He’s a lifelong unionized worker, has gone to PawSox games for the last four decades, and knows cities intimately as a former telephone worker. Dan Murphy also went to every Listening Tour stop last summer when owner Larry Lucchino was trying to get a new stadium built by the taxpayers in Providence as one of the leaders of the grassroots resistance, vociferous in his rejection of the proposed deal then and now still opposed to public funding for renovations of private buildings, be it McCoy Stadium or the Superman building in downtown Providence.

Recently the pre-bid press conference was held at McCoy Stadium for “proposals from qualified firms to prepare a master plan study (the “Study”) of the McCoy Stadium facility and surrounding area located in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The intent of the Study is to develop a master plan for significant repairs, upgrades, system replacements and/or improvements to McCoy Stadium and the surrounding area. The State of Rhode Island has regularly financed capital improvements to McCoy Stadium.” This comes more than a year after the late Jim Skeffington and Lucchino told the public a study had already been done and found that renovations for McCoy were too costly.

At a moment when bankruptcy is being floated in regards to the capital city, school buildings are in abject shambles, the birthing unit of a Pawtucket hospital is due to be closed, and unemployment and under-employment still high, Pawtucket Mayor Donald Grebien and state leaders are seriously considering this in two different instances. Murphy has read through the bid solicitation document for the PawSox and remains unimpressed.

“You can’t buy it with capitalism and pay for it with socialism, it doesn’t work that way,” he said. “If the state owns a piece of it and it looks like a good deal, then it’s worth considering. Other than that, no. To make rich people richer? No way! Neither one of those facilities is life-essential, like a hospital or a police-fire station combination or something to that effect. This is just a stadium and its just a building and they’re not going to make anyone any richer except for the people who own them.”

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Is there any indication that Lucchino has any interest in keeping the team in Pawtucket for at least the next 25 years? “Oh God no. They’re shopping around, they’re holding their cards close to the vest. I think this whole song and dance they’re doing now with they’re supposedly rebuilding the trust and all that crap? They’re not looking to do that. They’re looking at the fans that go to a certain amount of games every year, and you can count on them like clockwork, they’re not bothering with them, just like they didn’t bother with us last year. They assume we’ll keep coming and if we don’t we’ll be replaced with the new hipster-type fans.”

Murphy’s years of going to the PawSox games have helped him learn about the neighborhood surrounding McCoy intimately. “I think their only investment in the community surrounding McCoy Stadium would be to level it and to build it into something that they want. That’s about it. If you recall when we were putting up with those dog-and-pony shows last summer, [team president Charles] Steinberg never really had anything good to say about the neighborhood around McCoy, he saw that as a negative, almost like it was a ghetto or a slum or something. It’s a lot of three-decker houses that were very well-kept and that’s a very clean neighborhood. Walk around it sometime! It’s a very clean neighborhood. But that whole neighborhood is going to get the kiss of death if Lucchino and his boys get their way.”

What is Lucchino like in comparison to late owner Ben Mondor? “Ben Mondor brought almost like a warmth, a trust, a friendship, a guy that you would sit down with and have a beer, even though his social and financial stature is way different than your own. He was a good guy. That’s the way he was looked at and people supported what he wanted to do because he never wanted to bring that stadium above the people who went there. He wanted to keep the team in Pawtucket, he wanted to keep the games being played there, he wanted to stay in that stadium if at all possible. He was your typical Rhode Islander, even though I believe he was from Canada originally,” he says.

“Lucchino, his history has been just build a stadium and flip it or rebuild a stadium and flip it. He’s not a baseball man, he’s a businessman and the same thing with his whole crew with him, his yes-men.”

“I don’t think they are above moving [the team] right when [construction] is starting to happen. It’s strictly business.”

Every year Annie welcomes the new roster of the Bulls. And through the course of the season gives the ballplayers her full-hearted devotion, affection, the finer points of the game and, in some cases, her body. Sarandon immortalized the nickname for her place in the pantheon, “Baseball Annie,” in a wonderful way. All Annie asked from the Bull players in return every year was respect and loving kindness. At the end of the year, it was all good-bye hugs and kisses, and no regrets to the boys of summer, with a new group due in for the same warm embrace in the spring.

