Gabrieli Grabs and Gabs

VCs (venture capitalists, not Viet Cong) make their millions by being cocksure...then being right more than wrong. History and early indications suggest that long-term gubernatorial-campaign lurker and newly announced candidate Chris Gabrieli (above with daughter) would happily test his theories here.

We have our own issues with Gabrieli trying to swoop into June's Democratic Party convention like Zorro. However, local papers are a twitter with the possibility that he'll add some spice to a presently dull contest between the Mortician and the Progressive.

The Herald's Kimberly Atkins notes how hard it will be for him to get 15% of delegates at the convention with his sneaky entry.

The Globe's Lisa Wingsness (great name, eh?) writes that he can easily bore and turn off voters by showering them with data to support his schemes.

Over at the Phoenix, Adam Reilly gets a full feature to praise Chris' goofy brilliance.

From these and other coverage, it's easy to get a Weekly Reader kind of on-the-one-hand overly balanced set of comments. No one wants to come right out and say Gabrieli is headed for yet another ego-driven loss. We are; a detail is whether he gets on the primary ballot first or flames out in Worcester.

What's intriguing to us about his remarks so far is that he seems more than willing to play VC with MA. He claims to have all these great, untested ideas for the commonwealth's recovery and growth. He wants us to let him use the state as a lab.

Darwin knows, that can't be any worse than the stagnant neglect from the past decade or so of governors and legislators. Yet, to play Weekly Reader ourselves, we have no idea whether any of his economic or political theories would work.

For example, Adam cites the idea of indexing our income taxes to economic growth. Would that help anything, anything at all? Would it be just another bureaucratic, administrative distraction? It's hard to believe that it would do much short or mid-term.

Perhaps more likely, Gabrieli will shoehorn his huge ego into the former Centrum, where he'll broadcast his visions and fantasies. He's unlikely to get on the primary ballot, but if he does, he'll surely be an also-ran again.

The question at the moment is if he does make a splash at the convention and if he manages to get on the primary ballot, what impact will his ideas have? We predict not much.

By the bye, at his announcement this morning, Gabrieli would not answer questions but the Globe reports that he produced a mini-platform of broad topics:

Gabrieli said he decided to enter the race because the state's succession of Republican governors hasn't done enough to control the rising living and housing costs that have forced jobs and people to leave Massachusetts.

He pledged to make college education affordable by making tuition payments tax-deductible, to invest in stem-cell research and renewable energy to create jobs and to improve education by expanding after-school programs.

Note: His Website is up -- pretty enough but real lame. As long as he's been planning this, we expected much fuller, more detailed content, particulary on issues. He'd better spend a little of that $6 million on content, like today.

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Chris Gabrieli, election