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Marie St. Fleur's one-day candidacy for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts: It's time for the truth

By Eileen McNamara, Globe Columnist | September 10, 2006

Voters care less about who leaked the financial report that doomed Marie St. Fleur's one-day candidacy for lieutenant governor than whether the man who courted and then dumped her is lying about what he knew and when he knew it.

If Tom Reilly will not give a credible answer to that question, St. Fleur should.

The public scrutiny of her tax woes may be embarrassing for the state representative from Dorchester, but St. Fleur has not retreated to private life. She is still a public official with some obligation to share what she knows with Massachusetts voters so they can make an informed decision in the Democratic primary a week from Tuesday.

Sadly, she is not going to do it.

To recap, in January Reilly asked St. Fleur to be his running mate. He rescinded the invitation 24 hours later when her family's record of tax delinquencies came to light. At the time Reilly chastised his campaign for not doing a more thorough background check on St. Fleur, but last week we learned that his campaign had commissioned and received a detailed report on her financial troubles before he announced her selection.

In the double-speak that has come to characterize the attorney general's hapless run for governor, Reilly on Thursday morning said he had no recollection of the report, and a few hours later, during a televised debate with his Democratic opponents, accused a rival campaign of leaking the report he purportedly had no recollection of receiving.

Deval Patrick said it best: ``What's wrong is that apparently you knew about this information and then you told the public you didn't, and that's the reason why the question about trust is a valid one."

The question for St. Fleur is not about trust, but loyalty. She has maintained a steadfast silence since Reilly threw her under the campaign bus, apparently calculating that there is no political advantage in clarifying what really happened in January. If Reilly manages to overcome the incompetence of his own campaign and win the primary, she will have won the gratitude of her party's nominee. If he reaps what he has sown and loses big, she will be a political punch line for a while, but she will also be coasting to re election from the Fifth Suffolk District.

St. Fleur is running unopposed, the beneficiary of the good will of constituents, most of whom think her up-by-the-bootstraps biography trumps her tax transgressions. St. Fleur, who emigrated from Haiti as a child, was the first Haitian elected to public office in Massachusetts, winning a special election to the House in 1999. Since then, she has become vice chairwoman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee.

Her neighbors' empathy extends beyond forgiving a public official for falling behind on tax bills and student loan payments; many of them also ache for a mother trying to shield her children from a string of humiliating revelations about their father. (Jean B. Lauture faced a felony larceny charge in 1992 for allegedly altering expense reports and agreed to repay a portion of the $20,000 he was accused of stealing. Lauture, now separated from his wife, was arrested last month in a prostitution sting. )

Personal compassion has its place, but so does public accountability. Reilly is the state's chief law enforcement officer. He is asking voters to believe that, though his campaign paid investigators to vet St. Fleur's background, he neither read the report nor was briefed on it. He is trying to deflect attention from that implausible assertion by blaming Boston lawyer and Democratic activist Cheryl Cronin, a Christopher Gabrieli supporter, for leaking the report, an allegation she denies and Reilly says he cannot substantiate.

Voters should not have to guess at the truth. Marie St. Fleur knows the truth. If she wants to reclaim her reputation, if she wants to rebuild a career beyond the bounds of her neighborhood, if she wants to honor her oath to serve all the people of Massachusetts, she ought to tell the truth, and soon.

Eileen McNamara is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at mcnamara@globe.com.