At McCoy Stadium, it has never really been about the constantly changing players on the field, but the warmth, family atmosphere and affordable prices that allow folks to get more than their money’s worth. And if that is the future Jim Rice or Fred Lynn or Wade Boggs out there, it is a bonus that will be realized down the road with a boastful, “I saw him when he was at Pawtucket!”

Pawtucket Red Sox fans have become our own version of Baseball Annie, currently at a rift between the adoration of the PawSox in our hearts, and their ill-considered moment of straying from the emotional commitment of their loyal lovers. This was the much-vilified attempt by the new owners of the PawSox to abandon their age-old home of McCoy Stadium in the heart of The Bucket to more glamorous riverside digs in Providence. It left all the Little Rhody Baseball Annies stunned, hurt and more than a little pissed off.

Fortunately, that pie-in-the-sky attempt to drop Baseball Annie in favor of a more upscale relationship in the Capital City blew up in the team’s face. For a number of appallingly obvious reasons, the plan to relocate went down faster than Jeb Bush’s presidential hopes.

Time to make nice

Fortunately, the two new members of the front office management team, President Dr. Charles Steinberg and Sr. V.P./General Manager Dan Rea, seem to understand the Baseball Annie love affair the public has with their franchise. They inherited the mess from last year’s aborted move, which cost the club a big hit in attendance, and after a worthwhile chat with them, seem to fully understand the unspoken dynamic between team and fans.

Even more pleasingly, Vice Chairman Mike Tamburro, he of the perpetual smile and good humor, is still on hand from the legendary troika of he, late owner Ben Mondor, and top executive Lou Schwechheimer, who turned a moribund franchise into one that such New England lifestyle mags as Yankee magazine would recommend as a must-see Biggest Little attraction. And Dr. Steinberg so strongly relies upon Tamburro’s intimate knowledge of the needs and desires to succeed that he adamantly makes the point that he has moved himself into Tamburro’s office to make sure the acquired wisdom can rub off. Even to the point of pledging that he and Rea will be with Tamburro out in the parking lot greeting fans arriving for the game, even if they draw the slightly shocked and bemused reaction Tamburro is used to; most fans not realizing they have been given a personal thank you and warm welcome from the team’s top dog, who is more comfortable on the macadam than in a luxury box.

Steinberg and Rea both emphasize that the PawSox are here to stay in McCoy on a multi-year lease. This is almost a necessity if they want to woo their Annies back, and not seen to be looking over their devoted’s shoulder for yet another field of greener grass. They are making the critical financial commitment to the franchise with subtle improvements all around the 74-year old ballpark, the exception being the large banner atop a building outside the center field fence that shouts outs “Welcome to Pawtucket.” For residents of the city and essentially all Rhode Islanders, that is as good as sending two dozen red roses to their affronted lovers.

Unless my bullshit detector is badly damaged, I believe Steinberg, with Rea nodding in assent, when he says that the word for what they are trying to accomplish to bring their sweethearts back is simply, “Class. Doing things right and treating people well. It’s a two-way street.” And it is a road he, Rea and Tamburro are planning to take to win back the Baseball Annies.

Lover come back, all is forgiven. But don’t you ever, ever do that again. (Please.)

On The Ball And Off The Wall is an occasional sports column by Chip Young, a Rhode Island journalist who was a sportswriter and broadcaster for 25 years. Best known as Phillipe, of Phillipe and Jorge’s Cool, Cool World, Young was also an All-America soccer player in college, and he is in the Brown Athletic Hall of Fame. He has attended PawSox games since before the Mondor rehabilitation of the franchise, and once threw out the first pitch. He still has that ceremonial ball.

While the neighborhoods surrounding McCoy are not glamorous, they are authentic places and these are the types of stadiums that helped baseball grow into being the sport it is today. Baseball grew to the chosen American pastime in the neighborhoods across America, just like Pawtucket. Our Textile Mill Leagues here in Blackstone Valley provided a work diversion, and entertainment with their baseball teams and that helped the professional teams grow. From these neighborhood fields Rhode Island sent players like Nap LaJoie to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The roots of great baseball came from McCoy. These roots are what we need to build upon at McCoy.

The announcement of the move was not well received. The community was outraged, upset and created an organized resistance to the team moving. Rallies were held and the fans spoke up and out. Pawtucket’s Mayor, Don Grebien, took on the “up-hill battle” of fighting to keep the team in Pawtucket. The team’s effort to move has drastically changed. For the near future, the team is staying.

