Boston Herald
Joe Battenfeld
Friday, August 10, 2012

Smearing someone’s family is about as low as it gets in politics, but Massachusetts Democrats are setting a new standard in sliminess.

The party’s new website targeting Republican congressional candidate Richard Tisei claims to show his family’s “web of fraud and deceit,” but all it really shows is how dirty the Democrats are willing to get to win an election.

Tisei’s parents, including his deceased father, Ralph, were never charged with any crime, and Tisei himself has never been accused of wrongdoing. But those inconvenient facts don’t seem to matter to Democrats and U.S. Rep. John Tierney.

The party’s allegations of “fraudulent” activities, shady business dealings and yes, even a car accident make the Tisei family seem almost like … the Kennedys.

All this because Tisei’s campaign has pointed out Tierney’s family activities, which include actual crimes such as filing false tax returns, racketeering and drug smuggling. Tierney himself also could be the subject of an ethics investigation.

So the Democratic party has apparently decided the only way they can keep Tierney’s seat is to throw Tisei’s family under the bus — and drive over it a few hundred times.

If this strategy sounds familiar, it should — it’s the same one being used by the Obama campaign to smear Mitt Romney. So far Massachusetts Democrats haven’t accused Tisei of killing a woman, but it’s still early.

“I don’t feel like we’re going after his parents, I’m going after (Tisei),” Democratic chairman John Walsh said in an interview.

That’s funny, because the first line in the party website says, “The Tisei family businesses were found by a federal judge to have engaged in widespread, persistent, and blatant deception.” The next five paragraphs also are about the Tisei parents’ business problems and a court judgment against them.

Read More