Sunday Globe Special: Cahill Still Has Bad Karma

Looting and lying seem to have that effect, yeah.

"Timothy Cahill’s defense undercut by record; Lottery sales did not dip before he ran ads" by Frank Phillips  |  Globe Staff, April 08, 2012

Former state treasurer Timothy P. Cahill’s primary defense against charges that he illegally used state funds to bolster his candidacy for governor rests on his contention that he launched a $1.5 million Lottery ad campaign only because a blitz of Republican attacks had damaged the agency’s sales, a vital source of funding for cities and towns.

But Cahill never relied on such a belief during his 2010 campaign, according to a review of his statements and interviews from that period. To the contrary, he repeatedly stressed that the GOP attack ads — a $2 million onslaught paid for by the Republican Governors Association that spring — had no effect and that Lottery sales had remained strong....

Cahill boasted that Lottery sales were robust and generating revenues above the previous year. And indeed they were. Lottery sales figures during that period show no serious decline or major volatility in revenues. In July 2010, when Cahill decided to fund the promotional ads, the agency saw an 18.5 percent spike in revenues from the previous July.

The claim that the Republican ads had a negative impact became central to his defense only when his lawyers became involved after the election and he faced a criminal investigation.

Cahill declined to comment on the shift, but his lawyer, E. Peter Parker, cited the GOP defense when he responded Tuesday to the indictment charging that Cahill’s campaign aides orchestrated the Lottery ads with the candidate’s approval and direct involvement....

As it became clear that Cahill could face serious criminal charges over the ad campaign, his defense shifted, focusing specifically on the negative revenue impact of the Republican attacks.

Parker said Thursday that he is not familiar with all the public comments Cahill made during the campaign, but he expressed confidence that he can prove that the discussions at the Lottery about the promotional ads — known as permission ads — focused on the impact of the Republican Governors Association attacks.

‘‘There is an abundance of contemporaneous evidence from multiple sources that permission ads ran in response to the RGA attack ads and that it made business sense for the Lottery to run the ads,’’ Parker said. ‘‘That evidence will be aired in court and at the appropriate time and not in the newspapers.’’

Internal campaign e-mails that emerged in October 2010 as part of a civil court case involving Cahill showed....  

Related: Cahill's Karma 

Why the VAGUENESS, Globe?

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Also see: In ironic twist, Timothy Cahill could lose pension