Last week, at a lunch at McCoy’s Clubhouse, Pawtucket Red Sox Chairman Larry Lucchino, Team President Dr. Charles Steinberg and General Manager Dan Rea addressed the community in a way that went beyond professional. It was heartfelt, meaningful and seemed to impact positively everyone in the room.   The late owner Ben Mondor and then President Mike Tamburro, now vice chairman, built the team with an amazing spirit that was not just corporate – it was heartfelt and community-driven. We have that spirit back at McCoy Stadium.

Our hearts were broken when the new owners fought so hard to leave Pawtucket. The community was not without blame. We could have done more to help create the “Destination Ballpark” they seek and deserve. It can be done in Pawtucket. We have time on our side and work to do. Economic Feasibility and Design Site Feasibility studies have to be completed.

The new team leadership, and the administrative support they have assembled, is working hard to regain the trust, friendship and support developed by the late Ben Mondor.

The community needs to support the work of our Pawtucket city officials and the new Pawtucket Red Sox ownership, if we are to keep the Pawtucket Red Sox at McCoy. Let’s begin to grow back the attendance, the business support and the high community morale the team gave us. Go Pawtucket Red Sox! Welcome to Pawtucket and Rhode Island Mr. Lucchino! This will be a great year.

McCoy Stadium has been adjacent to a large swathe of African, Latino, and low-income white renters who live in multi-family housing units for some time. Now Lucchino is courting the business community around the stadium and encouraging them to buy up the properties so to contribute to an “urban renewal” effort that no one asked for or needed until Lucchino came to town.

Gentrification, called a “benign ethnic cleansing” by writer John Strausbaugh, has been going on for several years in Pawtucket. Unless artists and white LGBTQQI people are conscientious and mindful of their impact on a community, these demographics can oftentimes find themselves as the foot-soldiers of the Caucasian invasion Lucchino and Grebien now wish to throw into overdrive with a sports stadium.

It bears mentioning that sports projects, such as the 1996 Atlanta Olympics or the repeated Super Bowls in New Orleans, have contributed to the gentrification of those historic cities of color. It also bears mentioning that Lucchino was recently seen in the entourage of Hillary Clinton at a Boston stop on the campaign trail before the the New Hampshire primaries. Mrs. Clinton and the policies of her husband are considered much to blame for the gentrification of the past two decades, particularly in regards to the anti-poor “Welfare reform” and “tough on crime” legislation that included housing regulations. When I talked with Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report this past summer, he emphasized that capital is eager to reclaim the metropolis and return the communities of color to a pre-World War II status quo, dispersed and marginalized politically and socially in the hinterlands as they were before the Great Migration was shifted into overdrive by the wartime economy under FDR.

At this point, the situation is divided into a rather unfortunate either/or situation. PawSox fans either have to say goodbye to their beloved team, something I get the impression many can handle considering the behavior of Lucchino and company, or they can get behind a renovation project, totally financed by the taxpayers, that will turn McCoy into a bulldozer of communities of color that probably will be far too expensive for these fans to attend anyways. Unless Lucchino comes out in the next few weeks with a plan to create community land trusts for these housing units or, alternatively, Grebien institutes a series of rent control policies, we are looking down the barrel of a very ugly rifle whose shot sounds eerily like Take Me Out to the Ball Game.

In a recent article for the Providence Journal, Steinberg, whose training as a dentist just screams professional sports business acumen, said he wants to see ‘passion again’ in Pawtucket. Yet only four months ago he and the other two, along with Cyd ‘Vicious’ McKenna, were publicly insulting and antagonizing the very community they now claim they want to nurture.

Meanwhile, Jorge Elorza and Gina Raimondo continue to jump back and forth between appealing to the vast majority of sanely cynical citizens, who see this as a bail-out for a business model Lucchino’s type likes to impose on America’s past time, not to mention a Baltimore-styled gentrification move for Providence, and appeasing big-name Democratic Party donors who are getting cranky over not getting their way. The great political writer Paul Street has coined the phrase ‘Dismal Dollar Drenched Democrats’, one that is totally fitting herein.

If we look at the new leadership, we see a group of individuals who are more dedicated to the bottom line than the community. Steinberg is a long-time hanger-on of Lucchino’s coattails, having followed him to San Diego, Baltimore, and Boston, where they left less-than-desirable legacies. Rea is a year younger than me and does not remember when Bill Buckner let the ball roll through his legs during the World Series while White is obviously a number-crunching middleman with no interest in sports.

