The Boston Globe's Shelly Murphy wrote a piece today about the plight of Corey Abrams, who announced last month that he was running for a seat on the Revere City Council. Specifically, the piece is about a caller who threatened Abrams to post pornography on a website he had created and called coreyabrams.com — unless the candidate paid him for the domain name.
This doesn't shock me whatsoever. Local politics can be a brutal sport and in the case of Revere, it's like mash-up of rugby, lacrosse, football and street fighting -- only in this case, the threats are real.
You see, Revere has always had this mobster undertone running through its DNA. With a population that was once heavily leaning towards the Italian side, one would assume that all those little "community clubs" were really just Goodfella hangouts.
Now, if you've lived in Revere and happened to read the Revere Journal or watch the public broadcast of the Council sessions, you can read about all the drama that goes on between the moronic mayor, specific city councilors, the rumored corrupt police department, stealing city workers, etc. It's a full time job to keep up with all that's going on in the city.
Now comes the cyber-bullying of Abrams. I have no idea as to Abrams political beliefs or the type of campaign he's running, but he's probably a target because he wants to do something that's not in alignment with the thugs that run the city popular vote.
I'm glad that whomever brought this story to the attention of my former colleague (Murphy) did so. These shady political practices can't be tolerated. Residents of the City of Revere deserve a political system and local leaders that have our best intentions in mind. Crap like this only infuriates us high-paying tax-payers even more.
Whatever the intentions were of the cyber-bully, I'm guessing it'll backfire in their face. This type of stuff will only rally people behind the candidate because he'll come across as a victim. If I was in the Abram's camp, I'd use it to my advantage and play this card until the chips run out -- hopefully, all the way to an elected position.