Geoff Diehl

MassGOP Chair: Geoff Diehl campaign liable for bulk of party’s $600K debt

March 31, 2023 by pkzadmin

MassGOP officials say the party should not be on the hook for its whopping $600,000 debt, pointing to an audit that shows losing Republican gubernatorial candidate Geoff Diehl’s campaign is responsible for a majority of the charges.

Party Chair Amy Carnevale said the bulk, or $404,000 of the $602,000 in unpaid invoices she inherited from past Chair Jim Lyons are from advertising and media-related expenses authorized and signed by the Diehl campaign, “but incredibly were billed well after Election Day to the MassGOP.”

“Not on my watch,” Carnevale said in a Friday email to state Republicans. “We are auditing all these invoices to determine who is ultimately responsible for paying them because we have not received sufficient documentation from the vendor.”

The majority of these charges were for radio and television ads related to the governor’s race, according to MassGOP Executive Director John Milligan. The audit, he said, will differentiate between what expenses the party is liable for, which includes appearances authorized and hosted by MassGOP, and what Diehl’s campaign should pay for.

“There will be some amount of that $404,000 that the party is liable for,” Carnevale, who defeated Lyons for party leadership in January, told the Herald. “But it’s clear that a significant amount of that expense is Diehl-related, that should never have been billed to the MassGOP in the first place.”

Diehl and Lyons did not respond to a request for comment.

While on a “much smaller scale,” Milligan said a similar situation occurred with other Republican candidates, for state senator and representative, in the past election cycle.

Between those campaigns, the party was billed a total of $29,500 by Mittcom, the same vendor that sent the unpaid invoices for Diehl, he said.

The remainder of the party’s “enormous debt,” as described by Friday’s email, is due to issues with how the party handled candidate payment for coordinated mail, Milligan said.

Since MassGOP has an “indicia,” a marking that is used as a substitute for stamps, candidates will direct the businesses that design and print their campaign mail to bill the party, to receive its bulk mail discount.

Candidates will then send a check to MassGOP to cover those printing costs, Milligan said, “but what ended up happening here is that the money that was coming in from candidates was spent in other ways,” rather than going toward paying those small businesses.

“In this case, it’s not that what happened was in violation of any campaign finance law to my knowledge, but the candidates did give the money to the party with an expectation that their printers would be paid,” Milligan said.

Expenses the audit deems are not the party’s responsibility, however, will not be paid by MassGOP, he said. It will likely be up to the vendor, Mittcom, to redirect those invoices to the campaigns that authorized the payment.

Carnevale and Milligan are clear, though, on blaming former Chair Lyons, for saddling the party with its massive debt.

There are always leftover invoices when there’s a transition in party leadership, but Milligan said everyone he’s spoken to, whether from the Republican National Committee, state parties or vendors, “are continually shocked by the situation that we’ve been left with.”

“I would say that it’s definitely difficult,” Milligan said. “I think some donors are skittish about giving money to an organization to basically pay off what they see as other people’s debt. So that definitely is impacting us.”

The party is back in the black, for now, Carnevale said, thanks to $100,000 raised in March by MassGOP donors.

Carnevale said the party is also working with the Office of Campaign and Political Finance to audit invoices shared between the MassGOP and dozens of campaign committees, regarding $300,000 in spending that was misreported during the last campaign cycle.

This will require “scores of candidates” to amend their OCPF filings along with the party, work that Carnevale described as “ongoing but nearing conclusion.”

Further, Carnevale, for the first time, recommended that Republican State Committee members take the advice of outside counsel Brian Kelly, and vote to dismiss a lawsuit Lyons filed against MassGOP Treasurer Patrick Crowley last year, for control of the party’s bank account.

The lawsuit is the only one that remains of the four Carnevale said she inherited from the former chair, all of which involved using MassGOP finances to pursue inter-party litigation.

In the past, Carnevale said her position had been to let State Committee members determine whether to continue with the remaining litigation. But she said she decided to make her view known because continued litigation would result in “serious and significant” consequences for the party.

It’s time to get “past the cycle of Republicans suing Republicans,” she said, and focus on elections.

“This is a painful circumstance we inherited, and it will not be easy to resolve,” Carnevale said.

