Election Day in MA-05

I feel a bit bad that after I paid such loving attention to the Democratic primary race in Massachusetts' fifth district I've gone missing for the entire stretch of the general election. Unfortunately, the triple pressures of a baby, a full-time job, and yet another campaign have left me with little time for blogging.

In any case, today is the day that voters of the fifth finally decide who will replace former Congressman Marty Meehan. Democrat Niki Tsongas (interviewed here) is favored to win over Republican Jim Ogonowski, though the race has been close by Massachusetts standards. Really, though, nine points is a comfortable margin in a competitive race. I can't see Ogonowski winning for three reasons -- he has been incomprehensible on SCHIP, I don't think he can match the Democratic Party's GOTV operation, and Unenrolled voters don't tend to vote in special elections at the rate he would need them to. There's always a chance that enough Democrats would cross party lines because of immigration or some other reason, but I have yet to see evidence of that in a Federal-level race in Massachusetts. Historically, Democrats are much loyal to their party's nominee for Federal office than for state or local office.

In any case, if you're able to volunteer for Tsongas today, Blue Mass Group has some ways to help.

Who Won Where?

The Boston Globe has a list of the Fifth District election results by city and town, and I thought it might be instructive to see what that looked like on a map:

The results make sense. Barry Finegold won his hometown of Andover, and Jim Miceli won Tewksbury, which he represents. Jamie Eldridge won a group of small towns that overlap with his state rep. district. Eileen Donoghue won Lowell and the surrounding towns, including Methuen where she had the support of Sen. Steven Baddour (D-Methuen). Niki Tsongas was able to take the primary by racking up victories in Lawrence, Haverhill and Concord and coming in second in almost every community she didn't win (except Boxborough).

The general election for the seat will be October 16th, where Tsongas will face Republican Jim Ogonowski and three third-party and independent candidates. Tsongas will likely be the heavy favorite in that contest give the district's typical Democratic swing in Federal elections. Given that, it will be interesting to see how much the national parties get involved. Neither, I'm sure, wants to spend much money on a sure-win or a sure-lossm, and in particular Ogonowski must be careful that he doesn't get too heavily linked with President Bush or the national Republicans, neither of which are particularly popular in Massachusetts as a whole or the Fifth District in particular.

Niki Tsongas Wins MA-05 Dem. Primary

The results are in and Niki Tsongas, widow of former Senator Paul Tsongas, has won the special election to replace former Congressman Marty Meehan. Tsongas managed to hold on despite a late surge from Eileen Donoghue, who closed what had been a double-digit gap in the polls to just five points on primary day. Here are the results from the Boston Globe.

What's interesting to me how close the actual results were to the most recent SUSA poll, despite all the disclaimers that polling for a day-after Labor Day primary would be mostly meaningless. Here they are lined up:

	9/4 Result	8/30 Poll
Niki Tsongas	36%	40%
Eileen Donoghue	31%	29%
Jamie Eldridge	14%	15%
Barry Finegold	13%	9%
Jim Miceli	6%	3%

Every candidate was within four points of where they polled, and they finished in the predicted order.

Primary Day in MA-05

Today is primary election day for the Fifth Congressional district. There are two certainties today: one, that turnout will be very small, and two that Jim Ogonowski will win the Republican primary against challenger Tom Tierney.

Regular readers of this blog (if there are any left after my unscheduled two-week hiatus) will know that the real race is in the Democratic primary, where recent polls show Niki Tsongas with a healthy, but shrinking lead over Lowell City Councilor Eileen Donoghue, with the rest of the field a distant third, fourth and fifth. The low turnout, however, would seem to work against the frontrunner Tsongas if her opponents' supporters are more motivated to come out. Presumably, every supporter of another candidate has been contacted by one of the campaigns or is at least interested enough to follow the race. The same cannot necessarily be said of those who support the candidate with the highest name recognition. I expect, though, that Tsongas will will today's election, but perhaps by a smaller margin than predicted.

Update: Dick Howe has some preliminary information about turnout, and the unsurprising consensus is that it's going to be low. The city of Haverhill reported a total of eight absentee ballots!

