DiMasi hits the jackpot by blocking casino plan
POWER POLITICS sometimes requires the skills of a consummate actor.
Thus it was that, after spending weeks doing his utmost to deal Governor Deval Patrick's casino plan a stinging defeat - a defeat that came last night - House Speaker Sal DiMasi stepped before reporters Wednesday evening to promise a full and fair debate on the proposal.
"We are not presupposing any vote right now," said DiMasi. "And we are not predicting any vote right now. Members are still thinking about it, analyzing it . . . making up their own minds."
He added: "My members aren't shy about debating. They are not shy about telling you what their position is."
(Why, one could almost hear the falsetto chorus: We're with you, Mr. Speaker.)
As for his own role, it turns out that the avuncular speaker had cut no deals and made no promises, but simply provided answers to the various queries put to him by the House's bustling colony of bright-eyed and eager public-policy beavers.
"They asked me questions that were very substantive," he proudly reported.
Channel 5's pesky Janet Wu had a question: Had he pressured the members?
The very notion seemed to wound the Great Lawgiver.
"No pressure," he replied, his tone conveying a certain melancholy that reporters could even suspect him of something so unseemly. After all, should the public conclude that it was the speaker's skill at deal-cutting and other forms of, um, legislative persuasion that brought House members around to his view, it might cast a pall over the entire proceedings.
Alas, sometimes things go wrong with even the best staged productions. And unfortunately for the speaker, the man who had spoken to reporters just before he did, Representative Richard Ross, Republican of Wrentham, had displayed an inexperienced lawmaker's tendency to wander off message.
Having voted for the casino proposal when members of the Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies were first polled Wednesday, Ross had switched his vote by late afternoon - a switch that helped tag the bill with an adverse report, driving another nail into its coffin.
Why his switch? Well, he had never really supported casinos, Ross said, but merely felt that the governor's proposal should get a full debate. "That's something as Republicans we are always struggling for," he said.
His own thinking was that, during that debate, the bill could have been amended to allow slot machines at racetracks, he said, an important concern for Plainridge Racecourse, which is in his district.
But officials at Plainridge had ultimately wanted him to vote against the bill, and so he had, Ross said.
"Kind of like a doctor with a patient, you can give your best advice, but the patient ultimately chooses the course of action they want to be treated with," he explained. (Now, one might argue that a doctor isn't required to perform a lobotomy on himself at his patient's request, but that would be churlish.)
Ross then indicated that there had been a commitment - a promise even - from DiMasi that if the casino bill failed, the House would consider a bill to let racetracks have slot machines.
Thus it was that the speaker found himself queried closely about slots at the tracks.
"That's a question for another day," he declared.
But had he made some kind of commitment to bring up a slots bill?
The speaker proceeded to take reporters on a tortuous tour of the legislative process, the upshot of which seemed to be that anything is possible.
"So what does that mean?" he asked, before launching into a second digression.
Here's one thing it means. The wily speaker has prevailed yet again.
Meeting with reporters a little later that evening, Patrick acknowledged as much.
Asked about what the state would do now to replace the hoped-for revenue from casinos, he replied:
"Some of those questions you're going to have to put to the speaker."
Patrick seemed frustrated, and who can blame him? After all, he campaigned for almost two years to become governor - only to see the speaker emerge as the real King of Beacon Hill.
Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.
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