I know whom I would take, and the answer may surprise you:
"Rep. John Tierney bridles at another attack" by Michael Levenson | Globe Staff, June 30, 2012
Another brother-in-law of Representative John F. Tierney, this one a fugitive from justice living in Antigua, said Friday that the congressman was fully aware of the family’s illegal gambling operation, a charge Tierney strongly denied.
Robert Eremian’s assertion, in a telephone interview from the Caribbean island where he has been living since about 2002, came a day after his brother, Daniel, said outside a Massachusetts courthouse that Tierney “knew everything” about the offshore betting business.
“I will verify everything that my brother said, which will show John Tierney is lying,” Robert Eremian said.
That is what politicians do, especially when they are trying to protect their po$ition.
Tierney’s wife, Patrice, is the sister of the Eremian brothers, whom federal prosecutors allege ran a massive gambling ring from Antigua. Patrice Tierney was the first of the siblings to go to jail in the case last year, admitting “willful blindness” to the enterprise, but agreeing to plead guilty to tax fraud for her role in handling Robert Eremian’s bills and taxes in the United States.
On Thursday, Daniel Eremian was sentenced to three years in prison for his role in the gambling operation. Moments afterward, he called Tierney a “liar” who “knew everything.”
On Friday, Robert Eremian, who allegedly ran the gambling business from his home and has been charged with 442 counts of racketeering, illegal gambling, and money laundering, echoed another charge his brother had made: that Patrice Tierney pleaded guilty to save her husband’s position in Congress.
“He threw my sister under the bus for his political career,” Robert Eremian said in a brief interview. “He made her plead guilty because he was afraid of an Ethics Committee investigation, and he knew he couldn’t lie in front of the committee.”
But pressed about his assertion that the congressman was aware of illegal activity, he offered no proof. “I can’t do that, because I have to have the facts,” he said, adding that he has the necessary information, but needs time to assemble it. Eremian has not been handed over to US authorities because Antigua has no extradition treaty with the United States....
The gambling case has shaken the reelection campaign of Tierney, an eight-term Salem Democrat, who is facing a stiff challenge from Richard R. Tisei, a former Republican leader of the Massachusetts Senate. In one of a series of media interviews Tierney conducted Friday, he said he was flabbergasted when Daniel Eremian first suggested that he “knew everything” about the betting business.
“My initial reaction was just incredulous,” he said. “Where did that come from? And why is he saying something that’s so obviously wrong? From there, it just went to concern for my wife, who is obviously very troubled by what’s happening around her family.”
The Eremian brothers have a long criminal history, dating to the late 1970s, when they were arrested near Bar Harbor, Maine for building a deep water dock to receive a boat with hundreds of pounds of marijuana.
Prosecutors say Robert Eremian worked as a bookmaker in Boston for 11 years before moving to Antigua in 1996, choosing the island for its lack of gambling restrictions. In 1998, he was featured in a New York Times story about offshore betting businesses that were sprouting on the island, out of reach of US law.
“It feels great,” he told the newspaper. “I don’t have to worry about the police coming and breaking the door down.”
In 2000, after moving back to the United States, Robert Eremian was charged with gambling offenses and, two years later, was given probation. Authorities allowed him to return to Antigua to work as a software consultant for a betting business. But prosecutors say he then became the head of a vast gambling operation that employed 50 agents in the United States and laundered the money through bank accounts in the United States.
Two years ago, the Eremian brothers were indicted. That was the first time,Tierney said, that he learned the brothers might have been breaking the law.
“I never learned about it until we found out that this case was going to court,” he said Friday. “And at first, I’m not sure I believed it then. I was like, what are you kidding me? What are you talking about?”
Tierney said he made two visits — in 1999 and 2009 — to Robert Eremian’s home in Antigua, but was not aware it was, as prosecutors allege, the base of operations for the betting business.
Tierney said he dined with Robert Eremian on the patio and noticed a computer screen and perhaps a TV on the wall, but nothing suspicious.
“He was sent down there for work purposes, and that’s what he, ostensibly, was doing,” Tierney said. “He also had other businesses, real estate and heavy equipment. He was an entrepreneur.”
Tierney acknowledged he went to several Red Sox games with tickets provided by Robert Eremian, but scoffed at Daniel Eremian’s assertion on Thursday that he “sat in the boxes with bookies at Fenway Park.”
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Related: Tierney brother-in-law says congressman ‘knew everything’
Rep. John Tierney denies in-laws’ claims
Some backers skeptical about Rep. Tierney’s assertions
Tierney's Time to Leave
Yes it is.
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"Tisei picks up hope, steam in race vs. Tierney" by David Filipov | Globe Staff, July 03, 2012
READING — It was a good week to be Richard R. Tisei.
The Republican had been looking like a long shot in his bid to unseat US Representative John F. Tierney and break the Democrats’ hold on the Massachusetts congressional delegation.
But the Tierney family’s legal trouble, which boiled over last week when both of his brothers-in-law alleged that the congressman was fully aware of the illegal gambling operation that led to his wife’s conviction in 2010, have suddenly made the eight-term incumbent look vulnerable.
It’s the kind of opportunity that challengers wait for. But Tisei, 49, is an unlikely character to lead an uprising. On the North Shore campaign trail, he comes off as affable, yet toned down, his pressed shirts as neat as his slicked-back hair. He does not breathe fire. He does not speak in slogans.
Instead he seeks to win over voters with a promise that after 26 years in the Democrat-dominated Legislature, he knows how to reach across the aisle. He is an openly gay, pro-choice Republican backed by conservative party leaders in Washington. It is an unusual combination, but he says it makes him well equipped to break the partisan gridlock.
