Debate and Switch

September 24, 2012

Both local dailies front-page debate stories today as campaign season shifts into high(er) gear.

Via the Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages:

 

 

 

The Globe piece is pretty straightforward:

First debate called critical for Mitt Romney

Higher stakes than for Obama

After months of sniping from a distance, President Obama and Mitt Romney are nearing the unsparing crucible of one-on-one debates that could alter the dynamics of the presidential campaign.

For Romney, particularly, the stakes are enormous.

After a month of missteps and missed opportunities — from his convention speech, to his reaction after the US ambassador’s death in Libya, to a video in which he described nearly half the country as government-dependent “victims” — Romney faces three debates in the national spotlight, beginning Oct. 3 in Denver, that could bolster or bury his chances.

“Unquestionably, he has to do well in the first debate,” said Rob Gray, a Republican strategist who was a senior adviser in Romney’s successful 2002 campaign for Massachusetts governor. “There’s more on the line for him, whereas Obama has proven before that he can handle it.”

The Herald, on the other hand, has three – count ’em, three – columnists on debate patrol. Start with Joe Battenfeld’s cover story:

A glimpse inside Mitt’s strategy

He’s not Mitt Romney, but he got to play one in debate practice. And he says the real Mitt needs to resurrect his personable performance from 10 years ago to beat President Obama in their upcoming face-to-face showdowns.

Jeffrey Robbins, a Boston attorney who played the role of Romney as Democrat Shannon O’Brien prepared for the debates in the 2002 Massachusetts governor’s race, divulged for the first time key details of the Democrats’ strategy to turn Romney into “Gordon Gekko” — a strategy that ultimately failed then.

Robbins predicts Obama’s debate plan will come right out of the playbook 10 years ago, when Democratic gubernatorial nominee O’Brien tried to reinforce Romney’s image as a greedy, out-of-touch businessman.

Bit of a stretch there, eh?

Next up is Holly Robichaud’s piece giving advice to Romney.

Like Brown, Mitt must pack a punch in his debate

Last week it was great to see an aggressive U.S. Sen. Scott Brown take on Lizzy Warren. After months of her endless whining commercials, Brown called her out on multiple issues — including her fake American Indian status, helping Travelers Insurance avoid paying poisoned asbestos workers and her whopping $350,000 salary for teaching one class at Harvard University.

Brown had the right combination of talking directly to voters and discrediting Fauxahontas. He showed how a candidate can remain likable, but still deliver a solid punch.

Our former Gov. Mitt Romney would do well to take a page out of this playbook. President Obama is not going to be forced out of the White House if Romney keeps playing defense. It is time to put points on the board.

Finally, Kimberly Atkins weighs in:

Wisdom of pols’ rules is debatable

WASHINGTON — The debate season is in full swing, and with it we are seeing the emergence of a nifty approach by some candidates as they prepare to face their rivals face-to-face: avoidance by agreement.

The true pioneer of this debate is U.S. Rep. John Tierney who, as the Herald reported, insisted sponsors of two of four scheduled debates with GOP challenger Richard Tisei focus only on certain topics and preclude the participants from asking questions of one another.

Of course, this conveniently will allow Tierney to avoid an issue both Tisei and national Republicans have focused on: his in-laws’ gambling ring and his wife’s federal tax-evasion conviction.

Atkins goes on to relate other debate-related kerfuffles before offering some free advice to candidates, such as “[Elizabeth Warren] could try to throw U.S. Sen. Scott Brown off  his well-rehearsed game by demanding that the candidates be barred from using the word ‘professor,’ thanking the moderator after each question or referring to a truck at any point.”

The hardreading staff would be all for that.

 

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The Herald Warrens a Look Today

September 18, 2012

Our feisty local tabloid wins the Massachusetts U.S. Senate bakeoff today, with the old  good news/bad news combo platter for Elizabeth Warren.

Bad first: John McCain gives Warren the tomahawk chop  in this piece:

John McCain: Elizabeth Warren’s indian claims ‘bizarre’

U.S. Sen. John McCain — who endorsed U.S. Sen. Scott Brown this weekend — poked fun at Elizabeth Warren’s claim to a Native American heritage in an interview yesterday, saying he found it both amusing and strange.

“I’m entertained. I just think it’s bizarre,” McCain said of Warren’s purported Cherokee and Delaware tribal roots. “I know lots and lots of Native Americans, they have a very huge presence in my state and I’ve yet to meet one of them who claims to be related to Elizabeth Warren.”