Globe Discovers Fifth District Race

Yesterday, the Boston Globe had a front page article on the race to replace former Congressman Marty Meehan in the state's fifth district. The piece focused on some of the methods that the candidates are resorting to in order to get people's attention over the course of a special election that no one seems to be following. I thought it was particularly ironic for the Globe because part of the reason that no one is following this race is that the Globe just hasn't been covering it. Sure, there have been occasional articles, and some columns (mostly about candidate Niki Tsongas), but the Globe's coverage of the race has been substandard when compared with in-district papers like the Lowell Sun and Lawrence Eagle-Tribune.

That may be changing. After yesterday's article, five stories about the race appeared on the Boston.com local politics blog -- the first posts to that blog in more than two weeks. In addition, the Globe had a story today covering yesterday's fifth district debate in Haverhill. The Demcoratic candidates for this seat have had what seems like hundreds of these local debates across the district and it's rare that the Globe even sends someone to cover them, let alone prints an article afterward. I hope this is a sign that the race will be getting the attention it deserves from the region's largest paper.

Now, if we can only get the Globe to cover the special legislative elections...

SUSA Poll of MA-05

Via Jon Keller comes the latest WBZ4/SUSA Fifth Congressional District poll. This, I believe, is the first poll done by an independant firm for the race to replace former Congressman Marty Meehan (D-Lowell). The results showed candidate Niki Tsongas as the frontrunner, as expected, while Eileen Donoghue, Barry Finegold and Jamie Eldridge are roughly tied for second place. Barely registering (in fact, below "other" and "undecided") is Jim Miceli. Here are the numbers:

Tsongas	38%
Donoghue	16%
Finegold	14%
Eldridge	13%
Miceli	4%
Other	10%
Undecided	6%

Now, some may find it surprising that the number of undecided voters is so small in the SUSA poll. I've discussed this about SUSA before, but the reason for that is two-fold. Part of it is the question that's asked: "If the Democratic Primary for U.S. House of Representatives were today, and you were standing in the voting booth right now, who would you vote for?" That question encourages the respondent to make a choice. This is appropriate, in my opinion, because if people are undecided on election day, they're likely to stay home. This is particularly true of a special election where only one race will be on the ballot. It's also important to remember that these respondents are those SUSA considers likely voters. People who support a candidate are certainly more likely to vote than those who do not.

Of course, since this is a special election the day after Labor Day, any likely voter model is practically guesswork. The only people who I expect to come out to vote in the primary are people who have been contacted by a campaign. The winner of the race is likely to be the candidate who has done the best voter ID and is able to drag their supporters out on the first day of school.

Also interesting in this poll was the fact that 66% of the respondents disapproved of the job Congress is currently doing and 82% said the country is going in the wrong direction. These opinions, however, had no bearing on their choice for Congressional representation.

In other MA-05 polling news, I just got a notice from Eileen Donoghue's campaign touting the fact that their internal tracking poll shows them just six points behind Niki Tsongas. Their own polling also has Donoghue winning Lowell by a better than two-to-one margin and winning among "voters who have made a final decision on a candidate". Given how different this is from the public poll, I'm skeptical. The timing suggests that the internal poll was released to counter the SUSA poll, so take these numbers with a grain of salt.

GOP Candidate Starts Airing Ads

The Herald's Casey Ross notes in his Daily Briefing blog that Republican candidate Jim Ogonowski has started airing ads in his bid for the Fifth Congressional District seat. The ad itself is well done if generic, though the images in the background flash a little two quickly. I also notice that it does not mention that he's a Republican -- probably a good move in a Democratic district.

Still, the ad buy does not really make sense to me. The only reason the Democrats have aired campaign spots thus far is that they have no choice given the September 4th primary. Ogonowski does not have a primary challenge to speak of; Tom Tierney, his only opponent, doesn't even live in the district. Because of that, he has the luxury of waiting until after Labor Day to start his advertising blitz. That's when people are actually paying attention, home from vacation, and willing to think about politics. I also have to imagine that he has pretty decent name-recognition already.

