Twelve hours after their first televised debate Charlie Baker and Martha Coakley bitterly sparred this morning over Super PAC attack ads and the embattled Department of Children and Families.
With just 27 days until voters elect their next governor, Republican Baker, 57, and Democratic Attorney General Coakley, 61, took full advantage of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce's Government Affairs Forum at the Westin Copley Place hotel in Back Bay. Afterward, Coakley pooh-poohed today's Herald story showing some Democratic power brokers are throwing their money and support behind her rival.
"Absolutely not," Coakley said, when asked if she's feeling a shift away from her. "I think that every time we have a governor's race the race is about who's going to be a good leader. We have people lining up for different reasons. I'm really proud of the support I have from Democrats, independents and, frankly, from Republicans. This race is going to be run on ideas and organizing on the ground, plain and simple."
Bank of America Massachusetts President Robert Gallery said, "I don't think I could generalize the corporate community being in favor of either candidate. I think the important part about a morning like this is to just convene the public sector and the political leadership — they're both great leaders in their own right — with the business community and have a constructive dialogue. We heard today a very good conversation between two very good candidates and it just helps everybody ... frame your decision-making for the decision you make 27 days from now."
During the hour-long squabble, event moderator Bob Oakes of WBUR's (90.9 FM) "Morning Edition" challenged each candidate to disavow Super PAC ads the other took umbrage with — one, behind Coakley, criticizing Baker's rise in salary from $600,000 to $1.7 million while CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health; the other, pro-Baker, accusing Coakley of fighting a 2010 federal lawsuit seeking to overhaul DCF at the expense of children's lives. Neither pol bit, though Coakley said if Baker did, she would, too.
Slamming the ad attacking her as "deceitful," Coakley, a career prosecutor, said, "I'm the one that for 25 years has sat with those families. I know what they go through. I know what we have to fix. The tone is completely deceitful, and I made the right call."
Defending the content of the DCF ad, Baker responded, "Shortly after that suit was filed, and shortly after the sides had engaged in litigation, the commonwealth of Mass cut the DCF budget by more than $40 million. No one on Beacon Hill, including the attorney general, said one word about that, despite all the evidence that had been brought forth in that case. I think the issue is worthy of discussion."
Baker also defended his Harvard Pilgrim pay hike, telling the audience that when he took the job, "My family did not see me when they were awake for a year." He also elicited murmurs from the crowd when he pointed out that in 2008, when he made $1.7 million, Coakley, as attorney general, was in charge of overseeing executive compensation at not-for-profit companies.
"No one said boo about how Harvard Pilgrim's board of directors calculated executive compensation," he said.
Coakley, who became the state's first female attorney general in January 2007, initially denied she was even in office in 2008. She later told reporters, "I misspoke about that, I had the years wrong in my head. But, let me be clear on this: attorneys general don't authorize or OK salaries ... they don't OK executive compensation for not-for-profit organizations. First of all, we don't that. Second, that's not the issue. The issue is not whether it's legal or not, it's whether it's right. The focus here has to be on his decision-making, what drives him, what his priorities are."
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