Well, that settles that, doesn’t it?

On the other hand,  this piece has to be music to Warren’s ears.

Former Boston bigs: Menino’s Elizabeth Warren endorsement coming soon

Mayor Thomas M. Menino has yet to throw his political might behind Democratic U.S. Senate hopeful Elizabeth Warren — despite the Harvard professor being on the brink of crucial televised debates — but City Hall observers predict an endorsement is imminent.

“I’m sure he’s going to endorse her,” said former Hub Mayor Ray Flynn, who has endorsed U.S. Sen. Scott Brown in the heated race. “I think he’s with her 100 percent. His people are with her. I think it’s just a question of the timing that is the most beneficial, politically, to her.”

Menino was unavailable for comment yesterday but his spokeswoman, Dot Joyce, said: “The mayor remains focused on the business of the city. He will make his political endorsements when he believes the time is right.”

Yeah, can’t wait for the Mayah of Denmahk to be – or not to be – involved in this campaign.

Meanwhile, crosstown at the Globe this editorial calls on Menino to just quit dithering. (It also plays the Hamlet card, but the hardworking staff swears to you we wrote the above before reading the Globe piece.)

Let’s see if Menino knows a hawk from a handsaw.

 

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Cherokees and Times-fil-A Edition

September 7, 2012

As the hardreading staff noted the other day, the Boston Herald reported that “Massachusetts Republicans looking to overshadow Elizabeth Warren’s turn in the national spotlight [at the Democratic National Convention] are releasing a video with Cherokees at a nearby reservation saying her heritage claims are ‘slapping Native Americans in the face.'”

The Boston Globe, on the other hand, was silent on the issue.

Now the Globe’s kissin’ cousin, the New York Times, has weighed in:

For Warren, Bad Blood over Ethnic Claims

Karen Geronimo, a member of the Mescalero Apache tribe in town for the Democratic convention, knows what she wants from Elizabeth Warren, the Senate candidate from Massachusetts: a blood sample.

“Someone needs to make her take a DNA test,” said Ms. Geronimo, whose husband, Harlyn Geronimo, is the great-grandson of the legendary warrior Geronimo.

The still-simmering controversy over Ms. Warren’s self-proclaimed American Indian heritage has chased her from the campaign trail in Massachusetts to the convention hall, resonating with a small but vocal constituency: American Indian Democrats.

But still no mention in the local broadsheet.

Hey, Globeniks: Isn’t it good to live in a three-daily town?

Even if this is a crap issue?

 

 

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Elizabeth Warrin’ Headlines Edition

September 6, 2012

If you picked “hammer” for your DNC drinking game last night, you were knee-walking ten minutes into Elizabeth Warren’s primetime speech, which got very different play in this AM’s local dailies.

Boston Herald, Page One (via The Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages):

Boston Globe, page A13:

Warren sticks to her populist theme

 

So one paper’s populism is another’s class warfare.

Works for the hardreading staff.

 

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Cherokees and Chick-fil-A Edition

September 5, 2012

From our Why the Boston Herald Is Essential desk

Exhibit A:

Cherokees use GOP video to target Warren claims

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Massachusetts Republicans looking to overshadow Elizabeth Warren’s turn in the national spotlight are releasing a video with Cherokees at a nearby reservation saying her heritage claims are “slapping Native Americans in the face.”

“That’s not right at all. She is lying to the American public by running for public office and claiming to be of a race that she is not. If she is claiming that she is Native American, prove it,” says John Grant, a resident of Cherokee, N.C., in a GOP video.

The nearly two-minute Web video was filmed in Cherokee long before the Herald interviewed American Indian delegates Monday who also expressed outrage about Warren’s claims to Indian heritage. The Harvard Law School professor dismissed the delegates’ request that she meet with them and discuss her background.

What’s so essential about this story? It’s not like no one else covered this story (see here).

It’s just that the Globe didn’t.

Exhibit B:

Mayor won’t bite on offer of Chick-fil-A sandwich

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino can’t decide whether to back Scott Brown or Elizabeth Warren, but he is sure about one thing: He will never endorse a Chick-fil-A sandwich, even if it’s in front of his nose.

Menino, who led the protest against the fast-food chain because of the CEO’s stance against gay marriage, is staying in a hotel building in Charlotte that includes a dreaded Chick-fil-A just downstairs from the hotel lobby.

