Episode 224: DA to DA

8/11/2022 -- On this episode of The Horse Race, Steve and Jenn start the show off with updates of the ongoing MBTA woes. Then Lisa tunes in from the beach to give us a rundown of the latest election season updates.

Later, Evan Allen of the Boston Globe, joins the pod to walk us through her recent investigative reporting surrounding controversy at the Suffolk County DA's office. With an election coming up on Sept. 6, we discuss what this could mean for the race.

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Full show transcript:

Jennifer Smith: [00:00:27] Today on The Horse Race, we're less than a month from the state primaries and walking through a roundup of notable upcoming elections. Then we're looking at a recent controversy in the Suffolk district attorney's race. It's Thursday, August 11. [00:00:39][11.8]

Steve Koczela: [00:00:49] Welcome back to The Horse Race, your weekly look at politics, policy and elections in Massachusetts. I'm Steve Koczela here this week with Jenn Smith. Lisa is on vacation, but because she is super dedicated to us here at The Horse Race and to our millions of listeners all across America, she will be joining us later on for an election's roundup. But for now, there's big local news. And that, of course, is it's 74 degrees outside. [00:01:11][22.2]

Jennifer Smith: [00:01:12] Steve, I'm so happy. Steve. Steve, I mean, I don't know if you have been experiencing the absolutely bonkers heat related power shortages. The entire neighborhood of Dorchester lost power about, you know, two or three weeks ago at this point when this heat emergency started, a shocking number of neighborhoods lost it just on Monday. I would like to say, you know, condolences to everyone who is trying to tune in for The Bachelorette and suddenly lost power in Charlestown. I assume that is almost our entire listenership. But did they hit you all the way out there in Melrose? [00:01:46][34.4]

Steve Koczela: [00:01:47] And I should say that that, of course, is going to bring us to our 20 minute Bachelorette recap. [00:01:51][3.8]

Jennifer Smith: [00:01:53] Everyone jump ship, now run. [00:01:54][1.1]

Steve Koczela: [00:01:55] No, it did. It did. We lost power once. It was actually during the storm. We haven't actually lost power just because so many people are trying to run their air conditioners, though I could easily imagine that happening just given, you know, kind of how much power is used. But thank goodness it's now over. Something that's not over, something that is just beginning, gathering steam, gathering momentum. Even unlike the MBTA, is shutdowns of the MBTA. What is new this week, Jenn? [00:02:21][25.9]

Jennifer Smith: [00:02:22] Well, I mean, this week there's a few things we already knew that the Orange Line was going to be shut down for allegedly a month. There's been, you know, a decent amount of back and forth about, you know, are we actually going to get service returned by Labor Day? Maybe, maybe not. Are there going to be consistent shuttle routes involved? Are you going to have to pay for some of those? Are you going to have to pay for none of them? There is going to be, apparently, according to Mayor Michelle Wu, a policy of those who are using the commuter rail to substitute in for the Orange Line a policy of being able to, like, show your Charlie card and basically just take that for free. But the reason that there's a lot of concern right now about the Orange Line's timing is there is also going to be a halt for now on the Green Line extension. So anyone that lives in the very specific area of Somerville that will only let you access it by the Orange Line and Green Line, you are about to be in a whole lot of pain. So, yeah, it's basically kind of this continued rollout of big long term pauses to these pretty major train lines instead of pulling kind of an ad hoc repair by repair approach to it. It's basically saying we're going to shut them down for this big period of time. There's a lot of very understandable skepticism about whether or not the MBTA can keep to its promised schedule. And then on top of all of that, we're still kind of waiting for what we expect to be a pretty brutal report coming from the federal side about safety failures at the T. And then our state legislature is going to have a set of oversight hearings about the handling of the MBTA following the release of that federal report. So the chaos is going to continue here. And meanwhile, an off duty bus in Jamaica Plain was on fire again. So love that for us. [00:04:14][112.0]