Oganowski had about $112,00 on hand at the end of last month, less than any of the Democrats except for Rep. Jim Miceli. The conventional wisdom in Washington is that the National Republicans are not all that excited to dump money into what they consider a likely loss in Massachusetts, particularly since they fundraising problems of their own. When Ogonowski is down ten points in the polls come October, I imagine he'll be wishing he still had the money he spent on this ad buy over the summer.

The only way this makes sense is if this is a small ad buy, made more to get media talking about the ad than to actually pay to air it. Otherwise, I think he's jumped the gun.

Last Night's Progressive Forum

Last night, I attended the Fifth-District Congressional Debate sponsored by the Mass Alliance. While I thought that the debate was not very well attended, I talked to some DSC members afterwards who thought that turnout was in line with their expectations, particularly for a debate in Lawrence. Most of the attendees seemed to already be supporters of one of the candidates; I felt like I was the only one in the auditorium not already wearing someone's sticker -- and I can't even vote in this race. I spoke briefly with Mimi from Left in Lowell who confirmed that this was the case for nearly all of the other debates as well.

Outside the school where the debate was held, volunteers lined the street for all candidates except Rep. Jim Miceli. In both debates I've attended, Rep. Miceli has come alone and left alone. I'm sure he has supporters, but I'm starting to wonder if he's a serious candidate if he can't get them to show up anywhere or give him any money. Rep. Barry Finegold had the biggest signs and loudest supporters, but that shouldn't be much of a surprise given that Lawrence is his home turf, so to speak.

The format of the debate was fairly standard. The first round consisted of questions from three panelists -- Carl Nilsson of Neighbor to Neighbor Massachusetts, Cathy Dwyer of the American Federation of Teachers, Massachusetts and Angus McQuilken of Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund. The next was a lightning round conducted by Emily Rooney of WGBH, and following that the candidates were allowed to ask questions of two others. Frankly, I think the panel was wasted -- anyone could have been up there asking questions -- and perhaps we'd have been better served if the panel members could ask follow ups rather than move on to a completely different subject for a second question.

I'm a big fan of Emily Rooney's interviews on Greater Boston, but I'm not sure her style works in this format either. She forgot the opening statements, but she did, I think, keep the candidates honest when they strayed into talking points without answering the question -- at least in the second round.

The questions, as expected, ran the gamut of progressive issues. The candidates were asked about their opinions on the Bush Tax cuts (all are against), the war in Iraq (almost all want out as soon as possible), reproductive choice (one pro-life, four pro-choice), NAFTA (only Tsongas admitted that she would have voted for it at the time), Climate Change, the ERA, DOMA, Health Care and so on. The subjects seemed to be a natural fit for Rep. Jamie Eldridge, who is arguably the most progressive candidate in the race and was the only one of the five to have been endorsed by Mass Alliance in a previous race. It's hard to tell, however, who did well in this debate since most of the ground that was covered had been gone over in previous debates and the format prevented in-depth discussion of any single issue. I felt like I left the forum without having learned much.

There were a couple of interesting moments, though. Rep. Miceli grumped about how no one is paying attention to where the other candidates are getting their money during a question on campaign finance, and Rooney disagreed with him, offering to list the names of all the PACs that had contributed thus far. Miceli also spent his closing statement touting his experience and taking thinly veiled jabs at fellow candidate Niki Tsongas, saying how he couldn't believe someone could be elected to Congress without so much as even local-level experience. Eileen Donoghue also took some shots at Tsongas, pointing out how Tsongas promised ten years ago to bring a Performing Arts Center to Middlesex Community College, yet she couldn't deliver on that. In her defense, Tsongas offered up that the center was "too expensive" but still a possibility. Donoghue also took Rep. Finegold to task for voting in line with the wishes of some campaign contributers, but I feel that this lost a lot of its punch since Donoghue was forced to defend her own acceptance of PAC money earlier in the debate.

I have notes, but unless people are clamoring for a blow-by-blow account, I won't bother transcribing them. My laptop ran out of juice after about the second question and I have only my barely decipherable chicken scratchings to go on for the last hour and a half of the debate. Unfortunately, I could not get a wireless signal otherwise, I'd have live-blogged.

For more, see Marie's post at Dick Howe's blog.

Update: Here are the reports from The Boston Globe and the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune.