So the Truth Squad thought that would be a good opportunity to make a peace offering to the mayor — a No. 1 combo meal sandwich on a whole-wheat bun.

Unsurprisingly, Menino not only “recoiled,” he also “actually made a face.”

Why is this story essential? Because the Globe doesn’t do stunt journalism.

 

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Tampa Your Enthusiasm Edition

August 29, 2012

It’s true that both local dailies are covering the Republican National Convention in Florida, but they’re hardly covering it the same way.

The Boston Globe: Dutiful.

The Boston Herald: Exuberant.

Start on Page One (via The Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages):

 

 

Words warm and combative? Hey, somebody passed their Headlines as a Second Language course.

But . . . compare and contrast the crosstown version in clear idiomatic English:

 

 

That’s more like it, eh?

As for resources devoted to convention coverage, the hardcounting staff  has the Globe with five reporters and two columnists (and Is He or Isn’t He Callum Borchers, who gets a Tampa dateline here but not here).

The Herald seems to have deployed two reporters and two columnists (and Is He or Isn’t He Peter Gelzinis, who isn’t but sounds like he is).

Beyond sheer numbers, though – and proportionally the Herald is probably neck-and-neck with the Globe – there’s a distinct enthusiasm gap between the two papers. The Herald, for example, is running this series:

Warren’s take: Wrong priorities from Brown’s party

Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren is commenting on the Republican National Convention all week. Here’s her latest installment.

The opening night of the Republican Convention showed that Scott Brown’s party has the wrong priorities for Massachusetts . . .

Blah blah blah.

Wait – the Herald hired Warren to write this series? The hardreading staff is investigating.

Meanwhile, the Herald also has a UMass Lowell student (Corey Lanier, come on down!) blogging from Tampa, and a whole bunch of reader comments punctuating their coverage.

So far, the Herald is winning this bakeoff – easily.

 

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Elizabeth Warren Affirmative Action Edition

August 19, 2012

The Boston Sunday Globe has a Page One feature on Senate hopeful Elizabeth Warren that a bookend to the Globe’s big takeout on Scott Brown two weeks ago. That one dealt with Brown’s “searing childhood” and “improbable rise.” Today’s piece is about Warren’s relentless rise in the academic world (with a headline Brown must love, since he never misses an opportunity to brand Warren an egghead):

For Professor Warren, a steep climb

Original scholarship, and singular ambition, drove her legal career

The piece is generally positive (as was the Brown piece), and seems to answer the question the Herald has been endlessly asking: Did Elizabeth Warren use her claim of Native American heritage to improve her professional prospects?

The answer, according to the Globe, is no.

Her unorthodox career trajectory has been scrutinized since she became a candidate for Senate, particularly after the revelation that for years she had listed herself as a Native American in a professional directory often used by law school recruiters.

Critics insinuated that she must have leveraged her self-professed heritage to advance her career in the 1980s and 1990s when law schools were under pressure to diversify. However, in two dozen interviews with the Globe, a wide range of professors and administrators who recruited or worked with Warren said her ethnic background played no role in her hiring.

That won’t end the Herald’s hammering away at Warren over this issue, largely because of this:

In a recent interview, Warren declined to authorize Harvard and Penn to release her personnel records from the private universities where she taught. Her opponent, Senator Scott Brown, has requested that she do so, to satisfy questions about whether race played any role in her hiring.

The records, she said, are not what defined her as an academic.

“The core of my career is my teaching and my writing,” she said, insisting she was hiding nothing in her records. “It’s all out there.”

Well, not exactly all.

Other fun facts from the piece:

• Silent on the race and gender wars that divided campuses in the 1980s and 1990s, she was never a liberal crusader.

She was not even a liberal.

She was a registered Republican as recently as 1996.

• [On the University of Pennsylvania’s controversial rejection of tenure for feminist professor Drucilla Cornell] Warren told the Globe that she did not work against Cornell. But she refused to say how she voted when the faculty had to decide whether to grant Cornell tenure.

• [On turning down a full-time position at Harvard in 1993] She told the Globe in 2009 that she found Harvard to be a “hostile environment” for women. But in a recent interview, Warren downplayed that concern, saying instead that she declined the job because her husband wasn’t offered one, too.

All in all, there’s plenty of material here for supporters and critics alike of Professor Elizabeth Warren.

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Let the Voter-Push Rumpus Continue! Edition

August 10, 2012

The dustup over the voter registration of welfare recipients is turning into a perpetual motion machine.

