Who do they Fear?
By Josh Resnek
One of the most gratifying moments at Monday’s special council committee hearing called by Councilor Anthony DiPierro to take down Councilor Mike McLaughlin represented a fitting epitaph to the allegations brought by DiPierro and an Everett woman.
The claim she made and which DiPierro felt absolutely compelled to investigate, claimed McLaughlin had torn down her signs as well as terrorizing the woman, causing her to contact the council four months after the alleged event she was so concerned about it.
With everyone there Monday night to get to the honest bottom of this complicated mystery, chief among them DiPierro serving as judge and jury, McLaughlin showed up ready to defend himself.
A major problem came up.
The woman making the allegation never showed.
So much for justice being done by the mayor’s gun slinging cousin DiPierro.
While on the subject of DiPierro, I have heard he won’t be running anymore political campaigns, especially for the rep.
He apparently wants to spend more time selling insurance or whatever it is he does when he is not hanging signs, or ordering someone else to take them down.
In addition, he is just waiting for an opening to come about in the city clerk’s office and he will then slip into that position and his seat on the council will be a thing of the past.
City Clerk Sergio Cornelio is apparently up to his old tricks with his scheme to get himself appointed as the city clerk for life, I am told by someone who claims to know.
With the new council coming on board in January, with Gerly Adrien, Jimmy Le and Stephanie Martins coming aboard, Cornelio better get a real head start on this new effort and complete it before it dooms itself to failure with the new council.
Here’s one for everyone, kind of bonus ball bit of information.
Because it is expected that Adrien will likely run against the rep, with the rep likely losing because the numbers just aren’t there for him, at large councilor John Hanlon has come to the reps rescue by assuring him he will step aside and let the rep slip right into his seat.
David Ela, the mild mannered school committeeman who lost his seat in November, was the only incumbent running for re-election who failed to have printed by his name on the ballot “running for re-election” or “Incumbent.”
Did he know something we didn’t know?
Delivering the Leader Herald on Main Street last week I had the opportunity of handing Al Lattanzi the copies of the paper I drop there from week to week.
We had a nice talk – polite, discrete, mano y mano, so to speak.
When he first announced, I wrote several pieces that were incredibly straight about Al. They obviously had no effect on him as I soon heard after writing those pieces that he was telling friends and colleagues to throw out our papers and might have tossed out the Leader Herald whenever he had the chance more than a few times.
Then came the advertising in other publications but not in the Leader Herald because his friend the mayor wouldn’t allow him to do that.
That’s the rough equivalent of me telling everyone to shop at Home Depot rather than to shop at Al’s hardware store, something I was never inclined to do. I have never done such a thing. I am not like that. I don’t have friends who are like that. I don’t employ people who want to hurt others or to put them out of business.
It takes a special kind of jealousy and hatred to be the kind of mayor who warns a local newspaper publisher that he’s going to be put out of business in four weeks.
That’s exactly what he told me about 18 months ago.
It seems he’s a bit late with his scheduling of our demise.
As if that threat wasn’t enough, he tried to poison the well against the
Leader Herald by urging and sometimes threatening local businesspeople to keep their advertising out of the Leader Herald.
I get it. I understand but that’s really bad behavior – and the mayor knows something about bad behavior.
The discussion with Al on a Wednesday inside his hardware store was friendly.
He’s a decent enough guy… who relished tossing out the Leader Herald while at the same time assuring me “I am the most honest person you will ever meet.”
I like to think he’s an honest guy but I judge him by the company he keeps. In addition, I’ve never know an honest guy who does underhanded things to his perceived opponent.
Doesn’t matter now.
Al’s candidacy is like stale history tossed into the dustbin of stale history.
The mayor’s threat to put the Leader Herald out of business, well, he knows better now to make such empty threats.
I’ve been thinking about School Committeeman Frank Parker. He only sends letters to the editor to another newspaper.
What does he fear?
I’ve been thinking about Janice Gauthier, who has been ordered not to speak with me by the mayor.
Mainly though, I’ve been thinking about her passionate comments last week after School Chair Thomas Abruzzese was ready to gavel the meeting to its blessed end.
Instead, Mrs. Gauthier, who has done a yeoman’s job of guiding the public schools when she was called upon to do so, made some stunning remarks that stuck with me and everyone else who heard them.
Unlike the silent members of the school committee, I expressed myself about her comments lamenting how she had worked 49 years for the schools, had stepped up to the plate during a time of need, and was denied the courtesy of an interview to become the next superintendent of schools.
I know the embarrassment she was feeling.
I felt bad for her and the others.
I felt even worse that no one came to her side to defend her. That’s what’s sad.