Reality-Based Engineering: Delving Into Worcester Politics...

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Delving Into Worcester Politics...

...this is something that I rarely, if ever, do on this blog...however, here goes:

Bob Spellane is my state rep in the MA Statehouse...in the several elections that wifey and I have lived in Worcester, I've voted for him, especially after his office helped me out of a jam with the DMV. Well, it would appear that it pays to pay attention to your local politics...I guess Tip O'Neill was right when he said that "All politics is local." Anyways, Monday night when I got home, there was a note jammed into out storm door, a xerox double sided copy of multiple issues regarding Bob Spellane, and saying that John Mahoney was running a Write-In campaign for Spellane's seat because of multiple ethics violations that Spellane had been involved in...well, wifey and I started looking around the internets to see what we could see...

...and, as a side note, whomever wrote the flyer that got stuck in our door, learn how to use your spellchecker...writing crappily, even tho you might be right, only makes me think you're someone like these people from VA trying to suppress the black vote this coming Tuesday...and when I get my hands on the Mahoney flyer, I'll scan it in and add it to this post...

...anyways, it appears that Bob has diverted campaign funds to personal use, (another Howie Carr-penned link here to this whole issue) and that he's got some sort of semi-sweetheart deal with the bank that gave him his mortgage and (maybe?) a second home equity loan...although he was silly enough to get himself into an ARM, too, and they're trying to get him to start repaying, or be forclosed upon...AND, he had a year's worth of mortgage forgiven...he was also hit with ethics violations WRT to taking $50,000 from his campaign fund for personal use...so, the home equity loan was used, in part, to settle the ethics claim...and why do we know all of this? Bob Spellane's divorce proceedings...which also spell out why he's getting divorced...he's had an affair with a former WCTR-TV3 reporter who now MIGHT have gotten a cush job b/c of Spellane's relationship with her now-employer...ack. Too much.

Along the way to writing this post, I found a tremendous number of worcester-related blogs that I never knew were out there...I might just have to (finally!) start a Worcester bloglinks section on this site...there are more than I imagined...here are the specific links that I used to find some details of this story: