Then he's a loser.
"Stephen Lynch: As he has been in the House, Lynch would be a sympathetic ear and supportive voice for organized labor, willing to promote their cause and push their issues on the Senate stage. He’d also focus energetically on protecting Massachusetts’ interests and on meeting the state’s nuts-and-bolts needs.
He would not, however, be a big-picture senator or a see-around-the-corner leader on national issues. Nor would he prove adept at the personal relationships that help the best senators succeed. In the House, Lynch has been a loner whose occasionally brusque manner has sometimes alienated even fellow Democrats. Absent a sudden midlife emotional-IQ growth spurt, there’s little reason to think he’d be different as a senator."
That's the Globe's kiss of death.
Related: Lynch Legging It to Primary Finish
He doesn't have the finishing kick?
"Lynch’s attacks on Markey slightly off target" by Joshua Miller | Globe Staff, April 26, 2013
A week after the Boston Marathon bombings, US Representative Stephen F. Lynch was fired up.
In two separate Democratic Senate primary debates, he repeatedly accused US Representative Edward J. Markey of voting against the creation of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, the FBI-led interagency group that took command in investigating the Marathon bombings
“I don’t know how you’re going to spin this,’’ Lynch said. “I voted yes. You voted no. It’s just, that’s the fact.”
But Lynch was mistaken. He had his terrorism task forces tangled.
Boston’s Joint Terrorism Task Force was created in 1997, an FBI spokeswoman said. That was four years before Lynch was sworn into office. And it was not crafted by Congress, said Tom Powers, a former FBI agent who helped create it.
“I don’t recall any congressional mandate or anything from Congress,” said Powers, who was a supervisory special agent in the FBI’s Boston office in 1997. “It was an FBI initiative.”
Federal authorities later established a National Joint Terrorism Task Force, but that was not created by congressional legislation, either.
On Monday, Lynch’s campaign attempted to bolster his argument by pointing to a July 2002 vote in which the two candidates parted ways. Lynch voted yes and Markey voted no for a piece of legislation that, when it became law, gave the secretary of homeland security the authority, though not the mandate, to create a Joint Interagency Homeland Security Task Force.
But that Task Force is not Boston’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, the group that led the hunt for the Marathon bombers.
Indeed, a Joint Interagency Homeland Security Task Force was never created in Boston, according to a Department of Homeland Security official who declined to be named, citing departmental policy.
Conor Yunits, a Lynch spokesman, said: “Bottom line: There was a vote to create a task force. Lynch voted yes. Markey voted no.”
Where was Ed? Where was Ed? Where was Ed?
The tussle over the vote was not the only Homeland Security issue the Democratic candidates have sparred over in recent days.
Lynch has repeatedly hit Markey in debates for voting against a port security bill. On that vote, Markey was one of two representatives who voted no, an unusual occurrence.
But Markey defends his vote.
“That bill did not screen for nuclear weapons in the Port of Boston,” Markey said.
One issue that was not significantly addressed during the debates was a bill that reauthorized broader procedures by which intelligence is collected from foreign targets overseas.
Markey voted against it, noting in a statement at the time his concern about “the extent to which the government conducts surveillance over its own citizens.”
Ed just got a bump.
Lynch voted for it, in line with the position of President Obama, who later signed the bill into law.
Yunits said Lynch believed that letting the legislation expire would have been a step backward in the fight against terrorism....
Aaaaaaaaah!
On Homeland Security, there are also areas of agreement. All five candidates said last Friday’s lockdown was the right call. And all five said they thought the death penalty should be an available punishment for those found guilty of terrorism....
And they are ALL OPEN to MORE $URVEILLANCE CAMERAS!
--more--"
Wait a minute. Telephone just rang:
"PAC drops phone calls for Lynch that seized on tragedy; Campaign says it had no role in ad" by Stephanie Ebbert | Globe Staff, April 25, 2013
A political action committee that issued automated campaign calls to boost Democratic US Senate candidate Stephen F. Lynch said Thursday that it would halt the advertising, after Lynch disavowed the message that seized on the tragedy at the Boston Marathon.
“All of us share the shock and sorrow of the recent events in Boston,” said the automated calls, recorded on answering machines Wednesday.
“But as Americans, we’re not going to let the perpetrators of this tragedy or anyone else stop our democracy from moving forward.”
The message goes on to state: “Wouldn’t it be great to have a real working person representing you in the US Senate? Not just another millionaire. Someone who truly understands the day-to day problems facing regular working families.”
“Someone like Steve Lynch, the highly skilled and well educated ironworker who put himself through law school at night. In Congress, Steve Lynch has fought for Massachusetts working families not just when it was convenient or easy, but every day. That’s what you’d expect from an ironworker.”
Lynch, a US representative from South Boston, was an ironworker and leader of the ironworkers’ union before becoming a lawyer and entering politics in the 1990s.