Steve Koczela: [00:04:15] Yeah, love that journey for us. And there's been a lot of questions about just how all the institutions and individuals that rely on these train lines are actually going to function for the month or so that they may be shut down, depending on how the schedule actually works out. You know, some of them are literally right backs the MBTA and the users of those institutions or the members or the students in the case, for instance, of the Bunker Hill Community College, that's literally right next to a station that's called Community College. How are they going to do it? You know, how are students going to get there and back? What's it going to do to traffic, etc.? So lots to come on that for sure. But that brings us to the question which we've asked thousands of times over our decades producing the horse race and have yet to provide a satisfactory answer for which is, Jenn, what are we doing here today? [00:05:00][45.1]

Jennifer Smith: [00:05:02] I mean, man, it is primary countdown season. So we are doing an election round up as they approach September six. You may have felt the flutter in the air as mail in ballots go scurrying around the Commonwealth. Early voting in person is going to start in two weeks, but obviously given the mail in ballots, the timeline is way earlier than that. So we're going to run through those. And then later, Evan Allen of The Boston Globe is going to join me to talk about her recent investigative reporting that stirred up a lot of controversy at the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office right in time for said primary. So shall we ride? [00:05:36][34.0]

Steve Koczela: [00:05:37] Let's go. With primary elections now less than a month away, the pressure is on. Contests for statewide office are seeing new ads, seemingly daily debates and lots and lots of news. Here to walk us through all of it, we're joined by our very own Lisa Kashinsky live from an undisclosed beach location. Lisa, glad you could join us. [00:06:04][27.1]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:06:05] Hey, I needed a break from the sun. What can I say? [00:06:07][2.0]

Steve Koczela: [00:06:07] A break from the sun. Wow. [00:06:09][1.0]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:06:09] Look, I get hot, I'm fair skinned. Okay. [00:06:11][2.1]

Steve Koczela: [00:06:14] So let's start with the race for governor. It's been a busy couple of weeks for the Republicans in terms of news media coverage specifically. Lisa, you had a big article in Politico about how some of the races in New England are shaping up. [00:06:25][11.3]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:06:26] Definitely. So basically what we're seeing here is that the battle for control of the Republican Party and the future direction of the party has reached, of all places, our lovely deep blue Massachusetts. So actually tonight well, I guess last night when you're listening to this, the governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, is campaigning for Geoff Diehl. And that follows New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu coming last week for Chris Doughty. So basically what we're seeing here is this kind of battle that's been playing out across the country has now come to Massachusetts, where you have this proxy war between the Trump wing of the Republican Party and the more, in this case, moderate New England Republicans who are fighting to keep their brand alive. And so this is the local version of, as I said, what's been playing out across the country. But you have Chris Sununu here saying that Geoff Diehl is too extreme, too ultra conservative. He, of course, won't make this about Trump, won't admit that this has anything to do with Trump, who he has kind of a complicated relationship with. But he thinks that Chris Doherty is the one who is closer to his brand of politicking that still bipartisan, working across the aisle type of thing. And then on the other side, you have the Trump ally and Kristi Noem, who's coming for Geoff Diehl tonight. They were connected through Corey Lewandowski, who was a former Trump campaign manager, advises both Kristi Noem and Geoff Diehl. So this is what you're seeing. This is kind of the nationalization of a local governor primary. [00:08:01][94.5]

Jennifer Smith: [00:08:02] And exactly to that point, Lisa, maybe the most obvious question and yet the most confusing one, which is why exactly are they descending on Massachusetts, where a shockingly small percentage of voters identify as Republicans are registered as Republicans, and Trump is very unpopular statewide. So if anyone's going to be having these kinds of national proxy wars, does the Massachusetts governor's race seem like a logical place to be throwing a stake in the ground? [00:08:31][28.4]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:08:32] Well, this is a little bit less about Massachusetts and a little bit more about our neighbor to the north of New Hampshire. Yes, of course, Chris Sununu already gets exposure in his home state, but you need money if you're going to run for, say, president, maybe in 2024 or beyond. And all of the money comes from deep pocketed Massachusetts. So by appearing here and especially for other people who are coming in, like Kristi Noem, you show up in Massachusetts, you're getting free television, you know, free media in New Hampshire because of how the media market stretches up over the border. You're getting access to the you know, again, those deep pockets, those big money donors that you're going to need. And it's the same reason that you've seen so many officials from the Biden administration. While the president didn't do fund raising when he was here, you saw the vice president, you saw Jill Biden. You know, they both did fundraisers down on the islands while they were here. So you're seeing that kind of free media, that access to money that play in New Hampshire without the scrutiny of actually setting foot in the Granite State. [00:09:35][63.7]

