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Do they play Britney Spears on the PA at Bill Galvin's office?

Oops, they did it again. The Globe reports it's found more examples of workers at the Secretary of State's office doing election work for the longtime prince of darkness secretary of state during working hours. At least one works in the elections department, so you'd think he might be familiar with the rules governing such things.

The news comes as Galvin faces one of those pesky primary challenges, this time from Boston City Councilor Josh Zakim.

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Comments

in Galvin already. I haven’t seen any polling. Anyone know how young Josh is doing? I see him all over social media at a shitload more events than Galvin.

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All that out of state money oozing into Zakim's campaign coffers sure buys ample AstroTurf. Josh is going to be a loyal little puffy puppet to his paymasters.

Galvin may be a self serving Prince of Darkness. But he represents his constituency. Can't say Josh will do the same.

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80 year olds who still think that anything an elected official does is aok so long as he doesn't get caught?

Let me guess: you think Nicky Mavroules was framed and you never got over the unfairness!

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what kind of statement is that, substitute any other class of people and you would be heading the outcry charge, didnt 82 % of Boston vote for Hillary ?

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I just did a search here on Zakim's campaign contributions.

Guess What: FEW ARE FROM OUT OF STATE

Most of those from out of state appear to be small contributions from family or friends (e.g. Noah Zakim of Zakim and Zakim in NYC), or from people who are in the area but list their address as out of state (judging from their employer of record).. Nothing you wouldn't expect from shaking down the alumni at your old school.

So ... If you are going to play the "ZOMG he's got out of state money blah blah" card ... PROVE IT..

And, also, look at how much Galvin has pouring in by comparison ... similar percentage, but a lot more PACs from Texas and SC ...

http://www.ocpf.us/Reports/SearchItems

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You don't understand how bundling works. The money is funneled to state level organizations which then write another check to obfuscate the real donors with layers of filings. When you see single names or organizations giving $500-1000 multiple times in a short period of time it's really coming from a donor which doesn't want to be directly identified.

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Prove it. You've piqued my interested, now show your work, because apparently you know something the rest of us don't.

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Most Zakim contributions are small. And then there is ActBlue.

Galvin is getting a lot of PAC money from out of state - repeated large contributions from Texas and South Carolina. He's also getting a lot of union PAC money that Zakim is not.

Sunshine is a great disinfectant.

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said anon (not verified).

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Now go click that link on contributions. Lots of sunshine in there. If you sort by state, there's two pages of texas PAC money going to Galvin. There's a bunch of small contributions from singular donors coming out of NY for Zakim.

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On the OCPF website, Galvin's gotten $4,000 from 9 contributors from Texas. Zakim's gotten over $41,000 from 135 of New York donors.

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If you don't sort by year, you get stuff going back to the early 2000s.

So he's gotten repeated donations from some PACs and donors out of state.

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I know how bundling works and if you think Zakim is bought and sold already, you've clearly haven't met the kid or asked him that same question to his face, have you? And I say that as someone well known here for a political cynicism that most find annoying.

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I have asked Josh during coffee hours and he never answered my question. He is really thin skinned and doesn't seem to handle uncomfortable questions or criticism very well.

I wish Josh had to debate other candidates when first running for the City Council because of this. Ross before him was a lot better at professionally accepting criticism and creatively answering questions with reasonable non-answers if they weren't something he was open to sharing information about. It never seemed to me that Josh really wanted the council seat as anything but a stepping stone to a state level office.

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I also know how to sort spreadsheets to pick it off.

I also gave you a link to work with - a link where you can look at both Galvin and Zakim's contributions for yourself, sorted as you please.

You still aren't showing us the money here.

Quick sorts by state and quick sorts by individual show that Galvin is the one with his moneys in a bunch, not Zakim. Zakim has ActBlue and a couple of relatives and friends hitting up others for smaller money. Galvin is a regular PAC man.

You are free to use the data provided to demonstrate otherwise. But, hey, it is much easier to play this "oh you silly naive citizen!" game you want to play than it is to PROVE IT.

Put up or shut up.

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He isn't commenting during business hours.

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Zakim is twit. Totally useless as a city councilor. Only cares about higher office. His only stated reason that people should vote for him? "The other guy is old and has been there too long."

In our neighborhood Zakim is the one who's been here too long.

From day two in office, he's been here too long.

For gods' sake, please don't vote him into statewide office. Not with the Russians messing with our elections. Please don't.

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I agree he has been too busy with "national" issues and anything which gets publicity while ignoring nuts and bolts city issues.

Josh has been completely MIA from the Fenway Park concerts debacle and run of the mil quality of life issues.

We need officials that care about doing their job and not auditioning for other ones.