Leaving aside these surface observations, there is something much more important to note. Rea is a history baccalaureate graduate of Harvard, a finishing school of neoliberal public relations, and White comes from a long career of neoliberal financial restructuring deals. This school of thought, as fantastically described by Dr. Michael Hudson in a recent CounterPunch podcast with Eric Draitser, is a get-rich-quick ideology that stuffs the pockets of the few while defenestrating the taxpayers and treasuries. It is true that urbanized stadiums are quickly becoming the norm of baseball. Yet it is also true that baseball is functioning as a major lever of gentrification. During the summertime listening tour, McKenna reused as a talking point the idea that she as a Providence resident wished she could feel safe walking along the waterfront location on the old I-195 land corridor. The underlying implication, that those darned brown people make it unsafe, is a profoundly disparaging race- and class-based remark. Her invocation of the notion that a new baseball park would promote pro-active policing is certifiable lunacy when one recognizes the negative impact such policies have on people of color. Considering how Lucchino’s previous hosts in Baltimore were not exploding into demonstrations of celebratory glee for the police department last spring, only a member of the Chicago Cubs could miss how insidious this whole thing truly is.

Anyone who has followed this story in even a passing fashion this year can plainly see how truly desperate the ownership is now. Without any psychic abilities, it seems like they are ruing the day the late James Skeffington talked them into this because he thought he could pull a fast one and get his way due to the fact he had long-time connections going back to when his buddy Gov. J. Joseph Garrahy handed him a sweetheart real estate attorney deal. If one refers back to the original pitch at the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation he made with Lucchino, he looked genuinely stunned that people reacted in such a fashion to what he thought was an open-and-shut hustle. Now that Skeffington has passed on, the team is being led by a bunch of non-Rhode Islanders, which means they have absolutely zero connections and are left with a franchise whose reputation they destroyed and that they thought they could flip at a profit within five years. Why exactly are Rhode Island tax payers supposed to aid and abet such a scam?

At this point, with Lucchino threatening to pack up and leave town unless we pay his bills, I would offer a simple single word: SEYA!

…but the pressure needs to be kept on.

In a rally at the corner of Hope St and Doyle Avenue in Providence, 25 people turned out over the course of two hours to hold signs in an event that was described as not “a protest of any kind, just outreach the public!”

At least three anti-stadium groups, from a variety of political perspectives, were represented at the rally, spurring organizer David Norton to exclaim on Twitter, “Unite the Clans!!!”

A similar rally held last week had just five participants. Organizers hope for even more participation next Tuesday at 4:30. They see signs that Governor Gina Raimondo‘s position on the stadium is evolving, and at least one of the signs echoed a new talking point out of her office, “Take a fresh look at Pawtucket.”

“This effort goes beyond baseball,” said Tim Empkie. “It’s not about just one stadium. It’s about the use of public money for the public good.”

Despite what appears to be recent victories for stadium opponents in the form of RI Speaker of the House Nicholas Mattiello‘s admission that a deal with Brown University and the City of Providence seems unlikely, organizers Tim Empkie, Sharon Steele and David Norton all feel that the pressure needs to be kept on.

Murray Scott says that the video made today will be premiered in a couple of weeks on the Motif Magazine and GoLocal Prov news sites. In the meantime, below is a preview.

Keeping in mind that the speaker is not elected to his office by the citizens, but anointed by his peers, it is disturbing to read the news blips that report “progress” in the negotiations around a new PawSox stadium.

As we all know, the team, which has lost 80 of the 129 games it’s played (as of this writing), made a pitch to take over prime state-owned real estate in downtown Providence.

Claiming that McCoy Stadium, which was also subsidized by the citizens, was beyond repair, the Sox asked for an audacious blend of tax breaks, zoning variances and a huge subsidy—or else they might be forced leave Rhode Island.

This blend of corporate welfare and blackmail was greeted with loud disdain by voters on both sides of the (lopsided) aisle.

In short, the Sox struck out, and most of us went on vacation—although not on a paid junket to Durham —glad to see the end of the deal.

Now, House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello claims to be “very close” to an agreement—even though terms have not been publicly announced.

Really? Simply by making this announcement, Mattiello has lost an edge as a negotiator. So already, I can predict that no matter how much the terms of this “deal” have changed, it will still be sweet for the Sox.

