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‘Progressive’ City Council abuses vulnerable persons—and free speech
This could be the big one
East Cambridge Property
CCURE initiative petition 1999
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Anthony Galluccio—politics and real estate
Cambridge City Councilor Anthony Galluccio has an office on Mass. Avenue, a few blocks down from James Batmasian’s old real estate office. Not many years ago, James Batmasian ran his real estate operations from this office.
Now Batmasian resides in Florida. A lot of people are worried because he is selling his Boston-area real estate holdings, which include hundreds of apartments in North Cambridge, West Somerville, and Arlington.
The usually voluble Councilor Galluccio has not had much to say about the impending sales of the Batmasian properties. It happens that Marta and James Batmasian of Boca Raton, Florida, donated $1,000 to Galluccio’s most recent city council campaign. The Batmasians don’t really stand out among the supporters of this ambitious politician who has virtually married the real estate business.
As a high school student at Cambridge Rindge and Latin, "The Gooch" was obsessively against the city’s rent control system. That’s when he got the "Gooch" nickname, from the character of a bully on Diff’rent Strokes whose face, ironically, was never seen on the TV screen.
Free beer!
In 1991, Gooch organized the anti-rent control "Young Independents," which he called "a bunch of young kids who came just because they heard there was going to be a good party."
This bunch distinguished itself by stationing a sound truck outside the North Cambridge home of City Councilor Ed Cyr on election night, blasting a campaign song at top volume until the wee hours of the morning.
Apparently Councilor Galluccio is still a night person. At least he was on the morning of December 19, 2005 when he had an auto accident in Boston.
The incident might have passed into the night of oblivion with so many others—but one of the crash victims happened to be an attorney with his own blog site.Two months later, the incident was on Channel 5 news, then in the Boston Herald.
Around ten witnesses said that Councilor Galluccio plowed into the rear of another car, causing a chain reaction in which one driver claims to have been injured. Another driver says he physically removed Galluccio from his car because he seemed about to drive it right through a crowd of people and away from the scene. Boston cops reportedly refused demands to administer a sobriety test to the "legless" Councilor. With unwonted courtesy, they drove him to a hospital and fined him $50 for a minor traffic infraction.
For those who are interested, further unpublished details have been posted at www.BlueMassGroup.com.
Following up this story, the Boston Herald's Dave Wedge found that in 1993, then-Governor William Weld had pardoned some earlier convictions for theft and drunk driving—just in time for Mr. Galluccio's first run for city council.In those days, Galluccio lived within a few blocks of Weld, and next year, each played a key role in the Question 9 campaign which the real estate interests launched to repeal rent control in Massachusetts.
Real estate business leaders acknowledged Galluccio's help in Question 9’s narrow 46-44 percent victory: "Anthony brought with him his family and his large, dedicated group of friends and supporters, most of whom didn’t even own rental property, but were there out of loyalty to Anthony."
Indeed, Anthony Galluccio had spent the 1994 election season working his tail off for the rent control repeal. His work didn’t cost the landlords anything, because he was formally a campaign "coordinator" on the payroll of William F.Galvin, running that year for Secretary of the Commonwealth.
The Galvin connection
The Galvin-Galluccio connection was significant five years later. In 1999, a rent control petition was denied a place on the Cambridge ballot. The Election Commission had given false information about the number of signatures they needed.
Changes mandated by the 1993 federal "Motor Voter Law" have resulted in a large number of people remaining registered in cities long after they have moved away. This makes it almost impossible to pass a binding initiative—because the number of votes to win is a percentage of the number of registered voters.
A suit against the City of Cambridge was later dropped in exchange for the city council’s unanimous backing for a home rule petition to remedy this problem. Secretary William F. Galvin’s office opposed the City’s home rule petition at its 2001 Legislative hearing.
How he got on the council
Shortly after the 1994 election, legal difficulties forced Bill Walsh off the Cambridge city council, and Galluccio took his seat.
Within weeks of winning re-election in 1995, Mr. Galluccio was running against Alice Wolf in the 1996 Democratic primary for State Rep. He blamed his loss that year on "a huge effort to paint me as being against tenants," which he said wasn’t fair, because rent control was over and voters should forgive and forget.
But the big landlords didn’t forget the Gooch: they gave him at least $17,000 in campaign contributions that year. In 1998, he lost a second primary challenge to Wolf. His campaign class-baited her as a "privileged Brattle Street resident," and then he complained about being "stereotyped" by self-styled progressives.He was as progressive as anyone, he said.
Yet in 1999, the Boston Business Journal quoted Galluccio saying, "there are many people who would label me pro-business—I would wear that label with pride." He wasn’t talking about just any kind of business; he was speaking to "a gaggle of high-powered developers and deal makers" at the headquarters of Spaulding & Slye.
"Galluccio has gone to bat for some behemoth projects," wrote the Journal. "Everyone from developers and large commercial property owners to the heads of local trade unions and construction companies" wrote him checks.
In 1998, Councillor Galluccio opposed an Area Four zoning petition that neighbors wanted to protect against a large development proposed by Bulfinch Company. Later he held up the deal which the neighbors were forced to make with Bulfinch as a shining example of civic cooperation.
Today he is playing the same role as an active member of the City’s Harvard-Riverside "planning process."