We Get Letters

Ever since my wife and I were elected as a delegates to the State Democratic Convention, we've been getting a steady stream of mail from candidates pleading their case. The current leader in those standings is Worcester Mayor Tim Murray, whose campaign for Lieutenant Governor has sent us four pieces of mail in addition to two phone calls. Yesterday, my wife got a letter with no return address on the envelope from John Gabrieli, asking her to be one of the 500 convention delegates his brother Chris needs to get on the ballot for governor. Usually these materials are sent to both of us (Bill Galvin is the only one so far that's assumed that since we share and address and a last name, we can share a copy of his letter). Since I didn't get a copy, I thought back to the mysterious call I got last week and figured that my hunch was right -- Gabrieli's people were probably behind the survey. How else would they know that I am already supporting a different candidate?

Sure enough, today's Globe has more information about Chris Gabrieli's campaign activities, where he gives the results of his survey of convention delegates. Here's what he found:

Gabrieli, the party's nominee for lieutenant governor in 2002, said yesterday that he is encouraged by a survey he commissioned. The poll indicates that about a third of the convention delegates elected at caucuses in February are uncommitted to other candidates, Gabrieli said.

[...]

The survey of about 2,000 delegates suggests that Deval Patrick has a 3-to-1 lead over Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly, according to Gabrieli adviser Joe Ganley. Reilly was slightly above the 15 percent mark, and Patrick was just below the 50 percent needed for the convention endorsement, Ganley said.

Keep in mind that he could only survey the delegates elected in the caucuses, and not the add-on delegates (who have yet to be chosen) and other ex-officios who the article does not say were polled. I would refrain from extrapolating any data that Gabrieli got from that survey to the wider population of delegates, since they have different motivations -- though, of course, they are all "elected."

Anyway, the curious can read the text of the letter on Gabrieli's newly re-launched new campaign website. The sales pitch is that Chris has dropped a lot of money on Democrats and Democratic causes in the past few years, and he's got unspecified fresh ideas that are better than those of the other candidates. Now, it's true that Gabrieli is a good Democrat, but if he wants to make the ballot, he's going to have to have a stronger message than he's paid (literally) his dues and deserves a shot.