By Michael Gaffney
The last two week’s editorials on the corruption in City Hall discussed the termination of an employee in the Elections Department, Brittany Legasey. As per the article by Brad Petrishen in the Telegram and Gazette Judge Hillman stated in his opinion concerning the case Legasey brought against the City of Worcester:
“There was ‘sufficient circumstantial evidence’ for the inference that her firing was ‘substantially related to or motivated by her political affiliation.’”
If you want to get caught up on past articles on the corruption in City Hall, here are the links:
http://www.worcesterindependentleader.com/2019/02/25/12296/
Petrishen’s article further outlined a party that Legasey attended with her roommate Cindy Nguyen:
Judge Hillman noted that Ms. Legasey was friends with Mr. Gaffney, and gave weight to statements Ms. Legasey attributed to Mr. Rushford about supporting Democrats.
“While discussing his experience working on political campaigns with (Ms. Legasey), Rushford referenced the employees of the clerks department as “all good democrats,” Judge Hillman wrote.
The judge found that Ms. Legasey told Mr. Vangjeli she had attended Mr. Gaffney’s birthday party in December 2014, at which time Mr. Vangjeli could not recall criticizing her decision.
“Concerns regarding her attendance (to the party) were not raised until after Gaffney announced his candidacy for mayor,” Judge Hillman wrote.
The judge also wrote that Mr. Rushford, after sending Ms. Legasey an initial warning letter regarding her performance in April 2015, “waited until closer to the November 2015 election to suspend her for conduct, some of which occurred months earlier.”
At the time of birthday party in December of 2014, I hadn’t given any consideration of running for Mayor.
There has never been a more controversial birthday party held in the City of Worcester, than my birthday party of December 4, 2014.
It appears that the establishment was not happy that I would dare to celebrate my birthday and that people would show up for it! As Petrishen states:
“In his deposition, Mr. Rushford [the former head of elections] also testified that some city councilors had grown wary of Ms. Legasey.
Ms. Legasey’s roommate, Cindy T. Nguyen, had attended Mr. Gaffney’s birthday party, contributed to his campaign there, and decided to run against District 1 Councilor Tony J. Economou.
‘My recollection is that Mr. Economou notified several of his elected peers (about the party), and that the consensus amongst the elected officials was that Ms. Legasey was less than neutral,’ Mr. Rushford testified.”
To be clear, Economou searched through my campaign donations list and saw that his potential opponent had given me $50.00 and went crying to the other City Councilors and City Clerk. Apparently, they were all so distraught that a college student would dare run against one of them they then sought to have Legasey fired.
Keep in mind that Economou is the same fraud that cried, on the Council floor while in session, over a critical review of the City Manager’s performance. While he pretends to be a nice guy to get votes, he’s a vicious little man-child that worked to get a young woman fired, because she was roommates with a young woman running against him.
“Votes for Women”? Not Economou!
But they didn’t stop there!
It appears that my birthday party caused them so much distress that they planted a story in InCityTimes claiming that Legasey attended the party in “blackface” to “mock black people.” I had representatives of every community of color and Worcester Pride attend my party, so the story quickly fell apart.
InCityTimes quickly retracted the story as to Legasey, but continued to insist it occurred until I sued them and forced them to print a retraction. Economou and the rest of the City Councilors didn’t care that the publisher was embarrassed and had incurred significant attorney’s fees. They had successfully created their false narrative to pin me and anyone near me as racists.
This is how dirty City Council and the administration is at City Hall. They would pin me as a racist and get a woman fired because we opposed them.
As Judge Hillman stated in his findings, Legasey was open about attending the birthday party and it wasn’t an issue at all until I announced my intent to run for Mayor. As Petrishen states: “The judge also wrote that Mr. Rushford, after sending Ms. Legasey an initial warning letter regarding her performance in April 2015, “waited until closer to the November 2015 election to suspend her for conduct, some of which occurred months earlier.”
Economou and the City Council were calling for Legasey to be fired, but nothing happened until Mayor Petty found out I was running, that’s when the warnings, suspensions, and eventual termination went flying. Petty is about as petty and small as Economou.
In other words, run against this crew and they will go after you and anyone you associate with.
As I previously advised, at the time of the party, I was not even considering running for Mayor. It was on December 13, 2014 when I found out about the “secret meetings” being held by the Worcester Democratic City Committee. The plan was to flood the ballot with “good democrats” in an effort to dilute the vote and target me to bump me from Council. They were actively recruiting candidates (whether they could run legally or not, see last article on Cooney).
You see, “my friend” Dante Comparetto, now on School Committee and Martha Assefa , now the Female Vice Chair of the Worcester Democratic City Committee, reached out to me to go out to dinner. Comparetto joked in his text message to me of December 4, 2014 that “I never got a chance to congratulate you on your election day wins. You definitely caught the DCC’s [Democrat City Committee] attention haha. You have a big bullseye target on you now.”
Comparetto and Assefa continued to provide inside information throughout the entire campaign. Comparetto was angry that he was once kicked out of the Worcester Democratic City Committee for supporting a Green Party candidate and had an axe to grind ever since. Thus his run for School Committee. Unfortunately, he decided to attack me during his run using the same racism accusations City Council and the Mayor promoted based on their false story.
Comparetto is such a fake person that he apologized several times for attacking me in effecting his plan and even said a number of times that he didn’t really mean it and expected me to understand.
I didn’t understand and never will understand anyone’s motivations to destroy other people for political gain. I could never sell my soul for such a thing and I amazed that those that do. But, if I were on the Worcester Democratic City Committee, I’d reconsider my leadership.
More to come next week!