Steve Koczela: [00:09:36] Yeah, Massachusetts gets in a lot of ways the worst of both worlds in the sense that we go really late in the primary process. So we don't actually get much of a say in terms of our voters. But candidates do show up here, they run ads here. We're just swamped with ads trying to reach that key, sort of crowded southern part of New Hampshire that, you know, where most of the votes are actually located. So it's you know, it's never been particularly good, I guess, in terms of the impact on Massachusetts when it comes to candidates and others coming to visit and campaign here. I mean, I think it's also worth mentioning that it's symbolic in a lot of ways. You know, the polls show Healey leading both candidates by a huge margin. And it's not really even just Trumpism, it's not really even just, you know, that it's Geoff Diehl. And Diehl was, of course, Trump's campaign co-chair. You know, views between Democrats and Republicans have soured a lot in the last six years, even since Trump first kind of came on the scene and was first elected. Pew did a really interesting poll, for instance, where they found the percent of Democrats who say certain things about Republicans and vice versa, such as Republicans say Democrats are closed minded. Democrats say Republicans are dishonest. These percentages have gone up 20 and 30 points just in six years. So it's not just I guess the point is it's not just about Geoff Diehl was Trump's co-chair and people don't like Trump, there's this whole other set of things that that's going on that I think is setting Healey far ahead. But moving on then down the ballot, Attorney General, there's also been some developments in the last week or so. Lisa, catch us up there. [00:11:04][88.1]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:11:06] Yeah. So in this Democratic primary for attorney general, you now have Shannon Liss-Riordon up with her third television ad. And we are just under now a month until the primary. And she's on at number three. She went up in early July, I think, around the fourth. So this is really early and this is a huge investment in television from her. You know, to put it into context, Andrea Campbell has run one ad. She's been up for maybe a week or two at this point. And Quentin Palfrey isn't expected to be up on the air until another couple of weeks from now I think. She has also loaned her campaign now another $2.5 million. So she's now loaned herself $3 million in her campaign. That's the same amount that she loaned her failed U.S. Senate bid against Ed Markey that she pulled the plug on early in 2020. And she could very well do more. You know, she said that she could spend up to 12 million in the primary. You know, her campaign said that was in a filing with the state public financing program. Her campaign said that that, you know, she's unlikely to hit that, but it's clear that she's willing to spend money. And if she's pouring it into ad still and she's up with her third already, she must be seeing something that shows that she's moving the needle. We haven't had public polling in that race in a while, but she's got to have something that's showing her that this is the right play. [00:12:25][79.6]

Steve Koczela: [00:12:26] And this is, of course, the time when you often do see the needle move. You know, this is the time when a lot of primary voters are are just tuning in. We feel like in the political media sometimes that these primaries have been going on for months, over a year. But this you know, this kind of last few weeks, the month ahead, this is when a lot of voters that aren't super voters that aren't, you know, tuned in and following every twist and turn of the campaign, do kind of tune in. And as we've talked about many times before on the podcast, there's a lot of room for movement in primaries. And there's multiple candidates often that are kind of within ideological range of a given voter. So while in a general you might see things move a few points in primaries, you can see things move ten, 20, 30 points even in the last few weeks. It makes polling dicey. It makes an exciting way to make a living when you can be so kind of off what ends up happening, even though when you do a poll a few weeks out, that's often actually what the race does look like, even if it turns out way different, you know, by the time the primary day actually rolls around. [00:13:26][59.3]

