Taking a Deep Breath on Sal DiMasi
Photo by John Goodman for Boston magazine
The rumors have been flying around that House Speaker Sal DiMasi, to whom the word “embattled” may as well be affixed to his official title, would soon be going gently into that good night. The news yesterday that his one-time accountant, Richard Vitale, had paid off his in-laws’ legal bills to the tune of $7,500 only heated things up.
Into that cauldron, the Lowell Sun dropped the bombshell this afternoon that the Speaker was hanging ‘em up. The story was not bylined, anonymously sourced, and almost immediately shot down by DiMasi’s spokesman, David Guarino. (Whether or not this constituted good journalistic judgment is a question for another day, but if you’re going to try to bury one of the most powerful people in the state, you better be damn sure that he’s dead).
Now the question is, will DiMasi defiantly dig in his heels and continue to whistle past the graveyard with this hanging over his head, or does he exit stage left sometime soon, perhaps as early as next week?
From the beginning the whole Vitale mess has defied credulity.
“The guy wants you to believe that even though he has never been involved in the State House as a lobbyist, even though he have no experience, someone’s going to pay him $60,000, because what? He’s a good guy?” says a source. “This doesn’t pass the smell test.”
Making it even harder to fathom is that DiMasi watched his two predecessors, Charlie Flaherty and Tom Finneran go down before him in their own ethical traps.
Beloved in his North End district, DiMasi has always defied easy description. He took a principled stand against casinos, where one could expect all kinds of malfeasance to go down if one was inspired to look for that kind of thing, and has been a leader on liberal causes like gay rights.
As Paul McMorrow wrote in a Boston magazine profile of DiMasi:
Beyond the glad-handing exterior, there isn’t much consensus as to who Sal DiMasi is, what he’s all about. His friends extol his humor and his commitment to social justice; his enemies paint him as a vengeful power whore. In fact, he’s both, as well as a quick-to-tears crusader for the poor and a stubborn fiscal hawk, and a consensus builder who steers the House with an eye toward minimal public conflict and an old-school brawler who revels in political blood sport.
To some, it’s a minor miracle that DiMasi has hung on this long at all. His would-be successors, Robert DeLeo and John Rogers have not made much of a secret for their desire for the job. He has knuckled and brawled with Gov. Deval Patrick seemingly from the day he took office, beating him back on issues like the meals tax, and of course, casinos.
And yet he was overwhelmingly re-elected to the speakership earlier this month, and Patrick has also been hands-off with the Speaker. Certainly the governor could have landed some well-timed shots to the body if he had chosen, but that’s not his style. More to the point, it’s almost as if DiMasi’s political enemies were just waiting for the axe to fall.
