House Speaker Robert DeLeo’s dramatic leadership shakeup today did more than put an end to the power struggle between would-be future speakers James Vallee and Charles Murphy. It also consolidated power among the reps who stood with DeLeo last summer during the speaker’s bitter casino showdown with Gov. Deval Patrick.
Legislators who backed DeLeo’s gambit gained much more today than those who opposed the speaker.
Last July, DeLeo and Patrick were trading volleys over whether to include racetracks in legislation legalizing resort casinos. In the final hours of the formal session, when DeLeo was considering how to respond to Patrick’s casino proposal (which would have only allowed for one racino license, not the two DeLeo demanded), the speaker froze out several members of his leadership circle.
Vallee and Murphy were absent from discussions, as were DeLeo’s second assistant majority leader, Patricia Haddad, and his four division chairs (Reps. Kathi-Anne Reinstein, Garrett Bradley, Byron Rushing and Ellen Story). Instead, two senior members of DeLeo’s leadership team (assistant majority leader Ron Mariano, and Brian Dempsey, author of the House’s casino bill) were joined by a number of reps outside senior leadership – Michael Costello, Michael Moran, Steven Walsh, and Martin Walsh.
The speaker’s full leadership team was only brought in minutes before DeLeo’s gauntlet-throwing press conference, at which the speaker said a veto of the House’s casino bill amounted to “a decision to kill the prospect of 15,000 new jobs and bring immediate local aid to cities and towns.” In that meeting, Vallee, Bradley and Story urged DeLeo to compromise with the governor, while Haddad, Reinstein, and Mariano urged confrontation.
Of the House leaders who advised against DeLeo’s assault on the governor, only Vallee was sent to the back benches. Bradley and Story will keep their division leader posts.
Even so, today’s committee shakeup tilts DeLeo’s leadership team strongly in the favor of the legislators who backed him in the casino fight.
Mariano takes Vallee’s old spot as majority leader. And Reinstein will move up from her division leadership spot and take the second assistant majority leader post, as well as a seat on the House Ethics Committee. Haddad receives a promotion to Speaker Pro Tempore, and nets seats on the powerful Ethics and Rules Committees. Dempsey, who crafted DeLeo’s casino legislation, scores a huge win, taking over the budget-writing Ways and Means committee.
Costello is elevated from Public Safety, and gets control of the Financial Services Committee – a potentially lucrative fundraising post. Steven Walsh gets promoted to the committee on health care financing, which should handle some of the upcoming session’s signature legislation. Martin Walsh, who backed DeLeo’s opponent for speaker, trades in an obscure vice-chairmanship for control of the powerful Ethics Committee. Moran will control the House’s redistricting efforts. And O’Flaherty, under fire for his role in the probation scandal roiling the State House, retains his spot atop the Judiciary Committee.
It’s also noteworthy that while DeLeo buried Vallee today, he had a lighter touch for one scandal-plagued member of his leadership team, the patronage king of Ludlow, Rep. Thomas Petrolati. Petrolati resigned his position as Speaker Pro Tempore in November because of his role in the probation patronage scandal. But he was hardly sent to Siberia. Petrolati will retain positions on the committees on rules, ways and means, and public service.