Jennifer Smith: [00:13:27] And definitely, you know, one of the other things to just keep an eye on is every candidate in every race, but especially in this one, is kind of really leaning into what they think their advantage areas are. You know, I've seen a number of these Shannon ads on television. I don't know if she's targeting The Bachelor watching audience, but I have seen tons of them on Monday nights. So she's really leaning into kind of her her sort of champion of the the labor movement, working class people pushing that through. On the ad front, she has money to burn there if she needs to. I'm still watching as well to see whether or not there's any significant impact to the fact that Attorney General Maura Healey, who is, of course, the presumed Democratic gubernatorial candidate here, endorsed Andrea Campbell in the race. And then you have Quinton Palfrey, who is kind of rolling in with a bunch of the kind of progressive Massachusetts wind in his sails. So they're marshaling their forces behind him. But so, Lisa, how are you looking at these different dynamics as the candidates really kind of shore up their advantage areas heading into the primary? [00:14:34][67.2]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:14:35] Well, the Maura Healey endorsement was really interesting because it kind of seemed to come as a surprise like she said it, I think, on GBH and the press releases weren't quite there to support it. I think it caught a lot of us. I don't remember why I wasn't able to listen that day, but I maybe there was another debate or something going on. But yeah, no. It took a lot of us by surprise and was kind of a weird rollout to it, but now the two of them are actively campaigning together. I think they did a a canvasing kickoff or something like that last weekend, and if that keeps up, that's definitely something that Andrea Campbell will be able to use to her advantage. I mean, again, as we've kind of hinted at before, these are kind of low attention, low information primaries where voters are now just starting to tune in. And if you, you know, are looking for the differences between the candidates, yes, there are real policy differences in the attorney general's race that kind of get buried. But these endorsements could actually matter, you know, in these types of down ballot races. And to have Maura Healey out kind of anointing her successor. Sir. That could be a big deal for Andrea. [00:15:44][69.3]

Jennifer Smith: [00:15:45] Meanwhile, pivoting over into a whole different kind of of exciting, spicy? I don't know really how we're trying to describe this one right now campaign is secretary of state secretary of the commonwealth between Tanisha Sullivan and Bill Galvin. It's as seems to be the the run for Bill Galvin. Primary debates getting kind of contentious during debate season. The zingers are flying again. Why are we talking about zingers once again in the secretary of state's debate? [00:16:16][30.8]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:16:17] Well, it's because we have Tunisia Sullivan the NAACP Boston branch president, who is not just trying to out progressive Bill Galvin to win this Democratic primary, but she's also trying to turn what's like kind of the state's elections administration position into more than just, you know, about elections. She's bringing abortion rights. She's bringing civil rights into this. And, you know, Galvin is Galvin. He's used to these primary challengers and he knows how to you know, knows how to play with them, knows how to tangle with them pretty much. So you have two people who are kind of unafraid to go at each other. There's accusations of misstatements and allegations that people don't understand what they're talking about and yeah it got pretty nasty and pretty heated on the viewer debate earlier this week. But, yeah, it's really interesting because Tanisha Sullivan has been trying to make abortion an issue in this race ever since the Dobbs decision came down. And now she is, you saw in this debate, you know, she really expanded it beyond just kind of going back through Bill Galvin's old record, you know, as as a lawmaker and just past statements he's made on it. And now really trying to say that the secretary of state's office can do more than just, you know, hand out ballots and stuff. And she's challenging him over the work he's put in, in communities of color and other things to kind of boost access to voting. And yeah, it's just it's getting really heated over over those charges. [00:17:49][92.0]

Steve Koczela: [00:17:50] Yeah. The challenge for anybody running against Bill Galvin, of course, is he has done this a whole bunch of times and he's got that built in advantage of, you know, mailing his name and face out to every voter in Massachusetts over and over and over again. So his name ID is higher than you might expect for an office that very few people have much invested in. So that certainly is is an interesting race and one one to keep an eye on. Next week, we'll run through a couple other races, starting with the state auditor. But for now, Lisa Kashinksky, our very own thank you so much for calling in from the beach and running us through all of this. [00:18:23][32.3]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:18:24] Pleasure to take my sun break with you all. [00:18:25][1.9]