MassGOP chair under fire over alleged illegal probe of Maura Healey

January 18, 2023 by pkzadmin

MassGOP Treasurer Patrick Crowley said the party is now on the hook for a $52,467 payment, racked up as part of Chairman Jim Lyons’ alleged investigation into the governor’s personal life.

Crowley also provided emails to committee members — obtained by the Herald Wednesday — that he has alleged indicate Lyons may have violated state law in the process.

In an email to committee members, also obtained by the Herald, Crowley said documentation provided by private investigations firm STIRM group proved that Lyons had hired the firm to conduct opposition research into Healey, a Democrat, during the gubernatorial campaign.

Lyons, according to a demand letter that was sent to him by the firm, had also been working closely with Anthony Nader, chairman of the Mass Freedom Independent Expenditure Political Action Committee, in apparent violation of state law, which prohibits parties from working with PACs in any fashion.

“Attached is the information I received from the STIRM group regarding the bill for $52,467,” Crowley wrote. “While there is no signed engagement letter, in my opinion this information shows that Jim Lyons, as chair of the MA GOP, hired the STIRM group to conduct opposition research as outlined in the invoice and demand letter.”

As a result of this finding, Crowley said he amended MassGOP’s year-end Office of Campaign & Political Finance report “to show this as an outstanding liability.”

According to a demand letter from the firm, STIRM group “expended over 232 hours in services,” as part of the investigation into Healey’s purported romantic relationships with two state employees during her time as attorney general, but MassGOP made no payments.

Crowley informed committee members last week that he had reported Lyons to state authorities for potential violations of campaign finance laws.

State law prohibits parties from working with political action committees. According to a Herald columnist, Lyons was aware of these restrictions; he had sought an opinion from the OCPF last February regarding the legality of these interactions and was told they were prohibited.

Lyons did not respond to a phone call seeking comment, but is shown to have been in contact with STIRM representatives and Nader in the months leading up to the election, the emails allege. Republican gubernatorial candidate Geoff Diehl lost to Healey in a landslide.

“Most disturbingly, Chairman Lyons has directed STIRM group to seek payment of its outstanding amounts from Anthony Nader,” wrote George J. Nader, the firm’s counsel. “Anthony Nader has refused to answer any calls or emails from STIRM group.”

Crowley, who Lyons sued last year for control of the party’s bank account, did not respond to a request for comment.

A spokesperson for Healey declined comment.

Lyons faces at least five challengers in his bid for re-election as party chair. Committee members will vote on the leadership position Jan. 31 at Apex Entertainment in Marlboro.

MassGOP leadership race heats up, with some candidates vowing to forgo $100G salary to get job done

December 2, 2022 by pkzadmin

MassGOP Chair Jim Lyons rakes in roughly $100,000 per year as leader of a party that failed to win a single statewide election this November, a salary that two candidates eying his job vowed not to take amid the state committee’s fundraising difficulties.

“I have made a commitment to do the job without a salary,” said Amy Carnevale, a longtime MassGOP committee member who is mulling a run for chair.

Jon Fetherston, a former chair of the Ashland Republican Town Committee and longtime host of the “All Politics is Local” podcast, said he would also forgo a salary and work the chair position as a volunteer.

While Carnevale said she plans to make a decision on whether to seek party leadership before Christmas, Fetherston said Friday he is “definitely running” and will make a formal announcement in the “next couple of days.”

Per its bylaws, the MassGOP Committee has to elect a new chair in January, but the meeting has not yet been scheduled, and committee members are hearing that it could be pushed until the end of the month, the Herald has learned.

Given that the MassGOP State Committee has been operating without a budget for the entirety of 2022, it’s unclear how much salary Lyons is taking home this year, Carnevale said.

Carnevale said Lyons’ salary was budgeted at $97,500 in 2020. MassGOP Assistant Treasurer Anthony Ventresca, who cuts the paychecks, said the committee “did not vote any increase in salary” since that time.

But Carnevale, citing a conversation she had Friday with MassGOP Budget Committee Chair Patricia Saint Aubin, said that since fundraising has been down, there were months that Lyons did not take a salary.

Ventresca declined to comment on what months, or during how many, Lyons was not getting paid.

Lyons has not said whether he will run for a third term, and did not respond to a request for comment on Friday. But committee vice chair Jay Fleitman, who is jockeying for chairmanship, said Lyons provided him with a timeline prior to the election.

