Mihos/UMass Pollster Violated Ethics Laws

When I first heard about the UMass-Lowell pollster Louis DiNatale having violated conflict of interest laws by conducting polls for UMass at the same time he was conducting polls on behalf of then gubernatorial candidate Christy Mihos, I immediately thought of this poll, which I noted at the time was a big wet kiss to Mihos. That poll, however, was a Suffolk University poll, not a UMass poll. The UMass poll DiNatale conducted while he was on Mihos' payroll was this one, which was of the candidate vs. candidate variety.

Looking over the poll results, it's hard to conclude that DiNatale let his connection with Mihos bias his results at all, so it's probably just as well that his only punishment for the conflict of interest was publicizing that he'd violated the law. Still, one wonders what conflict of interest laws are for if there's no penalty for breaking them.

Deadline Today For Minor Party Signatures

Today at 5:00PM was the deadline for independent and minor party candidates to submit their signature petitions to town and city clerks to be checked against the local voter rolls and certified. There are (at least) two candidates this year who are affected by this deadline.

Christy Mihos and lieutenant governor candidate John Sullivan likely will have the signatures needed to get on the ballot, having paid Spoonworks Inc. a total of $85,000. Fellow gubernatorial candidate Chris Gabrieli paid Spoonworks $82,500 in May, and the state Republican party paid them around $70,000 for a number of their candidates.

Grace Ross of the Green-Rainbow party, however, does not have the luxury of paying for signatures. Last week, the party sounded the alarm as they feared they would come up short. Now, according to Ross, the Greens have already had 3,760 signatures certified by town clerks and as of yesterday they planned to submit an additional 9,400 by today's deadline. I don't know if they made their target, but even if they did, they would still require about 2/3 of those 9,400 signatures to be certified. That's not impossible, but it's certainly cutting it close. If they fell short of their goal or if too many of those signatures are invalid, the Green Party will not have a candidate for governor on the ballot.

Mihos To Announce Lieutenant Tomorrow

The Phoenix's Adam Reilly has the scoop straight from Christy Mihos himself:

"It is someone who has earned it. Earned it in the sense that they've had a multifaceted career, and if anything ever happened to me, I would feel absolutely confident that that person could step in and...could do the job, and would finish the job, and would not ever look to run for anything else, or to leave the Commonwealth."

Whoever he picked would have to have been unenrolled since early March. As such, his pick is unlikely to be involved in recent electoral politics, unless he or she changed party affiliation months ago. Are there any prominent Massachusetts independents? Did he pull someone out of the political mothballs? Anyone have any guesses?

Part of me wonders if he's picked a more left-leaning person with the idea of running on a unity ticket.

UPDATE: The Globe says it's John J. Sullivan, Town Moderator of Winchester. Who?

Mihos Follows Howie's Advice

Howie Carr last week:

Christy, if you really want to steal her thunder next week, just cut the price of regular unleaded gas at your convenience stores to $1.99 a gallon. Every TV camera in the state would be on the Cape.

Today's Boston Globe:

[Christy Mihos] also invited the teachers to visit his Christy's convenience store in Hyannis, where he said he personally would be pumping gas at the deeply discounted price of $1.97 per gallon.

Not sure who attracted the most cameras, but I hope Carr got his consulting fee.

Quantum Polling: to Observe is to Change

A new 7NEWS/Suffolk University poll was put out yesterday (via Adam Reilly) and, in some respects it's like many others that we've seen so far. Tom Reilly leads Deval Patrick by roughly 8-10 points, and with Christy Mihos in the race as an Independent candidate, both Democrats lead him and Republican Kerry Healey in the general. That said, what's different about this poll is that it reads like a big sloppy kiss to Christy Mihos. A total of eight questions ask about the respondent's opinions on Independent candidates in general and Mihos' positions in particular. Showing that the act of observing changes the phenomenon being observed, after the pollster describes a number of proposals put forth by the Mihos campaign, his poll numbers predictably jump up by ten points. In addition, Tom Reilly's numbers in that second question drop by 8 and Kerry Healey's drop by 6. One can't assume that this is because Mihos drains more votes from the Democrat naturally since respondents just heard about Mihos' campaign promises, and two questions pervious they were reminded that if a Democrat were elected Governor, Republicans claim that spending would be out of control (64% of those polled disagreed with this statement, to their credit).