Question of the Evening

Didn't Andrea Silbert already do this in her run for Lieutenant Governor last year? How'd that work out for her?

Second MA-05 Ad Goes Live

Fifth District candidate Rep. Barry Finegold (D-Andover) has launched what I believe is the second television ad in the race to replace former Congressman Marty Meehan. Fellow candidate Niki Tsongas was the first to go on TV with an ad that aired a month ago. Frankly, I'm a little surprised that there hasn't been more activity on the air in the race given how much money the candidates have and how close the election is getting. I expect that Eileen Donoghue will join in before too long and perhaps we'll see a second offering from Tsongas.

As far as the ad goes, there's an art to using humor in political ads, and Finegold's effort in that regard falls flat. The dancing Congressman is just weird and off-putting. Perhaps memorable, though, and that may be what Finegold is after. For me, it reminds me too much of one of our local furniture store ads (sans furniture, of course).

That said, I do think that the spot gets to the nut of why Congressional approval ratings are so low. People are frustrated because Congress is unable or unwilling to bring about the changes in policy that they thought they were voting for last November. In reality, however, electing Barry Finegold does not promise to change that, nor would electing any of the other candidates for the fifth district. To be sure, Finegold is not claiming he can change that, and he's at most promising that he'll listen to voters.

Blue Mass. Group has more commentary.

MA-05 Poll Update

In my post Monday on the latest Fifth District poll commissioned and released by candidate Eileen Donoghue, I posted a few questions that one should keep in mind when reading any internal poll put out by someone running for office. Today, I heard from the Donoghue campaign, who wanted to reassure me that their poll was legitimate.

First off, I wondered why they had used a different polling outfit than they did in their last poll. I speculated that perhaps they had commissioned two polls and released only the more favorable one. Donoghue's people assured me that this was not the case, and that they only switched polling firms because their campaign manager has worked with the new pollster before and was particularly happy with how he targets his regional breakdowns. They said that the campaign has commissioned two polls and released both of them. In addition, I noted that we had no information about what kind of questions were asked. I was told that in this case, it was a "straight horserace poll" without any biographical information and without any push. The only caveat to that is the poll was on likely voters, and as I've said in the past it's hard enough to predict who is likely to vote in a regularly scheduled general election, let alone a special primary -- especially one the day after Labor Day.

That disclaimer about likely voters aside, I feel more confident about Donoghue's poll than I did earlier in the week. Candidates depend on honest information about the electorate to craft their message or plan their targets. They do not benefit by paying someone to lie to them. The campaign that relies on misleading numbers will find itself in for a shock on election day.

Latest Fifth District Polling

Over the weekend, the Lowell Sun reported on a Fifth District Congressional poll taken by candidate and fomer Lowell Mayor Eileen Donoghue. The poll shows Donoghue second behind Niki Tsongas, but by a smaller margin than a similar poll taken in early May. Here are the results for the whole district:

Tsongas	25.7%
Donoghue	16.8%
Finegold	12.9%
Eldridge	10.0%
Miceli	3.8%
Undecided	29.0%

Donoghue's poll also showed her winning Lowell with 35.4% and with six points of Tsongas in Greater Lowell. The only candidate from the Southern end of the District, Rep. Jamie Eldridge, apparently does best in that region, though he still is behind Tsongas 20.7% to 26.6% in that region. Of course, given that the poll as a whole has a margin of error of 4%, the subsamples will have a much smaller sample size and have an even larger MOE. It's not clear how useful any of those individual regional numbers might be since we don't know the regional breakdown of the poll.

Of course, the usual caveats apply to this data because it is an internal poll, paid for by one of the candidates. It's true that Donoghue would benefit from having an accurate picture of the electorate as it stands now, but it's also true that her team has control over the questions and the decision whether or not to release these numbers. It's interesting that this poll was done by a different firm than the last one, which makes me wonder whether she is commissioning multiple polls at a time and only releasing the ones that show the most favorable results. In addition, there's no indication of how the questions were asked and what information led up to the selection of a candidate. I know that some polls in low-profile races give short bios of each candidate before asking the respondent to choose one. That may not be the case in this poll, but the Sun article makes no mention either way.