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He aspires for higher office! Maybe someday they'll move you up to manning the Fry-O-Lator™. See what I mean about upward mobility? Tell it to Ayanna Pressley, who now faces an almost angry Walsh who is clearly being told to be upset at her for daring to want to move into the big House.

As far as the Russians, tell that to ole dial up Galvin himself.

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Does Galvin's wife still work for the Globe?

Talk about awkward...

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I'd dread going to work in a place where they fired most of my co-workers and focused most of the paper on animal stories and poorly written re-writes of day old UHub stories.

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Then is local politics the dinner theater of acting?

Like, this years performance of “Sock it to ‘em “ is sponsored by the local telecom co., or ArLex oil, or the racist developer neighbor as the “Producer,” or his lovely-named foundation listed in the back of the program?

Like, the cape cod summer-stock company is supported by a successful wealthy alumni from out west because it couldn’t succeed in the current fractured entertainment climate with only a few locals attending shows and it costs so much just to mount a production nowadays?

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Say what you will about Galvin, but at least Massachusetts is free of the voter suppression shenanigans common in red states. I think that's no small thing. I'm not sure that Zakim is making a strong enough case to replace him but I'm all for challengers to keep the incumbents honest.

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Yes, it is true we don't do some of the horrible things you see in southern (and some northern) states.

But you could also ask why Massachusetts trails many states (including some in the South) in such things as early voting and election-day registration. And you might want to look up how difficult it was to get ballots in Chinatown printed in Chinese. We're Massachusetts and we should be doing better.

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Why would anyone that knew enough English to read and pass the citizenship exam or grew up attending US public schools need ballots in a foreign language?

Someone please explain that to me.

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And, also, and I realize this is a hard concept for some people, but English is NOT the official language of the United States,

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If they are US citizens or grew up in the US educational system, how is English not their "native" language?

Ballots aren't War & Peace length novels. Just lists of names or a short question for a ballot initiative. Why would that be a difficult thing to read for someone that passed a citizenship exam or graduated public school? Why should taxpayers be paying extra money to print ballots only useful for a minority of people which can already read an English ballot? Could I get a ballot in Elvish or Klingon if I demanded that those languages were of greater comfort to me? I don't get it.

Other than Braille (for obvious reasons!) it makes no sense to me why ballots should be in any other language.

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It's possible to pass a test in English and not be comfortable in it.

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That you?

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A person who would flunk the citizenship test, and yet you vote and speak English.

Amazing. Your ignorance is amazing.

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Are you really blaming a state official for the failures of the Boston Election Department to come up with Chinese Language ballots? Who told Boston they needed the Chinese ballots, anyway?

As for early voting and same day registration, Galvin certainly can be faulted for not pushing these things, but at the end of the day it's not like he was preventing the General Court from passing laws on these issues.

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The city wanted to provide Chinese ballots. Galvin opposed the city. He ultimately lost.

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And kind of surprised at the upvotes. My confusion came from the part where Boston was forced by a different level of government to do it. That much I remembered.

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I'll take another look at Zakim.

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Adam if you think that Josh they can miss the person to improve things you are sorely mistaken. Before you take such an audacious position it would behoove to take an informal but thorough survey of those who have suffered under Zakim's inept leadership in representing our district. He is worse than useless, he is destructive in his ineptitude.

Let's just take the issue of affordable housing. All the new building that's going on in the Fenway paying money toward affordable housing. Zakim is allowing all of this money to be put into pools which are then put into other neighborhoods for buildings elsewhere,, while people who have lived and worked in the Fenway for decades are being displaced through no fault of their own.

That's just one issue. But you will find a complete lack of leadership on all of the other issues as well. On any issue that I can think of he has been useless, or worse. Having a famous dad isn't enough. You need to have some competencies to be worthy of higher office.

So whether you like Galvin or not, please inform yourself thoroughly about Josh Zakim before you promote his candidacy in what is supposed to be an objective media environment.

Thank you.

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Here's hoping that current Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healy does a better job prosecuting Massachusetts Secretary of State Bill Galvin's apparent campaign law violations and concurrent misuse of public resources than former Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley did prosecuting similar misdeeds by former Massachusetts State Treasurer Tim Cahill.

That and Santa finally bringing me the Ferrari I have long had on the top of my annual Christmas wish list.

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Healey isn't doing squat to Galvin because he's agreed to keep records she wants kept away from FOI requests under lock and key. Bill's Prince of Darkness nickname is because he keeps records from coming to light for people that want to keep it that way.

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On a related note, I don't know if you read the print edition of the Globe, but on the front page of the Metro section, albeit below the fold, there was an article about a candidate for Boston City Council who had his aides submitting signatures during regular business hours while fending off a challenger last fall. The councilor's current campaign say's that the employees used personal leave to do it, but of course they have no timesheets to back this up. All I can say is thank God that councilor isn't running against Galvin. Oh, wait. Nevermind.

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