If Suffolk is going to keep doing polls like this, Mihos won't need to hire his own pollster. In my opinion, this poll did as much to publicize the stands Mihos has taken as it did to measure public opinion. Did it cross a line into advocacy? No, but it did seem rigged to produce the overall outcome that the pollsters wanted -- that an Independent candidate has a shot at the corner office. Maybe I'm overreacting, but I think it's always good to be skeptical of polls that first ask who you're going to vote for, then tell you all the things candidate X is going to do, then ask "Now, who are you going to vote for?"

The poll was not all Mihos all the time, however, and it did provide some useful name recognition numbers. I like these because they break out the "never heard of" numbers from the undecideds. They show a couple of interesting things, one that Tom Reilly and Kerry Healey's favorable and unfavorable numbers are identical and also that Chris Gabrieli has roughly the same name recognition as Deval Patrick, while Christy Mihos lags slightly behind in that area. These numbers are always very sobering for me, because as someone who follows politics closely I often forget how early it is in the election cycle and how many people still have yet to tune in to the race. Here is the raw data:

	Favorable	Unfavorable	Never Heard Of	Heard of, Undecided
Mitt Romney	49%	37%	2%	12%
Tom Reilly	36%	31%	9%	25%
Kerry Healey	36%	31%	12%	22%
Chris Gabrieli	21%	8%	33%	38%
Deval Patrick	19%	13%	33%	35%
Christy Mihos	15%	17%	37%	31%
Reed Hillman	9%	9%	50%	33%

In addition, the poll shows that 88% of voters cannot name a single accomplishment of Kerry Healey's. 59% of them responded that she'd accomplished nothing and the other 29% plead ignorance. This has already been a topic of political ads, even this early. Yesterday morning on the way to work I heard a radio ad put out by the SEIU which attacked the Romney/Healey administration for exactly this. The spot was in the form of a quiz show, and the last question asked "Name one Kerry Healey accomplishment." The correct answer: "I can't think of one!"

Campaign Ad Season Already?

Buried in the Boston Herald's story about yesterday's St. Patrick's Day Breakfast is this nugget of information:

Independent candidate Christy Mihos was vacationing with his family yesterday, and did not attend. But spokesman David White said he will begin airing radio ads today "in the same vein" as the roast.

Now, I know Mihos needs to get his poll numbers and name recognition up, but it's March. The election is eight months away. Do people really want to be subjected to eight months worth of campaign ads? Most people think that campaigns are too long as it is.

Am I wrong? Maybe this is a smart move by Mihos to get his side of the story out as early as possible. Personally, though, I think that running an attack ad -- and what else would be "in the same vein" as the roast? -- this early could do as much to turn people off as help his cause. Let me know if you hear the ad and what you think.

Update: Jon Keller has a link to the ad's audio on his blog (which is great by the way -- the blog, not the audio). The Mihos campaign also put out a press release today with the full text of the commercial:

Comedian Steve Sweeney: Welcome fellow politicos and assorted power brokers to the annual St. Patrick's day breakfast, or, as we're calling it this year, "Greek on a Skewer!"

Here's a short top o' the mornin' to you, and I do mean short: Christy Mihos! Somebody says gyros to him, he thinks they said hero, the next thing you know he's decided to run for Governor!

Christy thinks the Big Dig should work just because it came in about $10 billion over budget. Hey, funny, you'd think a convenience store clerk would know a little somethin' about markup!

Version 1: And what's this Proposition 1 thing he keeps talking about? Prop 1 -- Isn't that the name of your boat, Senator?

Version 2: Hey, speakin' of the Big Dig: Just wakin' up from a ten-year nap to sue the Big Dig, Rip Van Reilly! Good morning, Tommy!

Female Announcer: When the good-old-boy politicians get together, it's the people of Massachusetts who end up paying for their jokes. There's a way you can have the last laugh: Declare your independence. Vote Christy Mihos for Governor.

According to Adam in the comments, it aired after Keller's report on WBZ about the roast. To me, it still smacks of "I didn't want to come to your party anyway," but maybe after watching that whole thing yesterday my tolerance for this sort of thing is completely diminished.

