Excellent piece as usual from Dan Barry in Thursday’s New York Times.
(Dead-tree edition) headline:
Dumped by His Own No. 2, an Underdog Fights On
14k lede:
The rain beat down last week on a modest South Shore shopping center waiting to receive an underdog candidate for governor. It soaked two men trying to revive a dead car in the parking lot and caused the gray afternoon to sag like a stray plastic bag catching the runoff.
After a while, the requisite dark sport utility vehicle pulled up, and the candidate, in requisite white shirt, emerged to describe the deluge as “biblical.” He shook hands in the real estate office of a supporter who had gathered several employees in greeting, then moved on to his next stop, a bar, where he found himself competing with the televised baseball playoffs that, this year, do not include the Boston Red Sox.
Perhaps another candidate would see this dreary day as a sign that his campaign was as dead as that car; as dead as the Sox. Here he was, after all, grappling with plunging poll numbers and a fresh and stunning political betrayal that lacked only the eloquence, the togas and a knife.
Not Timothy Cahill. Whether guided by ego or committed to principle, he refuses to give up. The polls and pundits say: You’re done. But what he hears, he says, is: “You’re the guy.”
Dan Barry, however, is the guy who wrote this about a Boston reporter questioning Cahill at a press conference later that day:
[A] television reporter, declared by his news station to be “widely regarded as the most provocative political reporter in New England,” asked a provocative question wrapped in faux courtesy: “Is it possible you’re in denial, sir?”
“No,” Mr. Cahill answered, and looked away.
The hardworking staff might be wrong, but that television reporter sounds an awful lot like WBZ’s Jon Keller. (Full disclosure: Keller has interviewed the hardworking staff on occasion, but he’s never given us any money.)
Totally befuddled, we decided to ask Barry outright: What’s the deal here?
Our email:
Dear Mr. Barry,
I am a great admirer of your work. I also write the Campaign Outsider blog here in Boston.
And I have this question about your Thursday piece on Tim Cahill’s gubernatorial campaign: Was there a particular reason you omitted the name of the television reporter who asked Cahill, “Is it possible you’re in denial, sir?”
I’m guessing it’s Jon Keller of WBZ, but if you can shed any light on the situation, it would be much appreciated.
Sincerely,
John Carroll/CampaignOutsider.com
Not exactly an inquiry “lacking only the eloquence, the togas and a knife,” but not nothing either, right?
We’ll keep you posted on Dan Barry’s response.
Campaign Outsider 