The recording says it was paid for by the “99 Percent PAC,” a political action committee that uses the slogan of the Occupy Wall Street movement to suggest it is speaking for average Americans who are not millionaires.
Another controlled-opposition using the name and banner of Occupy. It wouldn't have made the paper otherwise.
However, the treasurer of the group that paid for the calls is also treasurer of the ironworkers union that endorsed Lynch, the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers Union, AFL-CIO.
Treasurer Edward McHugh said his 99 Percent PAC was formed just last month. Documents filed with the Federal Elections Commission include contributions from two local ironworkers locals.
Lynch spokesman Scott Ferson said the campaign knew nothing about the calls and pointed out that campaigns are forbidden from coordinating advertising with independent political action committees.
“We disavow it, want it to stop, wish it hadn’t happened,” Ferson said. “We know that momentum is moving our way and we do not need ‘help’ in stalling the momentum.”
The Lynch campaign has cited internal polling from last weekend to suggest that Lynch is gaining support and closing in on the lead of US Representative Edward J. Markey, his Democratic opponent in Tuesday’s primary.
We can ll sense that. This is state is alive and abuzz in the wake of 9/11, I mean, the Boston Marathon Bombings.
The recorded message apparenty backfired with some Democratic voters. One person posted on the liberal blog, Blue Mass Group, that the wording and timing of the call “lost him my vote.”
That's weird; he just gained mine.
McHugh said his group meant no offense and that ironworkers identify with first responders, having worked in the aftermath of terrorist attacks in Oklahoma City and in New York on Sept. 11, 2001.
Ride that f***er, Steve. Flog that f***er for all its worth. It's only four more days.
Where WAS Ed?
“There was no intention of upsetting everybody or trying to shine a light on anything in an unkind way,” he said. “That was never, ever the intention.”
Yeah, just don't mind the dead bodies being waved around in the back.
Told that some voters felt uncomfortable with the language, McHugh responded, “I guess as an ironworker we get mad about issues like this. We don’t get squirmy or squeamish, we run at them.”
Just the kind of guy we need in the Senate!
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Related:
"Ed Markey: What voters would get with the Democratic front-runner is an effective liberal lawmaker who knows the legislative process and has a demonstrated ability to get important things done. He’s patient, determined, and dogged on the liberal, environmental, and green energy causes he has made his specialty.
Just in time for the Senate to go Republican. Have you seen how many Democratic seats are up, and how many Democrats are not running again?
What they won’t get is a particularly independent thinker or a senator willing to speak tough truths to Democratic constituencies. On issues like the deficit and entitlement reform, the habitually cautious Markey would be unlikely to join one of the Senate’s groups (or gangs) in trying to broker a bipartisan compromise. He’d more likely be part of a bloc of liberal legislators holding down his party’s left flank and opposing even reasonable changes. His colleagues would generally like him and respect his work ethic, but they’d also view him as a little goofy — and more than a little garrulous."
Have fun in the Senate, Ed.
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"Lynch hoping bombing will not deter primary voters" Globe Staff, April 27, 2013
US Representative Stephen F. Lynch, whose primary victory on Sept. 11, 2001, secured his seat in Congress, said on Friday that he worries whether the patriotic surge that exploded voter turnout that day will echo next Tuesday, when voters in both parties will choose their nominees.
Lynch, speaking with the Globe during a commuter rail ride to Norwood for campaign stops, recalled how voters were trickling to the polls early in the afternoon of the terrorist attacks, as he vied in a competitive Democratic primary to succeed the late congressman Joe Moakley.
But a press conference featuring Republican Acting Governor Jane Swift and Democratic Attorney General Thomas Reilly urging voters in the district to go to the polls, Lynch said, helped spike turnout to more than twice what analysts had predicted.
“I don’t know if that rally cry will be out there this time,” Lynch said. “I’m not sure that’s how people will respond.”
Nevertheless, asked for turnout and outcome predictions, Lynch forecast 23 percent turnout and, for himself, a 5-point victory. Both predictions exceed those held privately by both Lynch supporters and by Democrats unaffiliated with either campaign.
Lynch said his campaign had detected unexpectedly strong support in the state’s midsize cities, such as New Bedford, Fall River, Everett, and Lawrence.
His primary rival, US Representative Edward J. Markey, declined to give a projection for either the number of voters who will participate or the race’s outcome.
Like Lynch, Markey expressed hope that voters next Tuesday would respond to the Boston Marathon bombings by hitting the polls.
Markey, in a telephone interview on Friday, said, “I’m working very hard to get the highest possible vote out. And I’m hoping it’s going to be a very high turnout.”
Lynch and Markey are competing to face the winner of the Republican primary. Investor and former Navy SEAL Gabriel E. Gomez, former US Attorney Michael J. Sullivan, and state Representative Daniel P. Winslow are the GOP candidates.
Also see: Markey’s camp scrambling to sort out endorsements