Friday Odds and Ends

It's another Friday, so it must be time for me to clear out my backlog and post some of the things that I found interested but haven't posted yet. Feel free to add your own!

• Mike Festa endorses Gerry Leone: On Wednesday, Rep. Mike Festa officially endorsed Gerry Leone for Middlesex County District Attorney. Festa had dropped out of the race for DA himself earlier this year siting a fundraising gap with his opponents. Check out The Alewife for pictures from the press conference.


• Mihos Caught Fudging His Web Bio: Christy Mihos, who once claimed that he was never handed anything, has now changed his website's biography. A sentence claiming that Mihos paid his own way through college by playing music at Greek weddings has been removed and Mihos now says that his parents actually paid his tuition, though he did do some jobs for spending money.


• Googling for Grades: Check out this Google ad campaign by the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy. They graded every New York State legislator on their 'middle class' voting record and for the next month, whenever you Google their names, you'll see their grade as one of the sponsored links. I tried it with my old state Senator, Majority Leader Joe Bruno, and he got a "D". This is a really creative idea, and I'd be interested to see what the click-through rate is on those ads once the campaign ends.


• Shorter Joan Vennochi: We took down John Kerry, and you're next, Mitt.


• Kennedy Opponent Collects Signatures: Republican Ken Chase, who last ran unsuccessfully against Congressman Ed Markey in 2004, was out collecting signatures by himself at the Waverley Square Shaws in Belmont on Wednesday. If either Chase or former Wakefield Selectman Kevin Scott get enough signatures to get on the ballot against Ted Kennedy, the National Republican Senatorial Committee will be able to spend money in Massachusetts. Of course, that money won't go to trying to unseat Senator Kennedy, but will probably go to pay state party field staff to help drive up turnout for the gubernatorial contest.


• LNG Plan Dies: The plan to put an LNG terminal on Outer Brewster Island has been shelved. The proposal had a lot of hurdles to go through, needing a two-thirds vote in the legislature, since the facility would be on parkland, plus approval by state and federal regulatory agencies. I still think that it's a better place for an LNG terminal than Everett, but since the Everett terminal wouldn't be going away if the plan were enacted, I'm not particularly upset.

There's lots of other stuff going on, so I'm sure that I left out something important. What's on your mind?

New Poll Shows Mihos Competitive

There's a new CBS4/SurveyUSA poll on the governor's race out (via CBS4's brand new Keller@Large blog). There are a whole lot of interesting issues with it, but the most striking one is how high independent-turned-Republican Christy Mihos polls. Here are the high-level results:

Kerry Healey	35%
Deval Patrick	30%
Christy Mihos	20%

Tom Reilly	36%
Kerry Healey	31%
Christy Mihos	22%

I don't really have enough time to dig deep into the results, but here are a couple of quick things about the poll. First of all, according the blurb, "when Reilly is the Democrat, Reilly leads among women by 15 points. When Patrick is the Democrat, Patrick trails among women by 1 point, a 16-point difference." I'm not sure that this gender gap is something that we'll see on election day, after everything plays out, but it's not great news for Deval Patrick. That said, you have to remember that this poll is of all registered voters, and not of likely voters. Figuring out who is likely to vote is, of course, as much art as science, but this early out, it's hard to predict what will happen on election day when you include people who are less likely to be paying attention to the race. That is, name recognition plays a much larger role now before the campaigning has begun in earnest. That Mihos was able to make such a strong showing even under these conditions is very interesting.

The experts remain to be convinced of Mihos' chances, however. Even some of his own friends have doubts, according to the Herald:

"We want our independent candidates to be mavericks, but not too maverick," said political consultant and Mihos friend Scott Ferson. "Ross Perot was a breath of fresh air - until he was crazy."

Will Mihos Destroy the State Republican Party?

Will Ash Wednesday, 2006, be known as the day the Massachusetts GOP self-immolated? Now that Christy Mihos is running as an independent, the GOP looks like it may lose the one foothold it has left in state politics -- the governor's office. Without the governorship, and since they do not seem to be running any other credible candidates for statewide offices, the state GOP will be almost entirely without influence on Beacon Hill -- a tiny coalition of legislators. Now, it's a long way until November, and there's plenty of time for scandals, or for the candidates to come down with foot-in-mouth disease, but after yesterday it just got more difficult for Republicans to win back the corner office.