Jennifer Smith: [00:18:33] It is a controversial week for the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office. Interim District Attorney Kevin Hayden, who was appointed to replace U.S. Attorney Rachel Rollins, is facing criticism after a Globe investigation about his office's handling of a cover up involving transit police officers. This news comes only a few weeks away from the primary where Hayden is facing city councilor Ricardo Arroyo. Joining us to walk through it all is Evan Allen of The Boston Globe. Thank you for being here, Evan. [00:19:00][26.7]

Evan Allen: [00:19:01] Thank you for having me. [00:19:02][0.8]

Jennifer Smith: [00:19:02] So there are a ton of twists and turns here, timeline wise, general detail wise. So let's just frame out the timeline first. You and your colleague Andrew Ryan were looking into the handling of a case that started in 2021. So when and why did you start investigating? [00:19:17][14.8]

Evan Allen: [00:19:19] Well, we got a tip that we should try to contact the victim in a case that started, as you said, in April 2021. [00:19:30][10.6]

Jennifer Smith: [00:19:31] So walk us through what reportedly happened between Jason, Leonor and transit police officer Jacob Green. [00:19:37][6.0]

Evan Allen: [00:19:38] Sure. So in April of 2021, Transit Police Officer Green is accused of pulling his gun on Jason Milner, who is a young Black man during a traffic dispute. And then Green is accused of covering it up with the help of at least one other transit police officer during the traffic dispute itself Green was off duty and not visibly a police officer, nor did he identify himself as a police officer. But after he allegedly pulled his gun, Jason Leonor called 911. And before the 911 dispatcher could send police officers to transit cars. Transit police cars pulled up behind Jason, Lenore, and pulled them over. And then the police officer who Jason says pulled the gun, walked over to Jason's car, now in full uniform. And issued him a ticket for a marked lanes violation. And this was captured on the 911 call. And you can hear Jason Leonor, saying "it was you!" Why did you pull a gun on me? So Officer Green, who is white, was accused of covering this up, but that actually is not the controversy at hand here. What is the controversy is how the case was handled or not handled by prosecutors. So in 2021, the district attorney was Rachel Relic's. And the leadership over at the Transit Police Department found the incident between Green and Leonor so disturbing that they brought it to Rollins's office and Rollins opened an investigation. A transit police supervisor applied for and received a search warrant. And transit police say the case was heading, it looked to them like towards prosecution. [00:21:30][112.1]

Jennifer Smith: [00:21:31] But then that took a turn because Rachel Rollins became the new U.S. attorney for the state of Massachusetts and Governor Baker appointed Kevin Hayden to take her position. So the office changed hands. And did anything happen to the case itself when that happened? [00:21:45][14.0]

