In a Massachusetts special election last January, us citizens of the 4th Middlesex Country District elected longtime State Representative James Marzilli to the State Senate, and we were initially pleased by our good judgement. Marzilli championed our well-to-do beliefs regarding environmental and social welfare issues, and he was considered the shoo-in encumbent in the upcoming Democratic primaries. But then, earlier this summer, 50-year old Marzilli suffered an apparent mid-life crisis and went on a madcap groping spree that resulted in being charged with accosting four women in downtown Lowell. One of the steamy and unseemly incidents as reported in the Boston Globe:
[Marzilli] told her that he thought she was beautiful. The woman told police that Marzilli then reached toward her with his hands and attempted to grab her crotch, but she grabbed his hand to stop him and told him, “Don’t you dare.” Marzilli then made a lewd remark, the report said. The woman went to a nearby apartment complex and reported the crime to staff at the front desk. Two maintenance workers flagged down police, who caught up with Marzilli… he started acting nervously and ran away. He ran past a hot dog cart, causing several people in the area to dash out of his way… Marzilli ran down the center of busy Market Street, between cars, and in the opposite direction of one-way traffic, causing several vehicles to swerve to avoid him, police said. Officers caught up with Marzilli in a parking garage… Police said that Marzilli resisted arrest several times and that they twice threatened to use pepper spray to get him to place his hands behind his back. Marzilli told police that “his life was over and that we were destroying him,” according to the arrest report. The officers told Marzilli that he would be able to post bail and would be out by the end of the day, but Marzilli replied “you don’t understand… I’m a state senator,” the report said. Placed in the back of a police cruiser, Marzilli said: “I can’t believe this is happening… She was flirting with me… I was flirting with her.”
It appears Marzilli was not exaggerating when he once described himself as an “ultraliberal.” Marzilli faces up to 5 year years of jail time for the Lowell rampage and police are investigating other allegations. The local media expects to have more than enough fondle fonder to regularly disgrace Marzilli until his trial in April 2009. As for his former constituents, after we got over the shock that this runty man with a kind face and granola-tinged grooming was approaching strange women with pick-up lines like “Oh baby you are so beautiful, your body is so perfect” before lunging at their genitals… well, we’re the sort of upscale Catholic enclave that will quietly gossip and giggle about Marzilli’s woes while loudly looking to the future.
And as our front lawns make clear, the future is Ken Donnelly versus Jack Hurd, who will vie for the Democratic nomination that Marzilli fondled away. Their background, beliefs, and priorities are nearly indistinguishably neutral-Liberal, but the advantage goes to Hurd, simply because his campaign slogan is catchier than the Macarena:
And there you go. Normally a candidate with a sturdy Irish name like Donnelly would have the edge, but front lawns all over town agree that they want their voices “Hurd.” I have to admire Hurd for using his surname — probably the bane of his teenaged years given the crude rhyming potential — to concoct a genuine statement. I can just picture him on Beacon Hill, rallying against casinos with a thundering battle-cry: “I am Hurd, and I will be Hurd!”