Let me explain, because some people are skeptical. I am not saying that the Democrats are now guaranteed victory in November. It is possible that Christy Mihos might win, and it's still not impossible (though I think it's unlikely) that Kerry Healey could win. Here's what I want to stress. The Republicans have been winning the governorship with a coalition of registered Republicans, anti-tax independents and disaffected Democrats. While Healey is likely to get the vote of the Republicans, there aren't that many of them, when compared with the size of the other two groups combined. Those independents and Democrats are just as likely to vote for Healey as Mihos (assuming he runs a credible campaign, which is not a given either). The point I'm trying to make is that Mihos breaks up the Republican's coalition. To my mind, that means that Healey will have great difficulty winning in November. The question for the Democrats is to what extent does the entry of Mihos break up our coalition? Mihos will, polls show, take votes from the Democratic candidate, but it remains to be seen if he and Healey will end up taking more votes beyond those already predisposed to vote against the Democrat (about one out of four votes in 1998).

The question I have, and that we'll all find out come Novemeber, is whether Mihos will be a Ross Perot (1996) or a Jesse Ventura (1998). If he's a Perot, he'll manage a few percentage points from disaffected voters, but won't end up changing the outcome of the election. If he's a Ventura, he'll end up squeaking by both the Republican and the Democrat, and muddle through four tumultuous years before declining to run for a second term. I can't see him as being successful as a governor, if only because of what Scott Brown said on NECN last night: he has no political base now. Republicans aren't going to want to work with him after this betrayal, and if he really is a Republican by temperament, the Democrats in the legislature can just ignore him.

On another note, the Herald is reporting that five members of his campaign team resigned yesterday. True, they weren't resigning in protest of his running as an independent, they were resigning because he was "unmanageable". Most of those that left are now supporting Kerry Healey. There is a danger that Mihos has, running as an independent, that he will not be seen as a candidate with a realistic chance of winning. If he spends a ton of money, he can help mitigate this, but if people end up thinking that this is a third-party vanity candidacy, he may not be able to break out of Green Party or Libertarian turnout in November.

Mihos To Run as an Independent

The Globe is now reporting that Christy Mihos is running for governor as an Independent. He's expected to formally announce this tomorrow.

That sound you hear is the Massachusetts Republican party whimpering.

"Never Handed Anything?"

Last week, we commented on a Wayne Woodlief column profiling the maybe Republican maybe Independent gubernatorial candidate Christy Mihos. In that column, Mihos made the claim that he was "never handed anything in his life," which was met with skepticism by one commenter here. Well, that wasn't the only person to notice that particular passage. According to the Boston Herald, Mihos' own sister is disputing that claim. Here's the passage from the article:

Mihos and his sister, Marlene Mihos Bucuvalas, haven't spoken in years, but in a letter to the Herald, she takes their sibling spat public, ripping him for claiming he worked his way up in the world when in fact their parents set him on the road to riches.

"We were all given things. We cannot say we got anything for free. My parents did so much for us," said Mihos Bucuvalas.

Mihos' late father, Peter Mihos, gave his three children proceeds from real estate sales and gifted ownership of Christy's Markets to his two sons, Bucuvalas said.

Now, I know these sort of family spats are complicated, and apparently there's more going on here, as Mihos and his sister have not spoken for years. Still, it seems to me that if Mihos wants to sell himself as a guy who worked up from nothing, he's going find that there are fewer people willing to buy that than the expired milk on his convenience store shelves. He's just another example of a guy who woke up on third base thinking he'd hit a triple.

Blute on Mihos

Former Congressman Peter Blute was on Greater Boston with Emily Rooney today, it seemed, to carry water for Christy Mihos. He talked a bit about his brief courtship with the national GOP, which asked him to consider a run against Senator Kennedy, but he spent much of the interview talking Mihos up. He hopes Mihos will run as a Republican, of course, but what really struck me is when he said this:

[Mihos is] the only guy in the race, of all the four candidates, who has actually created jobs here in Massachusetts.

