Endorsements taking center stage in race for DA, attorney general
Wu, Warren, Markey rescind backing of Arroyo
WHAT’S THE VALUE of an endorsement?
That question is getting tested in races up and down the primary ballot as candidates jockey for advantage leading up the September 6 vote. But nowhere are the powers of persuasion through endorsements more consequential than in the Democratic primary for Suffolk County district attorney.
The contest has been rocked by a Boston Globe report that Boston City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo, who is running against sitting DA Kevin Hayden, was the subject of two separate allegations of sexual assault, when he was 18 and 19 years old. Arroyo not only denies the allegations, he says he was never even informed that he was under investigation, a claim that the Globe says is contradicted by police reports the paper has obtained.
When the news broke last week, former congressman Joe Kennedy III and City Council President Ed Flynn quickly rescinded their endorsements of Arroyo. If there was a firewall keeping his campaign from going up in flames, it has been the continued backing of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Mayor Michelle Wu, and Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley.
Wu said last week that the allegations were “troubling,” but she wanted to see how the “story evolves.” In the wake of the new Globe report, Wu, Warren, and Sen. Ed Markey pulled their endorsements of Arroyo on Wednesday morning.
Endorsements don’t matter a lot in high-profile match-ups of Democrats against Republicans, “where the battle lines are clear,” said Steve Koczela, president of the MassINC Polling Group. “But in low-information contests they may serve as a signal to voters who don’t have any other way to make up their mind.”
That may also be true in the Democratic primary for attorney general, which has become the marquee statewide contest now that the party’s choice for governor is clear. The AG’s race is now a one-on-one face-off between Andrea Campbell and Shannon Liss-Riordan following yesterday’s announcement by Quentin Palfrey that he’s dropping out of the race.
Palfrey is throwing his support behind Campbell, a move that led Liss-Riordan’s campaign to issue a harsh statement accusing him of playing “petty politics” to “curry favor with political elites.”
Palfrey may sway some voters toward Campbell; the blistering statement from Liss-Riordan’s camp suggests the move will carry some weight. But with a recent poll showing that 77 percent of likely Democratic primary voters had never heard of Palfrey, it’s not clear how much of a punch his endorsement will pack.
Newspaper endorsements can also make a difference in races where voters are looking for signals. But huge cuts at newspapers in recent years have seen many of them give up on endorsements with no one staffing editorial pages.
In the state’s second largest city, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette is no longer offering endorsements. Michael McDermott, who took the reins last month as the paper’s executive editor, said there is no opinion editor and he is doing double duty and handling op-ed submissions. The Boston Herald has made no endorsements in the primary. Editorial page editor Sandra Kent didn’t respond to a message asking about the paper’s policy on endorsements.
Jim Dao, a veteran New York Times journalist who took the helm in early July as the paper’s new editorial page editor, said that transition is part of the reason for endorsements not coming sooner, along with some delays in scheduling candidates for interviews. “We would have liked to have started the process a bit sooner to reach early voters,” he said in an email.