And he's my guy in this race. Surprised?
The possibility that the Republican could topple a Democrat and win a House seat in Massachusetts, which last had a Republican congressman in 1997, has made the race a priority for the GOP. The party is prepared to pour money into the campaign and even sent House Speaker John Boehner for a exclusive fund-raiser at the Taj Boston hotel last month. Washington oddsmakers have promised that this is a campaign to watch.
But for the moment, the race is less about who Tisei is and more about who he is not.
Joe Coughlin, a town custodian in Reading, typically votes for Democrats, he said. But even before the last week’s accusations about Tierney, Coughlin had grown disenchanted with the congressman and his insistance that he did not know about his wife’s family’s gambling operations.
“I can’t believe he didn’t know,” Coughlin said of Tierney. “Maybe he’s been in Washington too long.”
After chatting with Tisei near the hot dog stand at the Reading Friends and Family Day in mid-June, Coughlin came away with the impression that the Republican and co-owner of a real estate business “is a level-headed guy.”
“We need a lot of people like him down in Washington,” Coughlin said. “We need new faces.”
Tierney’s office, in an effort to fight off the allegations, announced Monday night that he would hold a press availability Tuesday afternoon to “answer any questions about recent false assertions made by his brothers-in-law.”
Tisei has lashed out at Tierney over the scandal, but in an interview Monday, he said he will not let Tierney’s troubles dominate his campaign.
“It’s not enough to say everything that’s wrong with him,” Tisei said. “I have to explain why I’ll be a good congressman.”
He knows his good fortune. But he also knows that he is a Republican in Massachusetts, fighting against an incumbent with party muscle at his back.
The Democratic Party has already reserved $3.6 million in ad time for its candidates in the Boston area this fall, presumably some of it to promote Tierney and attack Tisei.
And with good reason. The sixth congressional district is fertile ground for a Republican upset. Scott Brown took the area in the 2010 US Senate special election. So did Charles D. Baker when he ran unsuccessfully against Deval Patrick for governor later that year, when Tisei was his running mate.
See: Baker's Mate
With more than 50 percent registered independents, the district is rife with distaste for the increasingly hostile relationship between Democrats and Republicans in Congress.
The budget battle is particularly irksome.
“The thing that really bothered me is when they almost shut the government down last August,” David Butler, owner of the Salem Trolley, which gives tours of the Witch City, told Tisei. “If you’re a Republican who can work in a Democratic state you’re already head and shoulders above the rest.”
New England Republicans are fond of saying they can reach across the aisle; for two campaigns, it has been a staple of Scott Brown’s message. But Tisei reasons that the approach is particularly relevant for him.
The GOP is not likely to lose control of the House this November. As a member of what is likely to be the majority party, he said, he will give the Massachusetts delegation, which currently has no Republicans, more of a voice.
He gave an example: when the question of funding for Hanscom Air Force Base comes up, he said “I can be a very effective congressman by being in the room.”
“The speaker’s not going to take John Tierney’s call,” he said. “Having one person who has a good relationship with the people who are going to make the decisions that will affect everyone’s life would be a positive thing.”
Tierney has sought to use Tisei’s connection with Washington Republicans, namely the Young Guns group, which targets those candidates who offer the greatest chance of defeating Democratic incumbents, to paint his opponent as a member of the GOP’s conservative fringe.
“This is about Tea Party Republicans, so called Young Guns,” Tierney thundered to a crowd of supporters at a June fund-raising event. “They are ideologically extreme. My opponent will tell you he’s a moderate, but he’s not.”
Can you smell the desperation?
Tisei counters that his ability to talk to the Republican leadership will help him to move the party to more moderate positions on social issues that matter to Massachusetts voters, such as same-sex marriage.
“I think I can do more for marriage equality than anybody else can right now,” he said.
Related: Barney Frank marries longtime partner Jim Ready
Tisei inherited his ideas about bipartisanship from the politician he calls his mentor, John A. Volpe, the former Massachusetts governor and US secretary of transportation.
Inside Tisei’s Lynnfield campaign headquarters hangs an old copy of the front page of the Malden Evening News, proclaiming the 1960 Election Day victories of President John F. Kennedy, a Democrat, and two Republicans, US Senator Leverett Saltonstall, and Volpe.
“Mass. Voters Criss-Cross Party Lines,” a headline declares.
“That’s been my whole career,” Tisei said, as he showed off the newsprint. He then paraphrased the campaign slogan of Volpe, whom he describes as his mentor: “Vote the man, not the party.”
It’s the approach that helped Tisei stage an upset victory in 1984, when at 22, he became the youngest Republican to win an election to the Legislature. He went on to win another two terms as a state representative and 10 terms as a state senator, where he served as Senator minority leader for four years.
Tierney easily won reelection in 2010, but his Republican opponent, Bill Hudak, was a far-right candidate who got himself into trouble with behavior such as planting a sign comparing President Obama to Osama bin Laden.
See: Tierney's Time to Leave
Hudak say they gonna beat 'dem Dems?
This time around, Tierney has drawn on the strength of the incumbency to outraise Tisei, $795,000 to $455,000, by the end of March (figures for the period that ended June 30 are not yet public).
Tisei says that his campaign has closed the fund-raising gap significantly, but could not provide specifics. While he knows the importance of the ads that cash will buy, he boasts that anyone who meets him will simply like him better.
“There’s 350,000 voters in the district,” he said. “If I meet all of them, I’ll win.”
He's got my vote.
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Updates: Questions raised about Tierney’s disclosures
Congressional candidate Richard Tisei releases first television advertisement