“Before I decided to run, I sat down and had lunch with him,” Fleitman said. “I told him if we did poorly in the elections, I was going to run. In our discussion, he mentioned to me that he would make a decision about whether to run some time this month, in December.”

Fleitman, a doctor who announced his run for chair the morning after the election, said he expects Lyons will make a decision that is “appropriate for the party, as well as for himself and his family.”

“I think he respected the fact that I’m going to do this,” he said. “I think I will respect whatever decision he makes in terms of whether he’s going to run. I think that’s the way we left it.”

In contrast to Carnevale and Fetherston, Fleitman said he would take a salary if he were to be elected chair, saying that since he lives in western Massachusetts, he would incur an additional expense in having to find an apartment in Boston or one of its suburbs.

“Part of taking a salary would be to accomplish that,” he said.

Christopher Lyon, a political consultant who declared his candidacy Wednesday, also said he had no intention to work pro bono.

“I would take a salary because I think it’s a full-time job,” Lyon said. “I view it as a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week, 365-day-a-year job. I think Jim Lyons is getting paid about $100,000. In my opinion, that’s not a lot of money.”

The candidates vying for chair may disagree on salary, but they all agree that they think it’s time for new leadership following last month’s disastrous election.

The heavy losses further splintered a party that for years has been marked by two clear factions led by the more conservative Trump-supporter Lyons and moderate outgoing Gov. Charlie Baker.

The candidates attributed a lack of fundraising success, or committee leadership’s unwillingness to raise funds for or support certain candidates, such as Charlie Baker’s endorsed pick for state auditor, Anthony Amore, as a contributing factor in those election losses.

“Massachusetts Republicans don’t always agree on a lot, but I think most Massachusetts Republicans acknowledge, at least privately, that we need to make some changes,” Lyon said.

Fleitman said there were a lot of things that were problematic with the election. The MassGOP committee does not have the structures in place to support its candidates, not only financially, he said, and there were problems with some of the selected candidates.

“I know Geoff Diehl — he’s a really good person, hard-working person,” Fleitman said of the losing Republican gubernatorial candidate. “It was clear to many of us that once he was endorsed by Donald Trump, his campaign was dead in the water in Massachusetts.

“Many of us were concerned that that would contaminate the down-ballot races as well. I think that was part of it.”

Sunday Notebook: Now comes the transfer of power

November 13, 2022 by pkzadmin

If you’re wondering how things went on Election Night for Democrats and Republicans in Massachusetts, just consider what was going on at each side’s results watch party shortly after 10 p.m. Tuesday.

Democrat Maura Healey and her running mate, Kim Driscoll, had already given speeches thanking their supporters for electing them governor and lieutenant governor, making history in a handful of respects along the way. The Associated Press projected Healey as the winner immediately as polls closed at 8 p.m., making the Democratic Party’s gathering at the Fairmont Copley Plaza in Boston festive right from the jump.

So festive, in fact, that Attorney General-elect Andrea Campbell had to contend with rowdy revelers when she took the hotel ballroom stage to make her own speech around 10:25 p.m.

“If you want to be loud and drink, go out there,” Campbell said, directing celebrants to the hotel lobby after having to shush some in the crowd during her remarks.

Across town at the Boston Harbor Hotel, where the Republican ticket of Geoff Diehl and Leah Allen was huddled, supporters were also being told to leave the venue even as the campaign insisted that the race was still far from over.

“Very shortly, we’re going to have to turn this room back over to the hotel,” attorney general candidate Jay McMahon told the assembled crowd. “Very shortly, you’re going to have to leave this room. But go ahead home, watch your TVs, watch the results. Do not believe it until 100% of the vote is counted!”

But just before the GOP crowd was evicted — along with uneaten oversized gingerbread people in the likenesses of Diehl and Allen from Ginger Betty’s in Quincy — Diehl took the microphone at 10:55 p.m. to thank his supporters and tell them that he had called Healey to concede the race.

His supporters, who had been told all night by McMahon and others involved with the campaign not to believe anything until every single vote had been counted, greeted their candidate with shouts of “every vote counts!”

“I understand every vote counts, it will be counted. I know the state will count those votes, OK? But right now, with the gap that we have, it is impossible to close. So I have called Maura Healey tonight,” Diehl said to grumbles from the crowd. “So thank you all for being here. I spoke with her, I congratulated her on her win. The people of the commonwealth have spoken, I respect their choice.”