Evan Allen: [00:21:47] Well, that is the controversy. Transit police say that the case appeared to just stall out. They say that, you know, there was a grand jury scheduled and that Hayden's office scuttled. Hayden's office insists they never closed this case. But there is an affidavit, a sworn affidavit that one of the police officer's attorneys filed. So Jacob Green's attorney is a man by the name of Robert Griffin, and he filed a sworn affidavit in court in late spring of this year. And the affidavit was in support of a motion to get his client's cell phone back. The search warrant had allowed police to take Jacob Green's cell phone, and he wanted the cell phone back. And so in this affidavit that he filed in support of this motion, he said that Kevin Hayden's top deputy, an attorney, a prosecutor by the name of Kevin Mullen, had told him, Griffin, that the case was not going to be prosecuted and that this conversation had happened in April of this year. And so this is a sworn affidavit. That's a big deal. It's not. This is this is Robert Griffin, an attorney, swearing to the court that this is true. What is contained in his affidavit is true. And he says he was told in no uncertain terms that the case was not moving to prosecution. The case was finished. And so this is sort of where the controversy hinges, right? Because Hayden's office says, well, they've said several different things. Hayden's office has told a couple of different stories. First, they said this is not true. Kevin Mullen never said this. I called Robert Griffin back and I said, Hey, Hayden's office is saying you lied in your affidavit. And Griffin said, absolutely not. And he remembered exactly what Mullen had said to him. Mullen had told him that he had no appetite to prosecute this case. So we went back to the district attorney's office and said, well, Griffin is standing by his affidavit, and here's what he said, Mullen said. So Hayden's office then replied that Griffin was correctly recounting the words that Mullen spoke but had misunderstood their meaning, and said that Mullen was talking about a jurisdictional issue as opposed to a desire to prosecute more generally, or what would happen to this case specifically. Griffin called that bullshit. Hayden's office further elaborated on their original position and said that Griffin had simply misunderstood that they sort of backed away from the claim that Griffin was filing an untrue affidavit and said instead Griffin misunderstood, and he filed this affidavit based on this misunderstanding. Griffin is extremely adamant that he did not misunderstand anything and that this is spin and this is dishonest. And it's worth noting that Griffin is a supporter of Hayden. Griffin has known Hayden for, he said, 25 years. He considered him a friend. The same with Mullen. They worked together when Griffin was the district attorney. So this is coming from an ally. [00:25:08][201.7]

Jennifer Smith: [00:25:10] Well, part of the context, too, that makes this such an interesting case is the Rollins administration in the DA's office was a bit of a pivot from prior administrations in that they took a very aggressive public approach, at least toward the idea of maybe the district attorney's office is not the person that should be going after, specifically law enforcement, because they rely on them so heavily. But in lieu of a kind of more specific plan for setting that aside out of the district attorney's office, basically taking a really aggressive internal approach to going after law enforcement cases. So was there a pivot between the Rollins administration and the DA's office and Hayden's tenure there around who should be handling law enforcement prosecutions and how they should be handled? [00:25:59][49.6]

Evan Allen: [00:26:01] You know, you ask different people and you get different answers on that count. Rollins' office was very aggressive in addressing or trying to address police misconduct. Hayden's office has said that he is committed to rooting out police corruption and that nothing has changed on that score. You know, transit police at least point to this case and say, well, it looks like something has changed. You know, there's a unit in the district attorney's office called the Special Prosecutions Unit. They're tasked with, among other things, handling police misconduct cases. That is run by three attorneys. And all of those attorneys have left since the beginning of this year when Hayden took office. Hayden's office says this is just typical turnover, regular attrition. But they're actually without a staff special prosecutions unit at the moment. Hayden's office says that in the interim, as they try to hire, they are handing cases to other qualified attorneys. But, you know, there are certainly concerns that Hayden's office is not treating the prosecution of police misconduct as seriously as Rollins's office did. [00:27:14][73.3]

Jennifer Smith: [00:27:15] And there's a ticking clock on this in a way, because, as mentioned before, there's a primary coming up in less than a month at this point. So challenging him is Councilor Arroyo, who has called for Hayden to resign. What has the gamut of responses been not just from his opponent, but also to mayors? Oversaw the city during this period. [00:27:37][21.6]

Evan Allen: [00:27:38] So Mayor Wu called the allegations against Hayden's office concerning and former acting mayor Kim Janey, who was in charge before Wu was elected, called them a breach of trust. [00:27:52][14.3]

Jennifer Smith: [00:27:54] And so how has Hayden responded to the calls for resignation, but also just kind of the broader expressions of unease coming from city officials? [00:28:01][7.0]

Evan Allen: [00:28:02] Hayden says there's nothing to the story. He says the case was never closed and he's the only one that can close the case. You know, they have insisted all along that the case has remained open and he has called calls for his resignation and other criticism political theatrics, I think, is how they're treating it. [00:28:22][20.0]