In the end, what the poll really shows is that more people are undecided than support any particular candidate. That may mean that the race is more up-for-grabs than the Tsongas team would like. Of course, what will really matter is which candidate can drag their supporters out to a special election the day after Labor Day. It seems to me that the undecideds will be less likely to schlep out to vote and that number is only important insofar as one candidate or another can gain the support of people who have not yet made up their minds. That may be a tough job over the summer when so many people are on vacation and thinking of other things than politics.

MA-05 Hopefuls on Libby

I'm not entirely sure why an aspiring Congresscritter needs to trumpet their reaction to President Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence, but I got statements from two of the candidates in the Fifth District race to replace the now former Congressman Marty Meehan (D-Lowell). I hate blogging-as-stenography, but I'm trying to get back in the swing of things after a busy couple of days in the real world.

The first statement came in yesterday from Rep. Barry Finegold (D-Andover). Here's what he had to say:

"This is a display of the cronyism that has infected Washington. Lying under oath is illegal, unacceptable and unethical. And now the protection racket has swung into action yet again to avoid accountability for this administration. President Bush has, once again, shown his contempt for the rule of law. The American people deserve real leadership. They don't deserve more of the same."

Fellow candidate and former Lowell Mayor Eileen Donoghue followed with this:

"President Bush is once again proving that he has no respect for the office and the people he represents by pulling special favors for his staff. We demand more of our public servants. This action mocks the system we have in place, and flies in the face of efforts to make it better."

Meanwhile, our one-time Governor, Mitt Romney, has predictably gone the other direction and defended the President. This, despite the fact that Romney never once issued a pardon or commutation himself in his four years as Governor, saying that he did not want to overrule a jury.

ActBlue and MA-05

Marie, in her comments to a previous thread writes:

Everyone keeps mentioning who is raising on ActBlue. If you took the time to go a little bit further you would see that Finegold is the only candidate that is using a different online tool for donations on his website.

Not a bad idea since you can tell exactly what everyone else has raised online except for him.

I would add to this that it's certainly true that you should not measure a candidate's fundraising prowess based on what they collect via ActBlue. That amount largely depends on how much that candidate is pushing Internet contributions and does not, as Marie points out, take into account any money not raised through ActBlue. By way of example, Rep. Barry Finegold is showing only $16,250, yet he raised almost 19 times that amount in the first quarter alone through other methods. Relying on ActBlue to draw conclusions on how a candidate's fundraising is going is not likely to give you a full picture.

What I would disagree with, however, is that it's somehow a bad idea to allow the public to see exactly how much you have raised online. On the contrary, it's often a very good thing, particularly if you're stressing your online contributions. ActBlue's Karl-Thomas Musselman notes today in the ActBlue blog that using ActBlue can earn you positive media. He mentions several downballot races in the past few weeks that have had free press in the local media as a result of public fundraising numbers on ActBlue. He elaborates:

Political beat reporters are hungry to have a reason to write. As a former journalist and state-level blogger myself, the public fundraising numbers that are provided by ActBlue are a great hook. This is great for local stories about elections that may not otherwise be generating much news. While politics is more than just about money, smart campaigns can leverage this fact to their advantage. In an environment where earned media is an important component of modern campaigns, the public nature of ActBlue can be a natural ally. Feel free to make use of it!

Of course, the end of the fundraising quarter is coming up. If you support one of these candidates, your contribution will make the most impact if you get it in before Friday. You can see how all of the Massachusetts candidates are doing on Actblue here

Does This Happen Often?

Fifth District Candidate Rep. Barry Finegold has found himself in a bit of controversy after it was discovered that he appeared as a cosponsor of a bill that would require a 24 hour waiting period before a woman would be allowed to have an abortion in Massachusetts. That information came out during last week's debate, and fellow candidate Niki Tsongas used that bit of information in a fundraising appeal that went out through EMILY's List, a pro-choice political organization. Finegold has since claimed that his sponsorship was the result of a mistake on the part of his staff, and has removed his name from that bill. He's also called on Tsongas to stop using his unintentional support of the measure to cast doubt on his pro-choice record.