Democrats swept statewide

Voters not only chose Healey and Driscoll to be governor and lieutenant governor, but they also picked Democrats for the other four Constitutional offices. Come January, there will not be a single Republican elected statewide in Massachusetts, and the party’s highest-ranking elected members will be Minority Leaders state Sen. Bruce Tarr and state Rep. Brad Jones.

Tarr’s GOP caucus in the Senate will remain at three senators out of 40 after state Rep. Shawn Dooley came up short in his purple-district challenge of Democrat state Sen. Becca Rausch. The House GOP caucus that Jones leads is going to shrink by at least three members as Democrats succeeded in flipping seats on Cape Cod and the North Shore.

With at least 132 seats secured, there will be more Democrats serving in the Mass. House at the start of the next two-year session than at any time since the 2009-2010 session, when they outnumbered Republicans 144 to 16.

MassGOP looks at leadership changes

The blame game took off in a hurry on the GOP side. The party has been fractured ever since Chairman Jim Lyons began a pivot away from the moderate model that has worked here for years (see: Republican Govs. Baker, Swift, Cellucci and Weld) and towards a full-on embrace of the twice-impeached former President Donald Trump.

By Wednesday morning, Lyons’ number-two, MassGOP Vice Chairman Jay Fleitman, announced that he plans to run for party chairman in January and declared that, “To say our party in Massachusetts needs rebuilding is a gross understatement.” Lyons has not said whether he will stand for re-election.

Republican Congressional candidate Jeffrey Sossa-Paquette, who lost his challenge of U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, wrote in a post-mortem email, “It’s critical to understand the Massachusetts Republican Party is beyond repair for years to come.”

Baker endorsed only one Republican running statewide this cycle, unsuccessful auditor candidate Anthony Amore, and on Wednesday seemed to suggest that the party lost big because it put losing candidates on the ballot.

“Elections are about the people on the tickets,” he said after hosting Healey to start the transition process.

Coming into this election cycle, Diehl had been elected to four terms in the Mass. House but lost a race for Mass. Senate to Sen. Michael Brady and lost a U.S. Senate race to U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Four years ago, McMahon lost the attorney general’s race and Amore lost the contest for secretary of state. Rayla Campbell lost a write-in campaign for Congress in 2020. And the party did not even field a candidate this year for treasurer.

While this year’s candidates were sweating out Election Night, a whole bunch of candidates of elections past took the opportunity Tuesday night to try their hands at political punditry.

NECN/NBC 10 Boston had a huge panel of talking heads who offered commentary as results came in Tuesday. It included Chris Doughty, whom Diehl defeated in this year’s Republican gubernatorial primary; Tanisha Sullivan, who lost her primary challenge to Secretary of State William Galvin this year; former Deval Patrick aide and one-time Congressional candidate Jesse Mermell; Beth Lindstrom, who lost the 2018 Republican primary for U.S. Senate to Diehl; and former MassGOP chair Jennifer Nassour, who was a candidate for Boston City Council in 2019.

Over on WCVB, outgoing Sen. Eric Lesser, who fell to Driscoll in this year’s lieutenant governor primary, was opining on the strong showing for Bay State Democrats. WBZ-TV had a panel that included former U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy III, and Boston 25 turned to former city councilor and Boston mayoral candidate Annissa Essaibi George.

After Tuesday’s results, TV stations will have plenty of former Republican candidates to add to their panels before the next election.

STORY OF THE WEEK: By electing Healey and Driscoll, Massachusetts voters checked off a number of firsts: the first woman and first openly gay person elected governor in Massachusetts, the first out lesbian to be elected governor in any state in America, the first sitting Massachusetts attorney general elected to the corner office since AG became an elected, not appointed, office more than a century ago, and along with another tandem elected Tuesday in Arkansas, one of the first all-women executive teams elected in the United States.

SONG OF THE WEEK: After eight years of a Republican governor, Democrats will have a hold on Beacon Hill and it will be the beginning of a new age.

Geoff Diehl concedes race to Healey, asks supporters to do same

November 8, 2022 by pkzadmin

After nearly three hours of his campaign refusing to admit defeat, and indicating a potential challenge to Tuesday’s election results, Geoff Diehl finally conceded the race to Maura Healey.

“Right now, with the gap that we have, it is impossible to close it,” Diehl said shortly before 11 p.m., about three hours after the Associated Press called the race for Healey, and unofficial results showed her leading by a 27-point margin, with 37% of the votes counted.

