There’s a lot of risk for the mayor with Fred Capone breathing down his back.
For his part, Capone is making a good run, the honest run, the decent man’s run against a misfit who has some how tied up the city to do his bidding and to keep mouths shut during his 14-year mayoralty.
The mayor has a noose around the city’s neck. It is tied especially taught around the necks of all those standing in line to climb the steps to the Carlo gallows, keeping their mouths shut about his depravity to save their jobs, lest the trap door should swing open and the condemned speed through it on their way to ruin at the end of a rope.
The Carlo DeMaria house of cards for city employees and all others who are perceived to be in his way provides for swift punishment for all those who do not toe the DeMaria line exactly, day to day, all the time.
This includes businessmen and women, all political opponents, leaders of local organizations, and with the mayor’s recent appointment to the School Committee, teachers and administrators will be fearing for their jobs should they step out of line.
The mayor’s control of city hall’s social, political, and economic apparatus precludes debates of any kind about policy, decisions made, and underhanded deals going down.
The mayor’s outrageous salary, which includes the illegal $40,000 a year longevity payment, brings applause and quiet from the city council.
No one but Capone and Councilors at Large Mike Marchese and Gerly Adrien stands in the way of the mayor’s Draconian rule.
Many claim this is the way it has always been in Everett. Many more are saying to one another that the 14 year DeMaria program of deceit, apparent outright theft, and pillaging of the city treasury and the business commuinty needs to end.
The house of cards needs to fall.
The threats of retribution for decent folks like the Cornelios, who have had the audacity to stand up against the mayor’s greed and intemperance, is a painfully transparent example of the lengths to which the mayor goes to punish those who he has fleeced.
The mayor took $96,000 from the city clerk – the city clerk’s money – and threatened to ruin him if he complained.
He now wants to get rid of the city clerk to make his point. He is going further.
The mayor wants to destroy Margaret Cornelio’s school committee run.
He will do whatever he can to destroy the Cornelios.
The Cornelios are not alone.
The story is told recently of an elderly man in a wheelchair holding a Capone sign in one of the city’s squares during a visibility effort with many other sign holders.
Seeing the man in the wheelchair holding the Capone sign, the mayor said to a sign holder standing nearby: “You’d think with two children working for the school department he wouldn’t be so dumb.”
Capone and DeMaria are as different as night and day. Capone is about integrity, honesty, and transparency.
The mayor is about threatening the elderly confined to a wheelchair.
Voters need to make a choice between these two.
Voters need to cast ballots for change or accept the status quo. This is what hangs in the balance as we approach November 2.