That strikes me as exactly what's wrong with the Republican party today, both here and nationally. What sort of jobs did Christy Mihos create here in Massachusetts? Unless there is some part of his resume of which I am unaware, they were all convenience store jobs -- many of which are, I'm sure, minimum wage. So, yes, Mihos has technically created jobs, but are those the kind of jobs we want to showcase in Massachusetts? I don't mean to sound elitist, but creating more clerks and cashiers is not exactly going to turn the Massachusetts economy around. President Bush has done the same thing, touting all the jobs he's created over his five years, but the truth of it is that inflation adjusted wages have declined or remained the same. Why do you think Bush gave a recent speech at Wendy's Headquarters? With manufacturing moving overseas and more and more white-collar jobs being outsourced, those low-wage service sector jobs are all that's going to be left.

Mihos Wary of Being Double-Crossed

In today's Boston Herald, Wayne Woodlief has a column (reg req) about Christy Mihos' decision whether to run as an independent or Republican. Mihos will have to make his decision within the next two weeks -- by March 7th -- and he'll base it on whether or not he thinks he can get 15% of the delegates at the state GOP convention in Lowell to get on the ballot. Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey has promised him 15% and ballot access if he runs as a Republican, but Mihos is determined to get there on his own.

Mihos views the offer as a Trojan horse. "I've never had anything handed to me in my life," said the millionaire convenience-store entrepreneur. "If I can't earn this (15 percent of delegates) on my own, I don't want political charity." Besides, Mihos is still skeptical that if he opts out of an independent run, the Healey people may yet doublecross him at the convention. Oops, couldn't get enough of those folks who are conscientiously committed to Kerry to switch over. Sorry, Christy.
[...]
Still, Mihos is wary. "The state party chairman works for Healey's husband. Healey's people control the credentials committee. Suppose they challenge our delegates and deny them their credentials?"

Woodlief points out that Mihos is right to be paranoid -- after all it was no less than former acting Governor Jane Swift who tried to boot him out of the Turnpike Authority for being too independent-minded. If Mihos' field team doesn't think they have 15% of the convention delegates on their side by March 7th, or if he thinks the primary is a lost cause, he'll likely forego the GOP primary altogether and run as an independent. Personally, I think the election will be more interesting as a three-way race, and an independent run by Mihos would likely hurt Kerry Healey's chances of winning. Which is, of course, why she wants him to run as a Republican so badly.

Scared Republicans

We learned from the Boston Globe today that Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey is guaranteeing Christy Mihos a spot in Republican primary. Through her spokesman, she said that she'll make sure that Mihos gets 15% of the votes at the Republican state convention in Lowell so that he qualifies for the ballot, even if that means telling her supporters to switch to Mihos for the vote. It seems to me that they're very afraid of an independent Mihos siphoning votes from a Republican Healey. David from Blue Mass. Group agrees, who notes that the Healey camp must be confident that they can take a primary against Mihos, but "terrified" of the prospect of a three-way race.

Not only is Team Healey quaking with fear, but it appears that Team Romney has been spending some time hiding under the covers. Kevin Rothstein, who blogs for the Herald, called the governor the Cowerer-in-Chief for ducking questions about how long it took him to probe the Department of Social Services' handling of the Haleigh Poutre case. Here is what Rothstein wrote about that:

Question: If Mitt Romney is strong enough to be president of the United States, why is he, via his spokeswoman, afraid to answer a reporter's question? Here's a paragraph from today's Herald article about Romney's call to probe DSS following the near-fatal beating in SEPTEMBER of 11-year-old Haleigh Poutre:

"Asked why it has taken the governor four months to launch the probe, his spokeswoman, Julie Teer, said, 'Right now, the governor is focusing on preventing this type of situation from occurring again.'"

Is the governor-slash-presidential-candidate cowering under his desk when Ms. Teer tells him about the question? Does he lock himself in the bathroom and put a paper bag over his head? Why else would he, through his spokeswoman, not want to directly answer a question?

I guess Tom Tomorrow is right, the average conservative does live in a terrifying world.

Mihos Wants No Part of Senate Race

Imagine that you wanted to buy a house, not just any one, but a particular one you'd been wanting for some time. The problem is, there are other bidders, and one in particular doesn't like you driving up the price. Now, that bidder comes up to you and says "Look, we really want this house, and we think it would be best for everybody if you just let us have it. But, if you're interested in spending all that money anyway, we'd really appreciate it if you just took it and flushed it down this toilet."

That's exactly the offer the Mass GOP are giving to Christy Mihos, at least according to the Boston Globe.

