If you need to perceive simply how screwed up the Massachusetts Republican Party is beneath GOP state chairman Jim “Jones” Lyons, think about election evening final month.
Geoff “DoorDash” Diehl, Lyons’ hapless candidate for governor, splurged on a “victory” social gathering after getting lower than 35% of the vote statewide.
According to his newest monetary report, the someday Uber driver’s marketing campaign rented a corridor on the Boston Harbor Hotel Nov. 8 for $28,065.60.
Think about that. The polls closed that night at 8 p.m. The race was known as – for Maura Healey – at 8:03.
So the GOP’s “victory party” lasted about 3 minutes. For greater than $28,000, that works out to about $9,350 a minute, or greater than $150 per second.
And now Jim “Jones” Lyons is working for an additional time period as social gathering chairman. During his stewardship, the GOP has but to win a single statewide or Congressional combat.
On Lyons’ watch this yr, an incumbent sheriff was defeated and the GOP couldn’t retain the workplaces of each sheriff and DA on Cape Cod, the place Republican incumbents have been retiring. Since Lyons gained the job in 2019 (after his personal failure to get re-elected as a state rep), the social gathering has additionally misplaced a few dozen seats within the Legislature.
Complete, utter failure, throughout the board. And but, Jim Jones Lyons may nonetheless be re-elected, as a result of his future might be determined by state committee members who’re even worse at electoral politics than the chief of their pathetic demise cult.
The downside is, the disappearance of the Republican social gathering impacts everybody who works for a residing right here. Consider mail-in voting, which killed Republicans throughout the board. Beyond submitting a frivolous swimsuit in opposition to one thing that the Legislature had enacted into regulation, the state GOP did nothing in regards to the new actuality.
The lecturers’ union, however, mobilized the hackerama to reap ballots. With DoorDash Diehl on the high of the ticket, the payroll patriots didn’t have to fret about something apart from Question 1. That was the so-called millionaires’ tax, an 80% enhance that may quickly fall on everybody who has an actual job.
Question 1 solely handed 52-48, and doubtless may have been defeated had the state GOP mounted even a semi-serious marketing campaign for… something. But beneath Jim Jones Lyons – nothing.
Here’s how massive a rating Question 1 might be for the hackerama, summed up in a post-election Wall Street Journal headline:
“For a measly outlay of $23 million, unions secured $1 billion in new annual education funding.”
That’s one billion a yr, yearly, endlessly. Instead of working onerous to cease this theft, Lyons was hiring a non-public eye to research a committee member who doesn’t help him. He’s additionally suing his personal state social gathering treasurer.
Pre-election, Lyons was obsessive about making ready a blizzard of subpoenas – to fellow Republicans. He was blanketing the State House with FOIA requests.
But Lyons’ Kool-Aid drinkers don’t care if he loses elections, as a result of none of them may get elected dogcatcher both.
Consider one among his most loyal stooges, Amanda Orlando. She managed Diehl’s unhappy marketing campaign. In a radio interview on WBSM final week, she blamed the catastrophe on DoorDash’s main opponent, millionaire businessman Chris Doughty.
“It’s kind of funny that anybody thought a man who had never run for anything in his whole life who had nothing but money and his own ego to run on would be a great candidate.”
Hmmm. Amanda makes Doughty sound like… Donald Trump.
But again in 2016 Jim Jones Lyons by no means appreciated Trump both. He was with Ted Cruz. Lyons’ finance chairman, Rick Greene, was a John Kasich fanboy. I child you not.
Greene, by the best way, lives in Pepperell. They’ve had a GOP state rep for many years, however the prior solon bought a hack job, so the seat was open.
The Lyons-Greene Kool Aid drinker misplaced the first, so Greene’s mother and father wrote a public letter saying they have been “unlikely” to vote for the GOP nominee, Andrew Shepherd. The old-timers stated they may write in a candidate as a result of “justifiable wins can take more than one election. Sometimes moral victories ought to happen in between.”
On election day, in Pepperell, greater than 60 folks took their recommendation and wrote in different candidates. Shepherd is in a recount, however proper now he’s 17 votes behind the Democrat.
They threw away a Republican seat. That’s an ethical victory to this crowd.
Amanda Orlando is the state committeewoman for a state Senate district in Essex County that used to have three GOP state reps. Two took hack jobs and Democrats gained each elections. Two extra seats gone.
A 3rd Republican within the district, Lenny Mirra, is at the moment in a recount, simply barely forward. When the recount began Monday, no one from the Republican state committee confirmed as much as help the incumbent.
Orlando’s counterpart is Richard Baker, age 63. He’s a loser for Congress (2008) and Governor’s Council twice (2016 and 2018).
It’s the identical m.o. for many of Lyons’ wrinkly robots on the state committee. Patricia Saint Aubin, 64, crushed for state auditor in 2014. Now she fawns over Lyons nearly as a lot as she dotes over her cat Lily, who she attire up for Christmas.
Paul Roukaitus, age 67, of Winthrop. This yr he was marketing campaign supervisor of one other of Lyons’ losers, Todd Taylor, in his marketing campaign for state rep in Chelsea. Taylor bought 28% of the vote.
Richard Berrena, age 62, of Holyoke. He couldn’t even get elected to the Holyoke Charter Commission in 2009. Now he’s petrified that if he sticks with Lyons, somebody with a clue may run in opposition to him.
You know, Berrena could also be proper. Think Nathan Bech, former West Springfield metropolis councilor now on lively army responsibility. Do you hear the footsteps, Richard?
Berrena’s feminine counterpart on the committee is Linda Vacon, one other electoral dynamo. Last yr she was re-elected to the Holyoke City Council – by 18 votes. On the state committee, her nickname is Landslide.
When she ran for state rep in 2012, Vacon bought 21% of the vote, just some greater than the Green-Rainbow candidate. She loves Jim Lyons, as a result of they’ve two issues in widespread. They’re each 68 years previous they usually couldn’t get elected to the Legislature.
The election for chairman is subsequent month, and naturally Jim needs to go to the RNC assembly first – it’s in sunny southern California, maybe the ultimate junket of his dismal political profession.
So many losses by so many losers, and but, none of them ever spent $28,000 at a “victory” social gathering the best way Diehl did.
But nonetheless, it was most likely a greater use of his marketing campaign funds than the $107,812.50 DoorDash squandered on Corey Lewandowski.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”