O'Reilly Drives throughout State for U.S. Senate Seat

BOSTON, Mass (09/04/2008) -- As he slumped into the driver seat, Ed O’Reilly surveyed the damage. The car floor was blanketed with pamphlets, cardboard boxes, containers of peanuts and business shoes; suit jackets and ties hung from the doors. Any passenger willing to ride shotgun would need to plan an entrance before placing his feet.
    “Fifteen months and there’s just 12 days of this left,” he said.
    Since June 2007, O’Reilly has practically lived out of his car campaigning to become a first-time United States Senator for Massachusetts. But it all ends next Monday with the Democratic congressional primary where he will challenge 2004 presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry for a spot in November’s general election.
    “This campaign is all about being on the ground and meeting people,” he said “I think that’s a big difference between me and John Kerry.”
    O’Reilly said western Massachusetts voters have been particularly receptive of his campaign, which stresses single-payer healthcare, renewable energy projects reinvested in local communities and tax fairness, among other things.
    “It’s an area of the state that John Kerry ignores,” he said. “They resonated with the idea that ‘John Kerry is aloof, that he doesn’t care about Massachusetts, that he’s looking for higher office all the time.’”
    Mounting an attack against an opponent as powerful and well known as Kerry, while trying to capture the attention of voters caught up in this year’s historic presidential election, O’Reilly has had his work cut out for him.
    “It’s worth thinking about what the incumbency advantage really means,” said Boston University political science professor Andrew Reeves. “Part of it is certainly name recognition. Meanwhile, the challenger has more limited avenues for getting his name out there. So a voter that walks into the booth with no information might cast their vote for Senator Kerry based on name recognition alone."
    Related is the issue of money. While Kerry has raised more than $10 million for his re-election campaign, O’Reilly has collected just about $500,000, according to a Center for Responsive Politics website.
    “Incumbents have a much better means to fundraise,” Reeves said. “They’ve proven that they can win, and people like to donate to winners. Mr. O’Reilly’s campaign contributions are probably quite limited because people don’t know him and because there is very little chance that he’ll win.”
    Jamaica Plain resident Mike Ball, who has been reading stories about the Senate race online, said he has noticed more news alerts detailing Kerry’s actions in Congress as of late.
    “Everybody has said (O’Reilly) hasn’t a shot in hell at winning, that it’s a waste of his time and resources,” Ball, 60, said. “People are saying Kerry’s power of incumbency is huge, and they’re probably right. But Ed has done a tremendous amount to inspire Kerry.”
    O’Reilly repeatedly prodded Kerry to agree to a debate, a proposal Kerry rejected until two weeks ago when both campaigns settled on a half-hour WBZ debate. The debate, which aired Sunday morning, focused on Kerry’s vote to authorize the Iraq war in 2002. That decision six years ago prompted O’Reilly to consider a run for Senate.
    O’Reilly, who grew up in Massachusetts, said his working class background allows him to better connect with residents than Kerry can. As a criminal defense attorney for 25 years, O’Reilly also served as a Gloucester City Councilor in the 1980s and as a school committee member in the 1990s. He was a firefighter for Watertown, Amherst and Gloucester, where he currently resides.
    "I went to law school at night, and I went to UMass-Amherst paying my own way by working in a factory,” he said. “I think that all those go towards being able to relate to ordinary Americans and what they’re going through now. I think (John Kerry) is out of touch not just with the voters in Massachusetts, but with ordinary Americans.”
    Upon learning of O’Reilly’s run for office last week, Hyde Park resident Jacquetta Van Zandt, 29, said she was glad to see someone challenging Kerry for the Senate seat.
    “I haven’t seen Kerry since he ran for president, and he’s supposed to be from Massachusetts,” she said. “Because I believe in the community and local government, I think this is important.”
    Van Zandt reflected that if she had not attended Thursday’s candidate forum at English High School, she would not have known about O’Reilly nor would she have considered voting for him.