The land that the speaker and the Sox want to blight is currently designated as open for space stormwater mitigation and parkland for citizens and taxpayers to enjoy.

The politicians are afraid that if they don’t “do something” then they will be excoriated for “losing the Sox” and faulted for not creating jobs.

But if it is bulldozed through the legislature, what will a stadium really offer Rhode Island? A short-term construction boom, a handful of seasonal minimum wage part time jobs, a seasonal sports and entertainment complex on prime real estate in the heart of the city, decreased parkland, increased traffic congestion and parking challenges on game days, and tax dollars funneled to a for-profit organization.

How is it possible that Mattiello and his happy team of yes-men-and-women forgot the last time that Rhode Island subsidized a baseball player’s dream?

It’s time to call game over at 38 Stadium on account of faulty rainmaking.

There has been great talk of late centered around the protests against the stadium. I want to offer a few ideas here about the strategy being offered in Providence by those who are adamant that the parcel of land remain designated as an open space green park.

First, it is important to begin with where this park idea comes from. Section 42-64.14-5 of H 5994- AN ACT RELATING TO PUBLIC PROPERTY AND WORKS, the law passed in 2011, reads:

However, parcels P2 and P4, as delineated on that certain plan of land captioned “Improvements to Interstate Route 195, Providence, Rhode Island, Proposed Development Parcel Plans 1 through 10, Scale: 1”=20’, May 2010, Bryant Associates, Inc., Engineers-Surveyors-Construction Managers, Lincoln, RI, Maguire Group, Inc., Architects/Engineers/Planners, Providence, RI,” shall be developed and continued to be used as parks or park supporting activity provided, however, that the city of Providence shall not be responsible for the upkeep of the parks unless a memorandum of understanding is entered into between the commission or the state and the city of Providence that grants full funding to the city for that purpose.

To that extent, the taxpayers have already funded landscape architects who have been developing plans for the future park, as seen in this slideshow.

But besides this issue is one that will determine the future development of the rest of the I-195 land. The stadium proposal is throwing a major monkey wrench into the drafting of a master permit by Department of Environmental Management, the Coastal Resources Management Council, and the Narragansett Bay Commission “that would shorten the time it takes for developers to build on former Route 195 land,” as Kate Bramson of the ProJo reported on May 2. The open park is intended to also include a stormwater mitigation mechanism that would shorten building permit wait times significantly. Bramson’s piece had a few lines worth repeating, including a quote from Quonset Development Corporation’s managing director Steven King:

“In Rhode Island, time is a killer,” King said. “When you get bogged down, your business seeks the path of least resistance.”

Bramson went on to explain that, if the stadium were to be built, it could trigger a domino-like reaction where the various agencies involved would have to revise their portions of the master permit and perhaps lead to further delays in development of the land. This is something that could end up being a real threat to construction jobs in Providence because these three agencies are not known for being anything but stringent. One of the alternatives would include underground construction in a part of Providence already well-known for traffic jams or using another parcel of land as a park where a building could have been. When I recently asked Syd McKenna, co-host of the PawSox listening tour, about this issue, she shrugged and said they intend the stadium to have a grass field, ergo no worries. But that is not exactly the same thing, the underground foundation of the stadium could end up failing to meet the mitigation requirements.

Another point I would encourage the Providence opposition to focus their energies on is making the team publicize the terms of the deal. Right now, the owners are trying to push the idea of a contract that would be ‘revenue neutral’, but I am unsure if that is just Rhode Island-ese for tax breaks, subsidies, and public funding. The simple message should be four words, ‘Show Us The Deal‘. While I respect the efforts of the people in Providence, I am skeptical about sending a petition to City Council based on the Providence Home Rule Charter Section 209 because when this strategy was used last so to raise the minimum wage, the General Assembly voided it by passing a law to bar municipalities from doing so, something they have done multiple times before. If the City Council or State House were to void the petition, that would be a tremendously disenchanting. But by engaging in a PR blitz calling for nothing more or less radical than transparency and no tax breaks, subsidies, and public financing, there is a further chance for success. And incidentally, the financing is the meta-issue that will resolve all the others by default. The park, the master permit, and the host of other peripheral concerns will take care of themselves if the PawSox do not get the financing they want, it is as simple as that. Having attended most of the Listening Tour stops, I can report that the speakers are doing very well at adapting to answer the tiny concerns, such as now including the claim that the ownership will build an adjacent green park so to appease those focused solely on that topic, but they consistently stonewall when asked to disclose the terms of the deal they want. Every decent attorney knows that kind of silence is the sign of a weak spot, so continuing to agitate on that point will continue to frustrate the owners.

