Rookie Suffolk sheriff flat out of excuses

8 September 2004

For someone who holds herself out as a professional, Andrea Cabral sure acts a lot like a politician.

In the worst sense of the word.

Cabral, appointed Suffolk County sheriff by Acting Gov. Jane Swift in late 2002, is now running for election. Her sole opponent is a Boston city councilor, Stephen Murphy, and, since there is no Republican running, next Tuesday's primary effectively determines the winner.

The job is less political than it is managerial. Two years ago, former U.S. Attorney Donald Stern chaired a commission that ripped into the rampant patronage and management failures of then-Sheriff Richard Rouse. The charges proved Rouse's undoing. What the sheriff's job required, the commission concluded, was a penal professional (in Massachusetts, the sheriff runs the county jails). A career prosecutor, Cabral appeared to fit the bill. She is also African-American and female, two feel-good attributes that fit nicely with Boston's growing sense of itself as a more tolerant and diverse place.

Moreover, one could easily caricature Murphy as just the kind of guy the Stern Commission warned against. He's a political creature who several times ran for city councilor before landing the job in 1997. Since then he's clearly been looking for something else - he explored running for Congress in 2001 and he ran for state treasurer in 2002. And while Murphy can claim some legitimate private-sector management credentials, even he acknowledges that his hands-on experience in law enforcement is weak.

I like Murphy personally but respected Cabral's credentials. While his political acumen gave him an edge in waging a campaign, judged purely by resume she seemed the stronger. Yet her brief tenure as sheriff has been marked by a disturbing series of problems. She calls them rookie mistakes. I think they call into question her fitness for the job.

For example, six months after she pledged to the governor, as a quid pro quo for getting the job, that she would run as a Republican, Cabral switched parties.

OK, perhaps that's a rookie mistake. Keeping your word, after all, is something you learn only after much experience. A novice at politics, how was Cabral supposed to know that she was expected to hold true to her promises?

When Cabral refused to allow her employees on active military duty to accrue their regular benefits - seemingly contrary to state law and certainly contrary to the practice of other governmental agencies - I suppose one could chalk it up as just another rookie mistake. She had never managed a large number of employees before and, I guess, didn't understand it was important to treat them fairly. Over time, she'd learn.

When Cabral blurred the line between her office and her campaign - sending sheriff's department employees out to deliver furniture to her campaign office, using department resources for fund-raising appeals or sending out campaign press releases on departmental stationary - it all seemed part of Cabral's political naivete. She'd never run for office before and didn't realize it was important to follow the law. A few more years under her belt and she'd get it right.

When she fired an employee who questioned the department's preparedness for the Democratic National Convention and then terminated another for cooperating with a federal investigation into prisoner abuse, it seemed yet another rookie error. Eventually, I suppose, she'd learn to stop being defensive, to accept criticism and even to understand that federal inquiries were part of the job.

Excuses, excuses, excuses - each one more difficult than the last.

But the latest stunt can't be excused. Indeed, the latest is, in a perverse sense, brilliant: the kind of bold, over-the-top, hubristic move that makes even veteran pols gasp with amazement.

Last week, just before the election, the sheriff's office decided to launch a massive series of (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) "public interest" advertisements. According to press reports, the buying spree included 1,800 spots on cable TV, ads in a dozen newspapers and 100 placards in subway stations. Their ostensible purpose was to discourage crime (as if the gang members spraying bullets on our streets are home at night watching CNN) and to further that end, they (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) would prominently feature Cabral's name and picture. The tag line for the ads, all of which are funded by public money, was (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) "Choose wisely."

The ads deservedly provoked a storm of outrage. I think we all know the game here and I think we all know that this was no rookie mistake. It was instead the clever ploy of a calculating politician, one who will use every trick in the book to make sure she wins.

Murphy, untried and untested, no doubt represents a risk for voters. But while trying to claim the mantle of professional, Cabral looks little more than a political hack. It's time to try someone else.