By Frederick A. Hurst

JAKE OLIVEIRA FOR STATE SENATE
State Representative Jake Oliveira’s State Senate campaign has received the endorsement of State Representatives Carlos Gonzalez, Bud Williams, Orlando Ramos, and Mike Finn, as well as Springfield City Councilors Zaida Govan, Tracye Whitfield, Justin Hurst, Victor Davila, Malo Brown and Maria Perez; Springfield School Committee Members Chris Collins, Denise Hurst, Barbara Gresham, LaTonia Monroe Naylor, and Joesiah Gonzalez; former State Senate Majority Leader Linda Melconian; and former City Councilor Bill Foley. And we at Point of View know why because we have followed Jake closely over the years and we also endorse him for State Senate.

WE ARE WAITING, MR. MAYOR
Mayor Domenic Sarno seems to be campaigning for Ward 5 city council candidate Lavar Click-Bruce for the September 13th final election, just as he did during the August primary. The question is, “Now that only two people remain in the race, will Mayor Sarno officially endorse him, something he couldn’t possibly do during the primary? After all, if the scuttlebutt is correct, Mayor Sarno was secretly supporting more than one candidate. Not only that, I’m told he didn’t want to risk alienating the voters of the many others who ran in the primary. The mayor straddled the fence. But now he has no excuse except maybe that Edward Collins, who came in a close second in the primary, got a lot of votes the mayor will be depending on for his own campaign next year. Rumor has it that he may be facing some stiff competition.
Nonetheless, many of us are waiting to see if his commitment to Lavar Click-Bruce includes a formal public endorsement in the newspapers, on television and radio and on social media. It would be helpful. Besides, the mayor looked silly standing out in the middle of Parker Street and Boston Road as just one of the crowd holding a Lavar Click-Bruce for City Council sign. What Click-Bruce needs most is Mayor
Sarno’s solid, heartfelt public endorsement. We are waiting, Mr. Mayor.

HE JUST DOESN’T SEEM TO GET IT
There is a certain arrogance about Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno that makes him subject himself to unnecessary public humiliation. He seems to be willing to do anything to defy his own city council rather than peacefully compromise. Which probably explains why he hired an attorney who has a long history of representing Springfield police officers to work with the Springfield Police Department pursuant to U.S. Department of Justice consent decree. It goes without saying that many councilors became suspicious. They wondered how the attorney could be objective, especially since the Nathan Bill debacle is still in the courts.
Councilor Tracye Whitfield was quoted in The Republican (July 27, 2022) as saying: “It’s the same old good-old boys club that has been around my entire life, for my parents’ lives, and my grandparents’ lives, and I could keep going back 400 years. If we don’t step up and make the change, the change is not going to happen.” City Solicitor John Payne praised the attorney as “capable and a strong selection for the position,” while neither he nor the mayor made the selection. It turned out to be worse than that…the police chief, Cheryl Clapprood, made the selection. But, most of the councilors weren’t buying it and they voted 9-1 against the funding proposal for the position as well as another position that was required in the consent decree and neither position was funded. Why Councilor Sean Curran cast the lone vote in favor of the mayor’s proposal is beyond me. Needless to say, the council vote made for a good news event and Mayor Sarno ate crow again.

SPEAKING OF SEAN CURRAN…
City Councilor Sean Curran was one of several prominent elected Springfield politicians who endorsed Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts even though our local senator, Eric Lesser, is running for the job. Joining Curran in support of Driscoll were Councilors Melvin Edwards and Council President Jesse Lederman as well as School Committee member Latonia Naylor. I don’t quite understand why they would vote for Driscoll against Lesser although I can understand them having some reservations about Lesser, who seems to fancy himself as a big-time politician before he has even arrived. But one must admit, Eric Lesser works hard and he has reached out to a broad cross section of people. His work on the East-West rail is second only to that of Congressman Richie Neal and East-West rail appears to be closer to realization than ever before, especially since they stopped calling it “high speed” rail, which it isn’t.
Nonetheless, those Springfield politicians are not alone as Stephanie Barry reported in The Republican (July31 2022). She wrote: “In addition to the municipal officials, Driscoll also has strong support from current and former mayors across the state, including a good number from Western Massachusetts: Easthampton Mayor Nicole LaChapelle, former Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz and former Springfield Mayor Mike Albano.” The fact is, Driscoll has substantial support from the Cape to the Berkshires and she is rumored to be leading in the polls.
None of it means that Eric Lesser can’t win. He has loads of money and the support of Springfield’s Congressman Richie Neal, Mayor Domenic Sarno, State Representatives Bud Williams and Carlos Gonzalez, Councilor Justin Hurst, School Committee Woman Denise Hurst, Chicopee Mayor John Vieau, former Governors’ Councilor Mary Hurley and State Representative Jake Oliveira, who is running for Lesser’s vacated seat. These are only the ones we’ve heard about but I’m sure there are many more locally and across the state.

BIDEN’S ABORTION WINDFALL
Although I hate to sound political about a subject as sensitive as abortion, I must admit the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade override fell into President Joe Biden’s lap like a homerun at a major league ball game at a time when his stars were beginning to rise anyway. He had already accomplished most of his agenda and now women power is coming his way because the Republicans miscalculated and ensnared themselves in a trap of their own making. Their radical Supreme Court is chipping away at voter rights and environmental regulations and now it has taken away women’s rights to control their own bodies by allowing states to concoct bizarre laws that have angered women across the political spectrum and placed the majorities in both the Senate and House they expected to easily win in the mid-term elections in serious jeopardy. Some might consider their plight as “the chickens coming home to roost.”

TRUMP ISN’T GOING AWAY
“Trump’s resilience seems puzzling. Why does a sizable chunk of the Republican Party remain in his corner, when those voters could back a more disciplined candidate who shares the former president’s policies and attitude? The question assumes that voters are logical and that charismatic leadership is easily transferable. Neither assumption is true. The connection between populist tribunes and their followers is personal rather than intellectual. The leader becomes a symbol of resistance against everything the crowd despises.” (Boston Sunday Globe, August 7, 2022)

DON’T BLAME THE UNEDUCATED
“In fact, scholars have found that highly educated Americans are central to the political polarization that is fracturing our country. They are less likely than the average American to communicate with people who don’t share their views and more likely to view their political adversaries with hostility. Their views are often inaccurate and their political reasoning is often poor – precisely the characteristics that education is supposed to counteract.” (Boston Sunday Globe, August 7, 2022)

IT WASN’T A HARD CALL
A lot of people were tragically killed and some injured when the truck driven by West Springfield’s Volodymyr Zhukovskyy’s collided with members of the Jarheads Motorcycle Club while they were driving in opposite directions on a New Hampshire highway on June 21, 2019. And many were upset, including the New Hampshire governor and attorney general, when a jury found Zhukovskyy not guilty for the killing of the seven motorcyclists who died. But anyone who studied the facts as they unfolded in the months leading up to the trial – especially lawyers – would understand why the jury found as it did. In law, we apply the law to the facts to determine guilt or innocence and in this case, it was clear to me that the facts simply did not favor the deceased or the prosecutor. That’s how the system works when it works right. ■