of we ve had blizzards, an upheaval in city politics with menino dropping out. everybody focused on that. then a big tax debate on beacon hill with the governor s tax plan and then all of a sudden, we have this marathon bombing, which has just taken the oxygen out of the air. these guys like markey, lynch particularly and the two republicans who were trying to challenge mike sullivan, the front-runner on the republican side, need more time to get into this race and get a challenge. build up a challenge to it. because they re not getting there. and that s what s amazing. i want to look at the republican side a minute. i talk to many democrats around here and they re only focused on one guy and that s gomez. that s the candidate they think if he gets out of the primary, he presents a real threat in the special general election. they re very dismissive of sullivan, who appears to be the favorite, because it all depends
in the massachusetts races. believe it or not, and the frantic fight to the finish. before last monday, much of the political oxygen was taken up by issues playing out nationally. candidates were arguing over gun, bipartisanship and the keystone pipeline. dan winslow and gabriel gomez were debating washington politics and the se guester. that was before two bombs exploded. lynch stood behind deval patrick at a press conference on the attack. for lynch, his ties were personal. he had known the family of martin richard for 25 years. this is a wonderful, wonderful family. you know, the richard family and the o brien family, you know, denise s maiden name is o brien. just good people. a second bombing victim,
got pretty nasty between lynch and markey. this was a race many in washington just assumed markey was going to walk away with. john kerry signed off, sort of endorsed, but technically didn t since diplomats don t endorse, but he might as well have. markey cannot put away lynch, can he? lynch is there. he s been out working hard. markey has been more behind the scenes in this race and most operatives, most people analyze this think markey still has the upper hand. i wouldn t count on lynch. he s a real scrappy guy, fought hard for every election he s been in and won them. hair has been on fire as one political operative told me. this is a progressive voting block that is going to dominate this election and that s marke yrk s group.