BY DAN
KENNEDY
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Thursday, June 19, 2003
Updating the scorecard.
Check out this
letter to the Globe
from state Democratic Party chairman Phil Johnston. Johnston takes
issue with a June 16 op-ed piece by Kennedy School lecturer Mickey
Edwards, a former Republican congressman and former Herald
columnist. (Edwards's column is no longer freely available
online.)
Edwards, making fun of the recent
Democratic state convention for adopting an ideological "scorecard"
for elected officials, wrote:
That's where Phil Johnston
and the Democrats come in. Johnston, the state's Democratic Party
chairman, presided a week ago over a state convention at which
approximately 1,000 party activists voted to produce a "scorecard"
rating members of the Legislature on their fealty to the state
party platform.
Johnston:
On several occasions I
have stated my opposition to the "legislative scorecard" adopted
by delegates at the June 7 convention.
And here's what Johnston told
Globe columnist Scot Lehigh on June 11: "It is a rather
bizarre idea, one that will be very difficult, if not impossible, to
implement. And I don't think it is helpful to Democratic candidates."
Advantage: Phil. Edwards uses
implication rather than direct assertion, but the tenor of his column
suggests that Johnston was all but demanding that the delegates
support the scorecard idea.
Ah, but then Johnston gets carried
away, writing:
A secondary point also
requires correction: There were 3,000 delegates at the convention,
not 1,000, as Edwards reported.
But that's not even remotely what
Edwards said. Here's what Raphael Lewis reported in the Globe
on June 10:
At Saturday's convention,
Johnston allowed the report card vote to take place, even though
fewer than half of the 2,265 delegates who attended the convention
at Lowell's Paul E. Tsongas Arena remained. The reason, Johnston
said, was that it did not mention any one lawmaker by name.
Now, I can't explain the
discrepancy between Johnston's figure of 3000 delegates and Lewis's
2,265. Johnston may have been including alternates. But if, as Lewis
reported, "fewer than half of the 2,265 delegates" were on hand for
the scorecard vote, then Edwards had it almost exactly right when he
asserted that "approximately 1,000 party activists voted to produce a
'scorecard' rating."
Almost, I say, because nearly
every single delegate still present would have had to vote "aye"
for Edwards's statement to be wholly accurate.
Can't anyone get this
straight?
posted at 8:54 AM |
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MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
