By Brian McGrory
The Boston Globe
January 6, 2010
If you’re a registered voter in Massachusetts, your friendly Democratic Senate candidate, Martha Coakley, is sticking her thumb in your eye.
Coakley, in exquisitely diva-like form, is refusing all invitations to debate her Republican opponent in the race, Scott Brown, unless a third-party candidate with no apparent credentials is included on the stage. She may also require a crystal bowl of orange-only M&Ms in her dressing room, but we haven’t gotten that far yet. Her demands have led to an astonishing result: there will be just one — that’s one — live televised debate in the Boston media market this general election season.
Think about that for a moment. We tend to elect our members of Congress for life in this state, especially when they’re Democrats, which they usually are. This particular race, a special election, has unfolded at breakneck speed. We have two barely known candidates — Coakley has run statewide just once, Brown is a state senator from exurbia — trying to fill a huge void at a time of war and economic upheaval.
And Coakley’s overriding strategy is to quietly back into the job, to have you, the voter, know less about the major candidates rather than more…
…This is all part of a Coakley pattern. When she ran for attorney general, she didn’t allow even the Republican candidate on a debate stage. In fact, she refused to debate at all…
The article continues at the Globe.