Diehl, a Republican and former state representative, said he spoke with Healey and congratulated her on her win.

“The people of the commonwealth have spoken,” Diehl said after supporters shouted at him not to concede. “I respect their choice. And I ask everyone who supported me and Leah (Cole Allen) to give her the same opportunity that I would have asked for if the shoe were on the other foot.”

However, three hours earlier, things appeared to be heading toward a less conciliatory outcome.

Almost as quickly as the gubernatorial race was called for Healey, Rick Green, the emcee for Diehl’s election night party, went on stage to question the results.

“As we sit here, there are lines across the commonwealth, of voters still waiting to cast their vote in towns and small cities for Geoff Diehl and Leah Cole Allen,” Green said shortly after 8 p.m.

“What you see on your TVs is nothing more than a projection of the mainstream media and what they believe will happen.”

The race was called minutes after polls closed, with percentages listed at zero for both the Democrat attorney general and Diehl.

“We have reason to believe that this may go down as a worse call than Arizona in 2020,” Green said, telling attendees in the Wharf Room of the Boston Harbor Hotel to stay put. “We believe this is faulty information and we will have more time.”

An hour later, Diehl campaign manager Amanda Orlando doubled down on that assessment, saying that with less than 5% of the vote counted — and Healey leading by 15 points — it was “irresponsible” and “extremely premature” for the Associated Press to call the race.

“In the last 45 minutes, we’ve seen red dots pop up on the electoral map as real results are coming in,” Orlando said. “I’ll also remind folks that back in 2016, the Associated Press called the presidential election for Hillary Clinton and I think we all know how that one turned out.”

The message matched the optimistic tone that was struck by Orlando and MassGOP Chairman Jim Lyons less than an hour before results started to come in, despite polls in recent weeks that showed Diehl was trailing Healey by double digits.

“I think tonight’s about us winning,” Lyons told reporters. “We’ve seen the polls. We understand the polls. You guys have all seen the polls, but we think Geoff’s run a great campaign and we think that we’re gonna win.”

Lyons said Republicans felt low voter turnout — with fewer Democrats and more Independent voters expected — was going to give Diehl and other party candidates a good chance to win on Tuesday night.

While Lyons dismissed the notion that not having the endorsement of popular outgoing Republican Gov. Charlie Baker hurt Diehl’s chances, Orlando said the campaign was happy to have the support of former President Donald Trump.

“We certainly don’t regret it,” Orlando said. “First of all, he supported Donald Trump back in 2016, as did a million people in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that year, right. So we’re in good company as far as where the voters are.”

However, Eric Fehrnstrom, a former top aide to former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s 2012 Republican presidential campaign, said an endorsement from Trump did not do Diehl any favors.

“Donald Trump is still the center of the political universe for Republicans,” Fehrnstrom told the Herald. “As long as that remains the case, Republican candidates in liberal Massachusetts are cursed to wandering in the wilderness.”

Fehrnstrom said successful Republican candidates for Massachusetts governor have, in the past, run on some combination of balancing the budget, tax cuts and creating more jobs.

However, the problem with that approach this year, he said, is that there’s low unemployment, a balanced budget, and “a record amount of money is being returned to taxpayers in the form of refunds.”

“Yes, prices are high, and gas and groceries cost more, but no one blames Maura Healey for inflation,” Fehrnstrom said. “Because Geoff Diehl didn’t have a strong economic case to make, voters are left to think about the social issues they care about, where Republicans do not score very well.”

He pointed to Diehl’s primary opponent, Chris Doughty, as a candidate the Republican party used to rally around, “a successful and pragmatic businessman who said he would work across the aisle to get things done.”

“The problem is those people cannot make it out of a Republican primary unless they swear loyalty to Trump, and that makes them unelectable in blue states like Massachusetts,” Fehrnstrom said.

Sunday Notebook: Christmas in July, in November

November 6, 2022 by pkzadmin

It was a warm 60-degree day on Beacon Hill, and under the Golden Dome senators were engaged in a miniature debate on taxes and spending. What month is it again?

The days have grown shorter, there’s less than a week ’til Election Day, and yet multiple observers remarked it felt like the Legislature was churning through formal sessions — a surreal summertime kind of vibe.