This comes just about a week or so after the confusion over whether Senator Paul Donato actually meant to cosponsor Senate Bill 123 got to the point where Senator Robert Hedlund, who filed the bill, had to issue a statement explaining how co-sponsors were listed. The confluence of these events makes me wonder how often legislators end up being cosponsors of bills they never either read or meant to lend their support to.

This might seem like a small matter, but I think it actually can affect the race. The differences between the Democratic candidates -- aside from Rep. Jim Micelli, the most conservative of the field -- are actually quite small. Sure Rep. Jamie Eldridge has staked out the territory furthest to the left, but Tsongas, Finegold and Lowell City Councilor Eileen Donoghue occupy a similar center-left space. If the other candidates can convince voters that Finegold is squishy on choice, that might be enough to cause undecideds to rule him out in favor of candidates whose records are unblemished.

Air Wars Start in MA-05

Unless I've missed a previous spot, Democratic Congressional Candidate Niki Tsongas has launched the first television ad in the race to replace Marty Meehan in the fifth district. Check it out here.

The ad is slated to run for a week and a half on cable in the district starting this afternoon. I didn't see it after watching a few hours of NECN, but then again I'm not in the district and I think cable can pinpoint as geography a little better than broadcast, so maybe I won't see any. The ad itself is nothing too spectacular, and the production values don't seem to be that great -- though maybe that's just because I'm viewing it on the web. That said, the message -- let's bring the troops home and treat them right when they get back -- is a good one that will play well in the district.

Being first to the air is a good move for Tsongas, who needs to hold on to her front-runner status if she's going to win the election. At the same time, though, she already has the best name recognition of all the candidates in the race, and paradoxically also has the least to gain by running early ads. Perhaps her campaign also hopes to coax one of the other candidates into spending their money on media buys before they can afford it. I don't think that's likely to happen here, but you never know how a campaign is going to react if they see some unfavorable poll numbers.

I do believe that this race will ultimately be won on the ground, but if a candidate cedes the air, the job of their ground troops will be that much more difficult.

Can Eldridge Compete Without Fundraising?

Via Left in Lowell, the Lowell Sun yesterday had an article on Massachusetts Fifth District Congressional candidate and State Rep. Jamie Eldridge (D-Acton), particularly focused on his efforts to stand out from the rest of the field in that race. There was one quote from Eldridge in that article that irked me. Here it is:

"I'll admit I'm not going to raise the most money in this race, but just ask Gov. Deval Patrick about who raised the most money during that race," Eldridge said. Former gubernatorial candidate Chris Gabrieli had more money than Patrick, but lost in the primary.

Now, as someone who was involved heavily in then-candidate Patrick's campaign, Eldridge knows full well that Patrick raised more money than anyone in last year's gubernatorial contest. He broke monthly fundraising records, and he raised over eight million dollars when all was said and done. Now, Patrick never had very much cash-on-hand compared to his rivals because his campaign spent the money as fast as he raised it, but to imply that he couldn't or wouldn't raise money is untrue. Perhaps I'm being pedantic here, though, because certainly Patrick didn't have as much personal wealth to put into his campaign as did his opponents Chris Gabrieli and Kerry Healey (and for that matter, Christy Mihos) and he was underfunded compared to them. Still, to give the impression that money was not important to Patrick's eventual win is to rewrite history.

I like Rep. Eldridge. I like his politics, and perhaps just as importantly, I like the people who like him. What makes me nervous, however, is that his campaign is frequently sending out messages that imply he's not interested in fundraising. The one that sticks out most in my mind is the statement he put out after he shook up his campaign team in May, that he was "putting people ahead of money". That's a fine sentiment, but when you say that after reorganizing your campaign it makes it sound like there was an internal disagreement about fundraising and the winners decided they didn't think it was important. His message should be, as Patrick's was during his campaign, "we'll have the money we need" not "we don't need to have money."

Don't get me wrong, you certainly can win a campaign on a shoestring budget, and perhaps Eldridge will do just that. It is difficult under normal circumstances, but that difficulty is compounded in a special election that takes place over the summer. While this may guarantee a low-turnout election where field organizations can make the most difference, it also means that volunteers are harder to come by and voters are harder to reach. In addition, since the race is so-far low profile, you can't rely on free media to help get your message out. If you do, voters will learn more about your ability to play basketball than your health care proposal.