Start with this morning’s papers. The Boston Globe featured this on Page One:

Only Mass. sent out voter registrations after lawsuit

Massachusetts is the only state that has agreed to send mass mailings to register welfare recipients to vote, following a series of state lawsuits brought by the liberal group Demos, which is chaired by the daughter of Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren.

Republicans say the mass mailings indicate that Massachusetts went above and beyond what was necessary to turn out likely Democratic voters for the November election.

Other states have settled Demos’s lawsuits by agreeing to less costly steps, such as better training for welfare officials or upgraded computer systems.

But Demos says it pushed Massachusetts to mail the voter registration forms to thousands of welfare recipients because the lawsuit here was filed so close to the election that simply allowing recipients to register the next time they went to a public assistance office was not practical.

The Globe also editorialized about the issue:

Mass. is justified in mailing voting forms to aid recipients

Mailing voter registration forms to people on public assistance isn’t part of a partisan plot to help Democrat Elizabeth Warren beat Republican Senator Scott Brown: It’s part of an interim settlement over a lawsuit alleging that Massachusetts consistently failed to comply with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.

Through the mailings, Massachusetts is taking steps to do what the law requires it to do — encourage voter participation in that great American enterprise known as democracy, including through public-aid agencies. To vote, citizens first must register. Government should do all it can — and all that the law requires — to help achieve that goal.

Yeah, tell that to the Boston Herald, which once again had four – count ’em, four – bites at this apple. First up, a news report:

Welfare chief declares Elizabeth Warren ties ‘ridiculous’ 

State welfare commissioner Daniel Curley said yesterday he never communicated with Elizabeth Warren’s daughter and he rejected claims that the department’s taxpayer-funded drive to get welfare recipients registered to vote was politically motivated to help Warren.

“This gets to the ridiculous,” said Curley, who heads the Department of Transitional Assistance. “There has been no communication from DTA to any of those officials — or their daughters.”

This morning’s Herald also featured an editorial (“Just sign ’em all up”), a Jessica Heslam column (“Recipients decry voter push waste”), and a Michael Graham column :

Coincidentally, fix in

No justice in lawsuit to boost Warren

In America, the wide-eyed and innocent believe in unicorns and the Tooth Fairy.

In Massachusetts, they believe in “coincidence.”

For 10 years a Lowell woman had been getting her welfare benefits at the local office without, she claims, being asked to register to vote. She never bothered to do anything about it until now. What a “coincidence.”

Right – but isn’t that what the law- . . . never mind. Let’s just keep moving.

To the web, this afternoon, when this popped up on the Herald site:

Brown: Warren must reimburse taxpayers for welfare mailing

U.S. Sen. Scott Brown demanded challenger Elizabeth Warren cough up nearly $300,000 to reimburse taxpayers for a push undertaken by her daughter’s liberal think tank to register welfare recipients to vote.

”It’s been disturbing for a lot of people to learn that the state’s welfare department undertook an unprecedented voter registration drive at the behest of Elizabeth Warren’s daughter and the organization she represents,” wrote Brown in a statement. “It is clear that this was done to aid Elizabeth Warren’s Senate campaign. Professor Warren has more than $13 million dollars in her campaign account, and if she wants to mail every welfare recipient a voter registration form, she should do so at her own expense, not taxpayers’. She should immediately reimburse the state for the cost of this mailing and stop playing politics with the taxpayers’ money.”

The Globe posted much the same on its website.

This gambit is so ridiculous, it’s actually smart. And it ensures the perpetual motion machine won’t stop anytime soon.

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Herald Foursome Whacks Warren Edition

August 9, 2012

The Boston Herald has sunk its teeth into the EBT Voter Push story and is taking bigger bites every day. Yesterday the feisty local tabloid ran three pieces (to the Globe’s none in its print edition). Today the Herald has upped the ante to four.

The beauty of this story, of course, it that’s its a twofer for the Herald: They get to rough up the welfare layabouts while inflicting maximum collateral damage to Elizabeth Warren, the paper’s particular bête noire.

Today’s edition kicks off with Warren on the defensive:

Elizabeth Warren: Nothing fishy about my kid’s role in EBT campaign

Elizabeth Warren scoffed at U.S. Sen. Scott Brown’s charges that her daughter is leading a taxpayer-funded crusade to get welfare recipients out to vote for her mom, even as records show the Democrat scored thousands in campaign dough from the group’s bigwigs — including a former Boston Globe publisher.

