Cue Stevie Wonder soundtrack: “Will It Go Round in Circles?”
The CPA opponents also plan one large general mailing close to Election Day. “You can’t peak too early,” Sperber says.
“You can’t peek at all” could be the slogan of the CPA proponents. “I don’t want to talk about what we’re doing in the future,” said Jay Gonzalez, chair of the Rorschachian-named Yes for Brookline’s Future campaign. “I’m not going to give away our plan to the opposition.”
Gonzales does volunteer that “there’s no sense to do TV or radio” advertising. The Yes campaign hasn’t run any print ads, either, but it does have yard signs and a fancy-schmancy Web site. “We spent a lot of time on the Web site,” Gonzales says. “One of the challenges with this election — more for us than for the people on the No side — is that this is a complicated issue, and people need to be informed and educated about it.”
Whatever their October Surprise turns out to be, CPA supporters have one obstacle they can’t change: their ballot position as Question #4. “We need to convince people to get down there to vote yes,” Gonzales says.
On the plus side, Gonzales says, “Brookline should turn out a lot of motivated Deval Patrick voters. That more-liberal voting base might be more interested in voting for the CPA.”
If so, Brookline residents will likely be consulting a different kind of CPA about their property taxes.
John Carroll is a mass-communication professor at Boston University and a correspondent for WGBH-TV’s “Beat the Press” edition of Greater Boston. He can be reached atjohn_carroll@wgbh.org.
