against the person at whose home the girls may have been drinking). And Reilly contacted Conte after receiving a call from Lycos founder Bob Davis — who, in addition to being the Murphys’ neighbor and serving as their spokesman after the fatal crash, hosted a June 2005 fundraiser that raked in $14,000 for the AG. (Christopher Murphy, the girls’ father, donated $300 to Reilly’s campaign at that event.)
Ask a Massachusetts Democrat, and they’ll insist that Reilly did nothing wrong. Frank Bellotti — himself a former attorney general and candidate for governor — notes that Massachusetts law instructs attorneys general to “consult with and advise district attorneys in matters relating to their duties.” “When I was in office, we used to have contact with them almost on a daily basis,” Bellotti says. Meanwhile, former governor Mike Dukakis argues that Reilly’s call was less problematic than a questionable tax break received by the husband of Kerry Healey, the lieutenant governor and front-runner for the GOP nomination. “I don’t think it compares with million-dollar tax breaks for moving a company to Beverly Farms,” Dukakis says. “Do you?”
Reasonable points, both. And indeed, later developments gave Reilly a measure of vindication. The Northborough police chief apparently backed off his claim that the Worcester DA’s office refused to hand over the girls’ medical records, for example. And the assistant DA in charge of the case said that he had no knowledge of Reilly’s call when he recommended against bringing charges in the case. The good news, for Reilly and his supporters, is that the episode finally seems to have played itself out.
Now the bad news: when the 2006 Massachusetts governor’s race comes to a close, January may be remembered as the month when Reilly’s carefully crafted persona — that of a tough, competent, squeaky-clean public servant capable of breaking the Republican monopoly on the governor’s office — started to unravel.
Backed into a corner
Consider the Reilly camp’s handling of the AG’s now-infamous call to Conte, which was first reported by the MetroWest Daily News on December 30 and became a bona fide Big Story five days later. To win the Democratic nomination over former Clinton-administration official Deval Patrick — and to win the general election, if he gets that far — Reilly needs to be able to control this kind of story. From the outset, though, the story seemed to be controlling the AG.
On January 4, Reilly struggled to explain the propriety of his actions on WGBH-TV’s Greater Boston, an appearance that was widely panned as unconvincing. Then came a January 5 press conference, called by Reilly after Healey and her boss, Governor Mitt Romney, accused the AG of trying to “hush up” the investigation. Reilly appeared overwhelmed; his voice was barely audible, and at one point he seemed close to tears. The AG also found himself denying a cover-up, thereby playing right into the Republicans’ hands. And the diminutive Reilly delivered his remarks while standing in front of a wall, with no podium to set him apart from the gaggle of journalists pressing toward him. He looked, literally, as if he’d been forced up against a wall.
Furthermore, Reilly and his handlers did more than their part to keep the story alive. During a January 8 TV interview, Healey accused Reilly of “managing to stifle and probably obstruct” a criminal investigation into whether the state’s social-host law had been violated prior to the Murphy girls’ deaths. Healey made these incendiary comments — which haven’t been borne out by the facts of the case — to CBS-4 political analyst Jon Keller, whose Sunday-morning broadcasts have a small though loyal viewership. And they might have been broadly ignored, if Reilly hadn’t shot back after a State House press conference on anti-gang legislation that he and Healey attended the following day. As a result, Healey’s charges found their way into the Globe and the Herald one day later.
