Campaign fundraising by Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown continues apace, which is to say it is happening at ridiculous levels. Brown, who used to have a campaign war chest that terrified opponents, raised just under $7.5 million in the past fundraising quarter. That would be an impressive number anywhere else, except that Brown is trying to fend off a challenge from Warren, whose quarterly campaign receipts just topped $12 million.
The Massachusetts Senate race is the nation’s most expensive. Over the first nine months of 2012, Warren raised $27.6 million, compared to Brown’s $15.8 million. Brown entered the race with a sizeable cash advantage over any potential opponent; Warren has erased it.
According to the Herald, Brown has slightly more cash sitting in his campaign account, but Warren has more tied up in an advance ad buy.
NECN says both Senate candidates are stepping up their advertising. But both candidates may be about to encounter diminishing returns in the final days of the campaign. Brown and Warren are both pulling in gobs of money at a time when the pool of undecided voters has shrunk to a small size. The latest round of state polls, which generally have Warren leading Brown by a slight margin, show just a fraction of the electorate remaining to be swayed. Western New England University’s recent poll put the slice of undecided voters at just 3 percent; MassINC’s latest poll for WBUR had 8 percent of voters undecided (half what the figure was in July), with just 5 percent not knowing which way they were leaning.
“As you know there’s only so much you can spend in the next 22 days,” Brown told the Herald yesterday. “As I said right from the beginning, we’ll both have the resources we need to get our messages out…”
–PAUL MCMORROW
BEACON HILL
The courts begin processing inmates affected by the tainted-evidence scandal at the state drug lab, NECN reports. Boston Mayor Tom Menino wants the state to fund a $15 million response to inmate releases. The MetroWest Daily News wonders what is going on at the Department of Public Health.
The Mashpee Wampanoag are in a difficult spot now that the US Bureau of Indian Affairs has rejected the compact between the tribe and the state. CommonWealth’s Paul McMorrow, in his weekly Globe column, writes that the state should have seen all of this coming, and that the Mashpee tribe and southeastern Massachusetts are now very much out in the cold. Elsewhere on the gambling front, Pennsylvania pushes ahead with plans to launch sports betting despite opposition from sports leagues.
State officials prepare for lackluster tax revenues, particularly if the country falls off the fiscal cliff, the State House News Service reports (via CommonWealth). A Boston Herald editorial urges spending restraint in the face of uncertain state tax receipts.
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
Two overrides to build a new library and police station in Acushnet will add $146 to the average tax bill.
The Lowell Sun, in an editorial, takes city officials to task for failing to make public records available to the newspaper and to the City Council.
The former director of Cambridge’s redevelopment authority gave himself $400,000 in bonuses before walking out the door.
ELECTION 2012
The old conventional wisdom: debates don’t swing presidential elections. The new conventional wisdom: tonight could be do-or-die for President Obama.
The Globe reports that a Scott Brown TV ad is misleading in the way it characterizes a Globe story about Elizabeth Warren’s work in an absestos case. Warren meets with seniors in Peabody, the Salem News reports. UMass Boston Professor Maurice Cunningham examines the Catholic vote in Massachusetts.
The Globe reports on what would be a novel topic for the middle-class-obsessed presidential campaigns to talk about: the plight of the nation’s poor. A New York Times editorial links a Mitt Romney victory to the re-criminalization of abortion. The Wall Street Journal previews the second presidential debate. A former advisor to Romney’s father rips Mitt’s campaign, accusing the younger Romney of a willingness to “say and do anything to close a deal – or an election.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton takes the heat on Libya, saying she is responsible for security at diplomatic outposts, CNN reports. Peter Gelzinis reminds readers of Romney’s taste for payback, calling on a former Turnpike Authority lawyer who was fired, and had his health insurance taken away, for stepping in between Romney and Matt Amorello. Moral support: Gov. Deval Patrick plans to attend tonight’s town hall presidential debate.
US Rep. John Tierney boasts about the bacon he’s brought home from Washington and highlights the endorsement of state Sen. Thomas McGee and Rep. Steven Walsh, the Item reports. Tierney insists, despite a fair amount of evidence to the contrary, that his reelection campaign is going swimmingly.
US Rep. Barney Frank is accusing Republican Sean Bielat, vying with Joseph P. Kennedy III to replace Frank, of switching and moderating positions that he ran on two years ago in his race against the then-incumbent congressman. Bielat and Kennedy hold their fourth and last debate in Wellesley, which covers pretty familiar ground, WBUR reports.
GOP challenger Tom Keyes is accusing Senate President Therese Murray of ducking a debate by being unable to arrange her schedule to meet at a South Shore Chamber of Commerce forum.
Rep. Colleen Garry, fending off allegations of corruption from Republican challenger Cathy Richardson, says she lost a committee chairmanship because she voted too often with the House GOP, the Lowell Sun reports.
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
A court rules Seattle can’t limit the distribution of yellow-pages phone books, the Seattle Times reports.
Federal officials are considering giving blanket immunity to lenders of some mortgages.
The founder of a bankrupt subprime mortgage lender gives it another go.
Waltham electric car battery maker A123 Systems looks to be headed toward bankruptcy.
EDUCATION
Barney Frank will donate his personal congressional papers to the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth when he retires.
The Springfield Republican is encouraged by the University of Massachusetts Amherst decision to release an annual discipline report.
HEALTH CARE
The US Food and Drug Administration is warning that more medications made at Framingham-based New England Compounding Center may be linked to fungal infections. WBUR interviews Bill Gouveia, who teaches at the Northeastern University School of Pharmacy and is a former member of the Massachusetts Board of Pharmacy, about the need for more regulation.
TRANSPORTATION
AAA is backing a “right to repair” ballot question even though lawmakers and auto repair dealers reached a compromise on another measure this summer, reports the State House News Service via the Brockton Enterprise.
Felix Baumgartner’s 24-mile-fall to earth would not have been possible without the custom-designed pressurized space suit he wore, which was made by a Worcester firm.
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
One of the owners of the new wind turbine in Scituate says there’s no evidence the turbines are making people sick, suggesting people may be talking themselves into illnesses. In Fairhaven, a proposed bylaw would cut the height and wattage output of a planned turbine in half.
Residents at Southfield, the new development at the former South Weymouth Naval Air Station, are up in arms over water bills that are three to four times higher than what they were told they would be when they moved in.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Police in Maine begin releasing the names of the male customers of a fitness instructor who allegedly sold sex on the side, the Associated Press reports.
The former treasurer of the Pentucket Youth Football League in Salem moves to the United Arab Emirates, apparently to avoid a trial for stealing $80,000 from the league, the Eagle-Tribune reports.
MEDIA
PR guru and former reporter Ed Cafasso interviews Globe columnist Brian McGrory for a trade publication and finds out the genesis for McGrory’s crusade against Liberty Mutual was the freak Halloween snowstorm of a year ago.
Paul Levy calls out the news media in town for failing to accurately report on the clout wielded by Partners Health Care.
