A Tale of Three Stories
Rumors and gossip often lead nowhere, but when political opponents start saying the same things maybe we should listen. That is the case with the recall petitioners lead by Attorney Louis Farrah, the City Clerk, and former Dan Rivera supporter James Patrick O’Donoghue. The tales, heard apart, don’t make much sense, but when combined suggest a story of election trickery and political intrigue worthy of a suspense novel. Intelligent Lawrence voters should ask just how much of these stories are true, and demand answers. Here are the stories as told by their tellers:
We all know that the Mayor and City Clerk do not get along. It is common knowledge that Rivera wants to fire the clerk over job performance, but never moved to do so because he did not have the council votes. Maybe this is the background for the following accusations, or, perhaps, they are true. The City Clerk argued months ago that the Mayor fired former bilingual coordinator Rafael Tejeda because he was a Lantigua supporter. Election worker Richard Reyes was asked to take the job, but refused. The mayor, supposedly, scolded him and told him that he thought he could be on his “team.” Shortly afterward, election worker Danny Taveras resigned. The Mayor hired two election workers of his personal choosing without involving the City Council. One might infer that Frandy Matos and Sonia Garcia were playing on the Mayor’s “team”.
The Clerk complained to his union that he was being pressured by the Mayor. The Mayor called him daily during the recall. The Mayor pressured him not to issue recall petitions during the election season. The Mayor pressured him to have the recall signatures reviewed immediately, and pressured him to issue the recall petitions before the Christmas holidays when collecting signatures would be difficult.
The election workers were accused by petitioners of certifying signatures too quickly, but not too quickly to find that election worker Sonia Garcia’s husband had signed the recall twice. She claimed the signatures were forgeries. Perhaps she is correct! As you will see later, although many petitioners are claimed to have signed twice, this is the only instance where the two signatures were documented. If the signatures were forged, we can assume that the petitioners conducted the forgery. Or can we? Former mayoral candidate James Patrick O’Donoghue’s tale may cause you to wonder if it weren’t the Mayor’s supporters who made the forgery.
We may never know whether those signatures were forged, but we do know that Sonia Garcia suddenly resigned her job when the petitioners started to investigate the certification process. Two stories are told about her resignation, no one knows which, if either, is true. In one story, she resigned because her husband had, in fact, signed the recall, and Mayor Rivera wanted her out! In the other, she resigned because she was pressured to forge signatures, not certify legitimate signatures, and feared that she was now a party to election fraud, a criminal act. Is either of these stories true? They could easily be dismissed except for the tale of James Patrick O’Donoghue which I will detail later.
Next comes the tale of the recall petitioners as told by Danielito Guzman. The Petitioners certainly have no reason to share good stories about the Mayor. Guzman’s group reviewed the results of the certification. The recall petitioners objected to the Board of Registrars’ failure to certify hundreds of names. They claim that at least one hundred and fifty names match the voter registration forms identically, yet were not certified. They acknowledge that certification can result in errors, but missing 150 exact matches seems more intentional than accidental. Even if the errors were accidental, if they made 150 errors of that one type, how many other errors were made? They also claim that signatures rejected for appearing twice on the petitions, only appear once, and that more names were rejected on the later petitions than on the initial ones. There is no document that shows where the two versions of the same signature appear. The petitioners claim that this statistical aberration is not normal and reflects an intent to not certify enough signatures to trigger a recall election.
Perhaps these objections could be easily ignored as the simple hard feelings of the losing side, except there seem to be complaints by others that corroborate these claims.
James Patrick O’Donoghue was one of five mayoral candidates who allied themselves to support the candidacy of Danny Rivera for mayor. He was rewarded for his support with an appointment to the Lawrence Redevelopment Authority. Last December he spoke against the mayor, he claims, when the mayor posted petitioners names on Facebook. Danny’s opponents noticed that just a few hours after the Board released its results Danny not only published a media release on the failed recall, but also had a searchable database up and running in the internet. (Many say that he could not have done this so fast, unless the recall results had been leaked to him by an election department insider.)
Further, O’Donoghue provides details of a meeting on November 18, 2015 when Rivera campaign workers conspired to sign forged names to the recall petition so that the entire process could be thrown out for fraud. O’Donoghue’s tale should be favorable to the Mayor, shouldn’t it? Well, yes, except that Danny Rivera is now removing him from the LRA. Is O’Donoghue’s removal from the LRA revenge for O’Donoghue speaking out, or is O’Donoghue’s story, now coming to light, revenge for the Mayor’s efforts to remove him?
O’Donoghue’s claims of conspiracy to forge, the petitioners claims of non-certified matching signatures, the Clerk’s claims of political pressure and influence on the elections workers, the sudden resignation of the election worker whose husband’s signature appears on the petitions, and the mayor’s quick access to certification names, and results and quick demand to search for forgeries all suggest that there may be more truth than fiction in these tales.
Those of us who fled dictatorships and rigged elections in our native countries for the free elections of the United States deserve more than what this recall gives us. We need answers, and they must be under oath. If the answers confirm the integrity of our process, then we are blessed. If they reveal fraud, then the perpetrators should be revealed and held accountable. One thing that I know for sure, we deserve better than the lingering doubts towards the integrity of our votes!
O’Donoghue’s case
James P. O’Donoghue’s case was heard by a judge at the Superior Court of Newburyport on Thursday, February 4th. The judge would not readily act to dismiss the case as the City requested. The judge is allowing him the opportunity to respond to the Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss and the accompanying Memorandum in Opposition to his request for injunctive relief.
The City asked if they could swear in the new appointee to which the judge answered, “I would not do that just yet!” He further told the attorney representing the City that there was no need to hurry to do that because this is a Redevelopment Authority and this can wait.
Mayor’s speech
Please take the time to read Mayor Dan Rivera’s State of the City Address on page 2. You might agree or not with some of the things he said that evening; I found a series of inaccuracies that I believe I should point out. Mayor Rivera said that the two recalls failed; the first one is being fought in the courts system – a long way from failing. The second one was not continued in view of the findings with the first one. Never got a chance to fail.
Mayor Rivera also credits his administration with the successes in the school system when the city government has nothing to do with it. And the portion about crime… I never believe the figures issued by the police department or the city because there are too many crimes that go unreported or misclassified. I recommend you read page 7 about Lawrence’s crime rate according to www.neighborhoodscout.com
SEIU rejects contract
SEIU Supervisors rejected Rivera’s insulting contract offer 18 no, and 4 yes. Goes to show that threads, coercion and duress coupled with simple disrespect really are not a good way to get employees to go the extra mile.
Another symbol of arrogance
Abel Vargas, during work hours brought his car for service, at Commonwealth Honda. Then he went out for a test drive and put a deposit on a new car.
This picture was taken on Friday, February 5th at 1:24 p.m. I called him at his office number to confirm he was there and told him that this picture had been taken and sent to me. He had his office telephone number forwarded to his cell phone. His response was that he works long hours and has time off coming.
Probably he is correct but this arrogance is typical of this administration. They are not concerned about keeping appearances.