Mihos confirmed that [Governor Mitt] Romney asked him to enter the Senate race earlier this month, just hours before the governor announced he would not seek reelection. [White House political director Sara] Taylor has placed a number of calls to Mihos over the past 10 days, and Mihos said he has returned each call but has missed her. The White House declined to comment, but state GOP party sources confirmed that she called to urge Mihos to run for the senate.

Mihos is predictably uninterested in challenging Senator Kennedy. It's hard to blame him -- if you're going to choose a seat to run for, do you pick an open seat that you have a decent chance of winning or do you challenge a popular and well funded incumbent you have no shot against? The party bosses aren't even offering Mihos any help should he go up against Kennedy. They, too, know he has little chance of winning and just want someone who's willing to spend his own money to tie the Senator down. Why should he do them any favors if they're only offering him the opportunity to waste a couple million bucks?

Fellow blogger David Eisenthal has more on Mihos's impact on the governor's race.

A GOP Primary After All?

Fresh on the heels of Charlie Baker's announcement that he's sitting out the governor's race, the Boston Globe's Brian McGrory reports today that former Turnpike Board member and Republican zillionaire Christy Mihos is talking about running. Mihos had previously talked about running for John Kerry's Senate seat, however he's now saying that he wants a competitive primary for governor if Mitt Romney sits out. From the column:

"If [Romney] doesn't run, I believe in competition. I don't ascribe to the belief that we all have to get behind one candidate."
...
Of [Lieutenant Governor Kerry] Healey, he says: "She's a very nice person. And I like her. But I don't think it does the party any good to have just one candidate. And I don't think people will stand up and say, 'Mitt Romney has deemed her his successor, let's follow lockstep.'"

As with Baker's, announcement, this is good and bad news for state Democrats. Mihos, with his piles of money, will make sure that the Republican primary is expensive for Healey, and whoever else may want to run. The more money they spend before September, the less they'll have to spend before the general election. Of course, Healey and Mihos both have access to practically infinite resources, so don't expect either of them to become paupers before next November. The bigger advantage is that those candidates will likely spend next summer bloodying each other rather than sniping at the Democratic candidates from the sidelines and raising money and resources unchallenged.

The flip side, of course, is that Mihos is a candidate that could potentially catch fire. He's more socially liberal than Romney and he's a bona-fide Big Dig Whistleblower. He can credibly use the old Republican playbook of running against special interests and the legislature without having the baggage of being linked to the current administration. Look for him to play of the fact that Jane Swift tried to fire him because he didn't want to raise tolls while on the Turnpike Board.

The Swift-Mihos Tax

Yesterday, the state settled a federal lawsuit former Massachusetts Turnpike Authority board member Christy Mihos brought against then acting governor Jane Swift in 2002. Mihos alleged that the governor violated his civil rights by firing him shortly after he voted to delay a toll increase -- which would have gone to fund the Big Dig -- by six months. The Boston Globe has the story.

"I think any elected official will think twice about an appointee's right to make a decision and vote, as opposed to waylaying someone's First Amendment rights," Mihos said after a settlement conference in US District Court in Boston.

Swift, who also attended the settlement conference, disputed Mihos's claims of victory, noting that she didn't admit to any liability. She stood by her decision to fire Mihos.

"I have always contended the actions I took were in the best financial interest of the state," she said.

Best financial interests? Apparently Swift is not counting the interests of taxpayers who she can now force to pick up the tab for her legal fees thanks to a law that Swift signed, practically in secret, towards the end of her term. That bill, which the Legislature's leadership snuck into an appropriations bill and passed with no debate, required the state to pay legal costs and damages up to $1 million for constitutional officers -- even if they've intentionally violated someone's civil rights. That means that Massachusetts taxpayers are not only going to have to pay the independently wealthy Mihos $197,500 as part of the settlement but, the state may end up having to foot the bill for Swift's own legal fees, a sum totalling $360,000. That adds up to over half a million dollars, or 8.6 cents for every man, woman and child in Massachusetts. Let's call it the Swift-Mihos Tax.

Mihos, by the way, told Boston Magazine in May that he wanted to run for John Kerry's Senate seat in 2008. By then, of course, the Big Dig will be long finished and forgotten. Right? Right?