At the center of the action was a nearly $3.8 billion spending package that Democratic leaders brought to life a couple days after Halloween, stitching together a long-stalled economic development bill with a spending bill to close the books on fiscal 2022. They chopped the head off their own tax reform plans in the process, with some Democrats instead looking to grab some of the limelight associated with the automatically-triggered tax relief that’s underway, with checks and direct deposits beginning to flow on Tuesday.

The closeout budget dealt with a fiscal year that ended June 30 (and ideally would be settled in September, if you ask the comptroller), and talks on the economic development bill had slammed into a wall on the night of July 31.

“Keep in mind, the world doesn’t end on July 31,” State Sen. Michael Rodrigues said back on July 28.

Gov. Charlie Baker has more than a week to act on the bill, which includes big buckets of money like $350 million to help hospitals experiencing financial strain from the COVID-19 pandemic, $195 million for nursing facilities and rest homes, and $540 million for clean energy and climate resilience programs, along with niche items like $100,000 for the slow-footed State Seal Commission.

And then there’s the earmarks for back home, like $50,000 towards the observance of Hyde Park’s 155th anniversary, $25,000 to help the Plymouth Area Chamber of Commerce create a Duxbury Chamber affiliate, and $100,000 for emergency repairs at the VFW post in Revere (which Revere lawmakers can also highlight on Veterans Day in their community).

Some State House folks call it the “Christmas in July” bill because of all the money for communities that individual reps and senators can point to as a proud accomplishment with direct local impact. And, the bill would normally have been wrapped up in July.

Now it’s Christmas in July, in November. Should make for some good campaign stops over the weekend if the subject is local projects, but the timing is awkward if constituents want to know about once-promised reforms to the estate tax, or increases to child tax credits or the renter’s tax deduction cap.

House budget chief state Rep. Aaron Michlewitz last month said no, the election date wasn’t a factor in negotiations over the giant spending bill.

But when House Speaker Ron Mariano unveiled details of the final product to the press Wednesday, he offered a candid look into an elected official’s mindset with less than a week until Election Day.

“It’s been no secret what was in the bill. And there’s a lot of important items in there for members, as they’re back home fighting to get reelected. I think there’s a self-interest in making sure some of these projects get done,” said the Quincy Democrat, who is himself unopposed next Tuesday.

Maybe that was just the trick to skate the bill through the chambers during informal sessions, when a single objection can shut down the whole show.

Democratic leaders have said they were caught offguard when the state hit its revenue cap under a 1986 law known as Chapter 62F, to the tune of around $3 billion which started flowing back to taxpayers this week in the form of rebate checks.

Under 62F, those rebates are issued in an amount proportional with a person’s 2021 tax bill, meaning wealthier taxpayers are seeing heftier checks than low-income people. They’re rebates, not exactly the “relief” for average citizens that legislative Democrats proposed earlier this year in their tax plan.

“I feel bad for renters, I feel really bad for all those low-income taxpayers of Massachusetts who don’t pay federal taxes, and there are a lot of people who have dependent care issues, some of which relate to the pandemic and some of which are just life,” Gov. Charlie Baker said Thursday.

The narrative seemed a bit different between the House and Senate on the topic of 62F this week.

Asked what sort of relief could now flow to lower-income folks, Mariano responded by saying Chapter 62F was “the system that the governor chose to use, and we philosophically raised some questions about this.”

On the Senate floor, Rodrigues trumpeted the fact that the compromise bill accounted for the $3 billion in “historic levels of tax relief to over 3 million tax filers,” although that was already underway before the bill was even filed.

Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, the lone Republican senator to attend the session in person, sounded like he objected at heart — at least to the cleaving of tax reforms that were dangled in front of Bay Staters for months. But in the interest of “statespersonship,” he said, he wouldn’t derail the train for want of one car.

After the branches adjourned Thursday, the Department of Revenue sent out another report of bulkier-than-expected revenues for the month of October — $2.359 billion, which was nearly $300 million over the Baker administration’s benchmarks.

Meanwhile, candidates have been getting in some final campaigning before Election Day casts away this week’s summertime aura.

Change is the only constant

Vice President Kamala Harris brought some star power to the campaign stage for a Roxbury rally with Democratic nominees including gubernatorial frontrunner Maura Healey and attorney general candidate Andrea Campbell.