Now, Democracy for America's recent endorsement of Eldridge, has the potential to help him raise some money from national progressives. They will often email out appeals to their members, though I have not gotten anything from them yet. Eldridge is also getting strong support from unions, who can spend money on his behalf should that become necessary. And, it might be that I'm reading too much into the statements from the Eldridge camp and that their fundraising is going smoothly -- we'll find out in mid-July when the FEC quarterly reports are due.

Tuesday Night Links

I didn't have a lot of time this morning, and I didn't have a lot of time this evening. So, you loyal readers get another link dump.

• Check out Lynne's summary of Monday's fifth district candidate's debate sponsored by the Mass AFL/CIO. Marie Sweeney also has her impressions of the forum on Dick Howe's blog.
• Last week the Wall Street Journal profiled the Health Care Connector Board. Why is it that the out-of-town papers do this sort of thing and the local media don't?
• House Majority leader paid his ex-business partner almost $200k to manage two uncontested (or nearly uncontested) elections. Nice work if you can get it...
• The Revere Journal has Carlo Basil running for Anthony Petruccelli's statehouse seat after Petruccelli inevitably wins the uncontested election in former Senate President Robert Travaglini's district. I don't know anything about Basil, but he's the only potential candidate I've seen discussed at all for the East Boston House district.
• Senator Barack Obama knows what's really important.
• Only in the world of the Boston Herald is Legislators Who Live Furthest Away Collect Most Travel Compensation a news story.
• In another setback for Hess LNG and Weaver's Cove Energy, the state Department of Environmental Protection has halted the review of the proposed Fall River LNG plant, pending a positive determination by the Coast Guard later in the summer. Given what the Coast Guard said last month, the LNG proposal may finally be defeated.

Liveblogging the Health Care Forum Q&A

I got to today's Health Care Forum for the fifth district congressional candidates a little late. The Pike was shut down for about a half hour, just before the 495 exit, after a deadly SUV rollover. I missed the opening statements, but I was able to transcribe some of the responses to the short question-and-answer period. Other bloggers were there liveblogging, and you can read Charley on the MTA's post at BMG and you can read Ryan's Take at his blog.

My notes from the Q&A session are in the full post. They're a little raw, so forgive any mispellings or bad grammar.

1st question about the prescription drug problem: Fast tracking of new drugs by FDA worth it?

Niki Tsongas: Until the FDA gets its house in order, fast-tracking won't work.

Barry Finegold: Need to streamline FDA, but not at the risk of putting untested drugs on the market.

Eileen Donoghue: If we look at Vioxx, the safety concerns and the harm done by fast-tracking gives me pause. Didn't work, I don't support it.

Jim Micelli: People should still have the availability of experimental drugs, if there's nothing left.

Jamie Eldridge: Concerned about Vioxx and a couple other drugs. We need a Federal Govt that is supporting prescription drugs. FDA is biased toward Pharma.

---
Is the Federal Govt doing enough to plan for avian flu?

BF: No. Not enough on the state govt level, either. Could kill up to 2 million people. We need to educate people, as well, we're not doing enough.

ED: No. Fed Govt hasn't done enough to stockpile. Not enough room in hospitals, etc. There are other natural disasters that we need to stockpile for.

JM: Look at Katrina, no transparancy of responsibility. Same problem when it comes to preparing for disaster.

JE: Need to stockpile more antiviral. USDA should hire more people to inspect poultry facilities. We need to be proactive to prevent deaths before flu comes to US. MA used to have best public health infrastructure in the US, not so much any more.

NT: It's unfortunate. Past commissioner of public health says they know it's going to come. They need to coordinate with public safety and public health.

---
Q: Tort reform?

ED: Doesn't attribute rising costs to med. malpractice. There are 100,000 deaths due to avoidable medical error. Doesn't want to shut out families harmed by medical error.

JM: Doctors are practicing defensive medicine. People should be entitled to any justifiable reimbursement, but there are times when people aren't getting the best from their doctor for obvious reasons. We might have a schedule that holds the doctor harmless.

JE: Tort reform is stripping the citizen's legal rights to redress injuries. To reduce