Local News: 20-term incumbent state rep replaced by some girl

Editors' Note: As long-time Spy readers know, the Spy prides itself not only on its comprehensive national and international news coverage.  It's also the paper of record for Old Sludgebury, Mass. and the Sludge River Valley, a typical New England mill town still recovering from the closure of its asbestos mills in 1957.  Topping today's local headlines: a shocking upset in the recent primaries.

Local News:

20-TERM STATE REP LOSES
TO SOME FOREIGN GIRL

By Hacky Carp
Local Politics Editor

The career of 20-term incumbent state Representative Whiff “the Stiff” O'Bribe came to a shocking and unexpected end Primary Night, when he lost his re-election bid in a landslide primary loss to some girl no one ever heard of, Ania Mossadegh, M.D., Ph.D.

Rep. O'Bribe had expected to coast to victory and in fact had not bothered to leave his yacht, anchored off Hyannis, to so much as set foot in his district, which he had represented since 1978.  In a brief speech at his Election Night party at Burke's Pub, owned by his brother-in-law and longtime Old Sludgebury mayor James X. Burke, O'Bribe sounded bitter.

The long-serving rep was stunned by his upset loss
to what his supporters referred to as “some brown girl”

“I've worked my ass off for the people of Old Sludgebury, whether they were cops, firemen, parishioners at St. Pederast's, or just regular guys and this is the thanks I get?”

Sources close to Rep. O'Bribe say that he never took the primary challenge from political newcomer Mossadegh seriously, even though the the percentage of voters who identified themselves as Irish alcoholics had declined from 80% in 1980 to 14% today.

At a raucous victory rally held at her family's popular Middle Eastern restaurant on Asbestos Avenue, Dr. Mossadegh attributed her victory to hard work and perseverance.  “Where else but in America could a young Iranian girl come to America with her parents, study hard, go to college, and become a doctor and now your nominee for state representative?” Dr. Mossadegh said, flanked by her husband, her beaming parents, and her three small children.

Dr. Mossadegh, Chief of Pediatrics at Mass. General – Sludge Valley Medical Center, had apparently become well-known in the community due to her work at local health clinics and for persuading Mass. General to take over the failing local hospital and turn it into an outpost of the most admired hospital in America.

She had campaigned on local issues such as the need to repair the bridges over the Sludge River, which in a recent engineering study had been ranked “You Are Going to Die.”  She also called for investments in public schools and job training in an effort to jump-start the local economy and attract new business to the long-shuttered asbestos factories.

“I will fight for economic development for this region on Beacon Hill, and I won't be satisfied with a few no-show jobs for my relatives, ” Dr. Mossadegh had promised.

Local pundits now wonder if O'Bribe's scorched-earth campaign tactics, suggested by his campaign manager Roger Stone, may have backfired.  O'Bribe repeatedly chastised his opponent as an “alien threat to our way of life in Old Sludgebury and probably a Lesbian to boot.”

The turning point in the campaign, observers speculate, occurred during their only debate, when O'Bribe accused Dr. Mossadegh of being “just another foreign terrorist like her fellow countryman Saddam Hussein.”

Dr. Mossedegh responded that Saddam Hussein had been Iraqi, while she was of Iranian descent.

O'Bribe's response – “I don't give a f*** what kind of raghead you are.  Now get me another 'Gansett like a good girl” – was widely regarded as a tactical mistake that alienated many women voters.

The insurgent campaigned on the need to repair local infrastructure

On a deeper level, the defeat of Rep. O'Bribe represents the passing of an older style politics.  O'Bribe had emphasized constituent service, always offering to pick up a voter's dry cleaning in Boston and bring it back to town with him.  He also boasted that he had arranged over 1,600 disability pensions for his constituents over the last 40 years of the local “sore back” epidemic.

Rep. O'Bribe blamed his defeat on “a bunch of welfare-chiseling illegal immigrants who don't know the meaning of hard work.”  By contrast, O'Bribe said he had risen the old-fashioned American way: by inheriting his seat from his father, Whiff O'Bribe Sr., after the elder O'Bribe had decided to take a seven- to ten-year vacation in Allenwood, Penn.

The defeated legislator said that he intended to retire from public service on a state pension.  Taking into the consideration the extra $35,000 he earned every year as Chairman of the House Committee on Bills the Speaker Wants to Bury Forever, he expects to pocket a cool $115,000 a year for the rest of his life.  Ever gracious in defeat, O'Bribe said, “I hope the savages choke on it.”