Let’s hope than Andrea Campbell can have higher luck than Andrea Doria.
Andrea Campbell is the state’s new Democrat lawyer normal, overwhelmingly elected following a smooth-sailing marketing campaign.
The Andrea Doria is the well-known Italian luxurious liner that, after {smooth} crusing from Genoa, ended up on the backside of New York Harbor after colliding with one other ship again in 1956.
Both are firsts. Campbell is the primary lady—and lady of coloration—to be elected lawyer normal in Massachusetts.
Doria was the primary Italian luxurious liner sunk with out getting hit by a World War II torpedo.
But no one will probably be firing any torpedoes at Andrea Campbell, at the very least for some time.
Her issues will come from inside, beginning when she assumes workplace in January. She is taking up from fellow Democrat progressive Attorney General Maura Healey, who’s the brand new incoming governor.
Campbell, a former member of the Boston City Council and a failed mayoral candidate, would be the first lawyer normal with hardly any courtroom expertise or authorized accomplishments price mentioning.
Campbell does have a compelling private narrative by which she overcame private household hardship to graduate from Princeton and get a regulation diploma from the UCLA School of Law.
She labored for a non-profit offering authorized recommendation in Roxbury and served as a deputy authorized counsel to Gov. Deval Patrick. She was elected to the town council in 2015, turned president, then ran for mayor coming in third to Michelle Wu.
Now with restricted authorized expertise, she would be the state’s chief regulation officer, or high regulation enforcement officer. She has up to now proposed defunding of the police and opposed certified immunity for cops. Let’s see how that works out.
Her marketing campaign hardly talked about cops or regulation enforcement and as a substitute centered on all of the lefts speaking factors, like accountability, duty, transparency, local weather change, social change, racism and social injustice.
What is fascinating is that Campbell will develop into the primary lawyer normal in years who has no investigative or prosecutorial expertise, together with little courtroom expertise in addition.
Unlike the previous 4 attorneys normal, Campbell assumes the state’s’ high authorized workplace with out having served an apprenticeship as both an assistant district lawyer or as an assistant lawyer normal, or each.
These are positions the place younger attorneys be taught their investigative and courtroom prosecutorial abilities earlier than shifting on to larger positions each out and in of state authorities.
It can be useful for aspiring lawyer/politicians for title recognition in addition to expertise to work within the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office since it’s the largest county within the state.
For occasion, Maura Healey started her public profession as an assistant district lawyer within the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office earlier than she was employed as an assistant lawyer normal by then-Democrat Attorney General Martha Coakley in 2007. Eight years later Healey was elected lawyer normal.
Coakley herself was the district lawyer for Middlesex County for 2 phrases earlier than she was elected lawyer normal in 2006.
Both former Democrat Attorneys General Tom Riley, 1999-2007 and Scott Harshbarger, 1991 to1999, additionally served as district attorneys for Middlesex County earlier than they had been elected lawyer normal.
The level is that the previous 4 attorneys normal, all Democrats, had been skilled prosecutors and/or directors who had expertise on the district lawyer degree or within the lawyer normal’s workplace earlier than they had been elected lawyer normal. Campbell has none of that have.
But she does have Healey to lean on. Healey early on dubbed Campbell as her successor and campaigned for her. Now Campbell owes Healey.
Still, all that authorized and courtroom expertise will not be essential to achieve elective politics anyway.
Of the state’s previous 4 attorneys normal—all of whom ran for governor—Healey is the one one to get the highest job. The gubernatorial candidacies of Coakley, Riley and Harshbarger all sank just like the Andrea Doria.
Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.
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Source: www.bostonherald.com”