Healey and her Republican rival Geoff Diehl both made stops in the North End, where Diehl held a fundraiser at Massimino’s on Wednesday and Healey filled cannoli for the cameras Thursday afternoon.

In the meantime, Gov. Charlie Baker’s staff are prepping for the next administration. His office disclosed that chief of staff Tim Buckley and senior advisor Elizabeth Mahoney, both of whom were part of Baker’s transition into office, will lead his transition work with representatives of the next administration.

MBTA General Manager Steve Poftak is already eyeing the exit, too, telling T workers on Tuesday that he’ll be departing Jan. 3, two days before Baker’s successor takes the oath of office.

Baker continued to pay attention to the judiciary ahead of his impending “lone walk.” The governor tossed out three more nominations for the court system on Wednesday, and it’s interesting to see who gets these lame-duck appointments.

One magistrate job went to former New Bedford state Rep. Joe McIntyre, a Democrat who left the House in the ’90s in an attempt to pick off Bristol County Sheriff Tom Hodgson, who was running for his first full term. Baker has stumped for the veteran Republican sheriff during this year’s campaign, and now he’s handed a plum to Hodgson’s onetime foe, too.

Another magistrate position went to Pamela Gauvin-Fernandes, the law partner of state Rep. Chris Markey, another South Coast Democrat.

Worth mentioning that Governor’s Councilor Joe Ferreira, Democrat-South Coast, has been perhaps the most consistent vote in Baker’s corner for the past eight years at the council meetings where judges and magistrates are confirmed.

Diehl confident, despite polls

Polls are tricky things, and Republican gubernatorial candidate Geoff Diehl took issue this week with how recent polls show his chances next week. But leaving aside sample sizes, margins of error, methodology, … what a huge swing eight years can produce when we look back at how respondents have felt about driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants.

A Suffolk University/Boston Herald poll released almost exactly eight years ago found voters cold to the idea, with 70% opposed. (The same poll showed Republican Charlie Baker three points ahead of Democrat Attorney General Martha Coakley.)

Fast forward to UMass Lowell’s survey out this week, in which 53% of respondents said they’d vote yes on Question 4 to uphold the Legislature’s new licensing law that’s set to take effect next summer.

Revisting sectarian battle lines

Talking to reporters this week, Speaker Mariano was still referring to Russia as the “Soviet Union,” something folks noticed during the divestment discussion back in March. But there was a bigger ’80s/’90s throwback over at Boston City Hall when City Councilor Frank Baker revisited the sectarian battle lines of an earlier era.

It’s the latest headline in a weekslong tangle over redrawing the city’s political districts. Councilor Baker said a priest told him that Boston’s Catholic clergy were “all talking about this process right here, they’re viewing this exercise as an all-out assault on Catholic life in Boston.”

“And it’s not lost on them that the person leading the charge on this is a Protestant from Fermanagh (Northern Ireland),” Baker was quoted as saying in the Dorchester Reporter, referring to Redistricting Committee Chair Liz Breadon.

The Archdiocese of Boston responded that “we do not believe the (redistricting) process is an assault on Catholic life,” adding, however, that with all the issues and debate “perhaps more time is required for all parties to deliberate.”

That wasn’t the only intersection of religion and politics this week.

It was Governor’s Councilor Marilyn Pettito Devaney’s turn to lead the council in prayer at the start of its Wednesday session, and she promised from the outset that it would be “very unique.”

The Watertown Democrat’s prewritten prayer included an autobiographical account of recent disagreements, her crusade to restore a livestream of council meetings, and several allegations of fellow councilors bullying her and working against her.

“Dear God, I am asking you to intercede in terminating the anti-civility atmosphere that exists here,” Devaney said before she was interrupted by her colleague Councilor Mary Hurley, who called across the chamber, “Is this a prayer or a speech?”

Hurley revisited the matter during a separate debate later in the meeting to say she was “personally offended, as a good Catholic, that you would use the prayer to God to make a political speech.”

Devaney said Hurley, a retired judge, was out of order. The two have been at loggerheads for years.

STORY OF THE WEEK: Could be that the last big bill of the 192nd General Court just got over the last hurdle.

SONG OF THE WEEK: Sen. Bruce Tarr said he tried reading the bill backward but couldn’t find any permanent tax reforms in there. State Sen. Mike Rodrigues told him that it isn’t a Beatles album that gives you “special messages” backward and that the tax reform effort is not dying.