Jennifer Smith: [00:28:24] And an interesting wrinkle to this as well is that transit police does, in fact, want this case prosecuted. Right. They would like the D.A. to file charges against these officers. [00:28:34][10.4]

Evan Allen: [00:28:35] Yeah, absolutely. Transit police, are they transit police leadership sort of immediately caught this incident and identified it as extremely suspicious and launched their own investigation. And within just a couple of weeks have brought it to D.A. Rollins. And the transit police all along have been pushing for prosecution, which is not always something you see when police departments are confronted with evidence of their own officers misconduct. So this case is sort of unique in the sense that I would say that number one champions of these officers being prosecuted is the transit police department itself. [00:29:19][43.6]

Jennifer Smith: [00:29:20] Odd. Very strange. Is there anything else kind of as this rolls forward? You know, you had the initial article follow up from it, but then kind of looking ahead, are you watching to see if Hayden makes any public statements about the current status of the case? Do you expect this to continue to be a factor in the next few weeks of this campaign? [00:29:41][20.7]

Evan Allen: [00:29:42] I do think it'll continue to be a factor, in part because it's unresolved. A few hours after we sent over questions to Hayden's office about this case, and they found out that we knew about it. They assigned a new prosecutor to it. That was a Friday afternoon. Hayden's office says that they, in fact, had assigned the prosecutor the day before and that the decision to assign a new prosecutor was made in early July. We have reviewed a document that suggests it was the assignment of the prosecutor, happened directly after we sent over questions. But the case is still in limbo. So either the case will move forward to prosecution or to a grand jury under Hayden, or it will move forward under someone else, or it will not move forward at all. But we'll be following it to see which of those things happens. [00:30:40][57.1]

Jennifer Smith: [00:30:41] Perfect. I think we're going to end on every journalist's absolute favorite criticism, which is the timing of this story, given the, you know, pressing, pressing nature of the campaign. So, you know, walk listeners through this like this was not an extremely recent oppo dump essentially. This is something that you'd been looking at. [00:31:03][22.0]

Evan Allen: [00:31:04] So no, this is not a recent oppo dump. This is something that happened recently. I mean, the case itself happened in April 2021. But this alleged meeting between Hayden's top deputy and the attorney for Officer Green happened in this past April, and that attorney did not file his affidavit attesting to the fact that he was told the case had been dropped until June. So this is something that we could not have reported on before because it simply had not happened yet. [00:31:39][35.2]

Jennifer Smith: [00:31:41] Perfect. Well, thank you so much, Evan Allen of The Boston Globe for coming to walk us through this one. We will be watching to see whether or not anything comes of it in the next few weeks. [00:31:50][9.4]

Evan Allen: [00:31:51] Sounds good. Thank you so much. [00:31:52][1.1]

Steve Koczela: [00:31:55] And that brings us to our final segment, which this week is mailbag. And the headline that caught our eye is that a beloved dog mayor in California died this week, and it got us thinking about other non-human elected officials. And it turns out there are more than you might expect. [00:32:09][14.5]

Jennifer Smith: [00:32:10] I cannot believe there is just a record of elected non-humans, but I mean, R.I.P. to the long since dead billy goat that was elected to City Council in Brazil in 1922, I suppose. Do we have any of those in Massachusetts or is our state groundhog up for election? [00:32:29][18.4]

Steve Koczela: [00:32:30] I don't know, but I feel like I'm going to check OCPF after this and just find out for sure. But the question we have for you this week is if a non-human candidate were to file for state auditor, which is the race would be catching up by next week. What kind of animal should it be or a specific animal? Anything you want to tell us about non-humans running for state auditor? [00:32:51][20.8]

Jennifer Smith: [00:32:51] And we will be waiting with bated breath for that one. But that is all the time we have for today. I am Jennifer Smith signing off with Steve Koczela. Our producer is Elena Eberwein. Don't forget to give The Horse Race a review wherever you're hearing us now, subscribe to the Massachusetts Politico playbook and reach out to the MassINC Polling Group if you need any polls done. Thank you all for listening. See you next week. [00:32:51][0.0]

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