These parcels have the potential to generate both years of joy at no cost for the general public and also revenues for the city when organizations reserve space for events. By contrast, a ‘revenue neutral’ stadium would cost money to attend and would send all event monies to the PawSox owners. Just last night, it was announced that Larry Lucchino, principal owner of the PawSox, is leaving his post at Fenway to devote more time to championing the stadium’s construction. This makes clear to me that, while they are probably getting desperate, this is not the end of anything, we have merely entered the eye of the hurricane.

In Ms. DiCola’s letter to Norton, she wrote the following:

Please be aware that, pursuant to Chapters 22-10 and 42-139 of the Rhode Island General Laws, all lobbyists and organizations they represent must register with the Rhode Island Department of State. Furthermore, all lobbying activity must be reported using our LobbyTracker online portal (lobbytracker.sos.ri.gov).

Organizations and their members must register if they are “promoting, opposing, ammending, or influencing in any manner the passage by the general assembly [sic] of any legislation or the action on that legislation by the governor.” RI Gen. Laws § 22-10-2. Registration is similarly required when organizations and their members promote, oppose, or influence “(A) any policy-making decisions or policy-making actions of the executive branch of government or of public corporations; or (B) any decisions or actions on the part of the executive branch of government or any public corporation involving the sale, lease, or other alienation or encumbrance of any real property owned or leased by the state or any public corporation.” RI Gen. Laws § 42-139-1(1)(i).

First, while Mr. Norton has named his group Organizing for Pawtucket, he actually does not fit the definition of a lobbyist.  According to state law, the term lobbyist denotes

[A]ny person who engages in lobbying as the appointed representative of another person. A person is “appointed” by another if he or she receives compensation for lobbying or pursuant to a mutual understanding or agreement engages in lobbying. “Compensation” means any remuneration received or to be received for services rendered as a lobbyist, whether in the form of a fee, salary, forbearance, forgiveness, reimbursement for expenses or any other form or recompense, and any combination thereof. Where lobbying is incidental to a person’s regular employment, his or her compensation for lobbying shall be reported as such and the lobbyist shall record the dollar amount of that portion of his or her compensation that is attributed to the time spent pursuing lobbying activities. In such instances, it shall not be necessary to disclose one’s total salary or the percentage of one’s time spent on lobbying. The lobbyist shall be required to disclose only his or her best good faith estimate of the dollar amount which corresponds to the portion of his or her time spent on lobbying activities.
Person means an individual, firm, business, corporation, association, partnership, or other group.

In the case of Mr. Norton, his efforts have been self-financed and driven by passion, not corporate dollars.

Second, while PawSox owner Larry Lucchino has registered as a lobbyist, his spokesman Dr. Charles Steinberg, as well as his various handlers and assistants, are not registered lobbyists.  In all likelihood, Lucchino may claim that his registration with the Department of State is meant as an umbrella to cover his workers also, something Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea may allow to pass because the various owners are also major donors to the Democratic Party.  But the hypocrisy is still obvious.

Third, one is forced to wonder based on these developments just what is going through the mind of Gina Raimondo if this is being allowed to fly.  On June 3, Raimondo’s office told WPRI News that they had received a 98% negative reaction from constituents.  Activists in this issue have noted this and see it as a signal from the Governor.  In terms of political ideology, there is much to discuss, but it terms of political strategy, she is obviously no fool.  This issue may prove to be one of her first major tests in office and she cannot afford to drive away that many votes, especially if she intends to make a bid for either a second term (probably) or an office in Washington DC (definitely).  Speaker Mattiello has no higher office to gain, he has alienated a large swathe of Democrats with his policy moves and statements that refute the basic planks of the National Democratic Party platform, such as choice, gun control, and the social safety net.  Raimondo is a different story and knows she is on thin ice, she had no electoral majority, she came to office with no mandate, and people voted against her by casting their ballot for Bob Healey, whereas Allan Fung was basically a catered offering to the die-hard Republicans.

It remains to be seen if such a similar epistle will be dispatched to the PawSox lobby.