Reilly and the Talking Heads

Chapter 2 of the Let's Fluff the Candidates for Governor show on NECN treated him pretty much the same as Deval Patrick earlier. Having squirmed through the previous smile festival, I knew not to tape this one. Because I had an evening meeting, I missed it. However, the Tom Reilly version is available in transcript in today's Globe here.

It's tedious, but it won't hurt you to look at it. The style is the same as the first. Two made-up heads, NECN (Jim Braude) and Globe (David Dahl, not Dull or Doll), aim to get if not up-close at least nearby and personal. It's a women's service-magazine 20-questions kind of thing.

Note that the ground rules require heads and candidate not to bring up politics or such. They boys broke their own rules with Patrick, blindsiding him with dumb questions about his $27,000-a-month mortgages. They played straight and reverent with Reilly.

Reilly loves telling his blue-to-white-collar story. We've all heard and read it. Born of Irish immigrant parents, his two brothers and father died by the time he was 16. He was a lousy student headed for trade school. The registrar of students at the local American International College in Springfield let him try courses and saw him placed in college after he did well enough. He remained best friends with Wayne Budd from early childhood. Budd is Black.

While not the up-from-the-dung-heap tale that Patrick gets to tell, Reilly's is close enough. He's certainly not a trust-funder. He can lay claim to understanding oi polloi.

The new tidbits (to me at least) from the stroke fest include:

• He loves to cook -- Italian and not Irish food.
• In his community of 36 years, Watertown, he is known as Ruth's husband because his wife is such a popular teacher.
• He started Ralph Martin's career when he and Budd hired him as a young lawyer to join their firm.
• Before he got into AIC in Springfield, he had actually had a year at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia -- before he realized he was being groomed to be a priest and he got the hell out of Dodge.
  
• He's been married for 40 years and they have rented an apartment almost the entire time. Does this man know how to work a lawn mower?
• He went from AIC to CIA, recruited as a numbers nerd during the Cold War, before deciding to head to law school.

These profiles are harmless enough. They are unlikely to add to our sense of these guys.

I do await Kerry Healey's though. How heavy-handed will she play working in high school after her father's heart attack? Will her hair move with her head?

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Tom Reilly, NECN