“The organization that Amelia’s involved in was working on voter registration issues I believe before she ever joined,” Warren said. “And they were working in several different states, they’re working with other organizations and they were working with the commonwealth of Massachusetts before I ever became involved in the campaign.”

There’s also a backgrounder on Demos, the group organizing the campaign. And what would a pig pile be without the smooth stylings of Howie Carr?

It’s not enough that Granny Warren, the fake Indian, is raising more campaign cash from the Beautiful People and, yes, the machine, than any congressional candidate in the country. Now Brown has to contend with campaign mailings from the Department of Transitional Assistance, i.e., welfare, paid for by money extracted from the taxpayers — his voters.

Oh, yes – just for good measure, the paper tossed in an editorial:

A true voting scam

Ah, yes, we can hear the governor once again blaming the Herald for “making sure you’re angry” with yesterday’s front page story on how nearly $300,000 of your tax dollars will be spent to tell welfare recipients how to register to vote.

That the national voter registration effort is led by a left-leaning group whose board is chaired by Amelia Warren Tyagi, daughter of Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren is, well, just one of those funny political coincidences — no?

And etc.

Meanwhile, the crosstown rival Globe ran its story – an expanded version of what the paper posted yesterday afternoon on its website – front page above the fold. The broadshet also ran this chinstroker about  the Massachusetts Democratic Party’s “aggressive effort to expand upon and invigorate the grassroots organization that propelled Deval Patrick to two terms as governor after 16 consecutive years of GOP control over the Corner Office.”

We’ll see tomorrow who makes an aggressive effort to expand upon and invigorate the voter registration story. We’re laying plenty of eight-to-five it’s the Herald.

 

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Herald “Welfare Voter Push” Edition

August 8, 2012

The Boston Herald hit its favorite target – Elizabeth Warren – with a one-two punch this morning, starting with this piece:

Welfare voter push has GOP crying foul
Critics blast state’s Dems for ‘inside job’

The state has mailed out voter registration letters to nearly 500,000 welfare recipients, in a push sparked by a group led by former ACORN bigwigs that critics say is a naked bid to boost Democrats at the polls in November.

The letters, mailed last month by the state’s Department of Transitional Assistance, went out as Republican U.S. Sen. Scott Brown and Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren have been locked in a neck-and-neck race.

The welfare system’s get-out-the-vote push came in response to a suit brought by New England United for Justice (NEU4J), which is led by three former leaders of the controversial Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now. ACORN was disbanded in 2010 amid a voter fraud scandal.

Yow. Then there’s the follow-up:

Brown blasts welfare vote group chaired by Warren’s daughter

HYANNIS — An exasperated U.S. Sen. Scott Brown today said a taxpayer-funded push by a group chaired by rival Elizabeth Warren’s daughter to register welfare recipients is “outrageous.”

“It’s like another thing you shake your head about. Here we go, we have Professor Warren’s daughter leading the charge at taxpayer expense to get welfare recipients out,” said Brown, who added he will fight just as hard for the votes of those on welfare. “It’s not about getting people out to vote, it’s the fact that Professor Warren’s daughter is leading the charge at taxpayer expense, getting out the vote for her mom …I think it’s outrageous and when does it end?”

Yikes – that’s about as high as Brown’s dudgeon gets.

But wait . . . there’s more. The Herald couldn’t resist taking a whack at the group organizing the voter push, hitting the trifecta with a piece headlined, “Group fueling registration doesn’t fall far from ACORN.” (Or maybe they couldn’t resist the pun.)

Regardless, the Globe finally jumped in the pool this afternoon with a web posting:

Scott Brown criticizes efforts to register welfare recipients

US Senator Scott Brown today criticized the state’s welfare department for sending voting registration forms to 478,000 people on public assistance, saying the mass mailing was a ploy to boost the ranks of Democratic voters and benefit rival Elizabeth Warren’s campaign.

The Globe piece also featured this response from the Warren campaign:

“For Brown to claim this is some kind of plot against him is just bizarre,” said campaign manager Mindy Myers, adding that the attack on Warren’s daughter was “ridiculous.

“His entire attack is built on efforts in multiple states to enforce a law passed almost 20 years ago with bipartisan support. Even the Bush Justice Department filed suit to enforce this provision of that law,” said Myers.

And, yes, the Globe did credit the Herald for breaking the story, for those of you keeping score at home.

 

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