On the campaign trail

There are less than six weeks to go in the campaign for East Boston's open state rep seat, and it appears that Carlo Basile is running the best campaign so far.

I drove through a Basile stand-out Tuesday at Wood Island and there were dozens of supporters holding signs. In fact, Basile seems to be winning the sign wars all around. It looks like he matches Jeff Drago throughout Orient Heights and easily tops him in the rest of Eastie. There is a small bastion of green Mary Berninger signs on a few streets just off the beach, while I’ve seen only a couple of placards for Gloribell Mota.

I’ve received a mailing and several flyers from the Basile campaign, his web site is the best looking and easiest to maneuver, he’s got several union endorsements, and the July issue of Eastie Latino magazine has a big cover story on the candidate. I’ve been told that the Basile campaign has a well-respected Latino managing its inroads into the neighborhood’s Spanish-speaking community.

The Basile web site does have an “On the issues” pages, but besides vigilance against Massport and opposition to casinos in East Boston, we are told that Basile “will continue to be diligent about issues that matter” to us. There is no discussion of his positions on education, healthcare, public safety, taxes, same-sex marriage, auto insurance, etc.

The same is true for Drago, who has a page on his site called “Press releases,” which is empty. From the start, Berninger’s site has listed her thoughts on a number of topics under the headings “Issues” and “Positions,” and she deserves credit for that. Mota recently added an “On the issues” page that outlines her thoughts on the areas most important to her.

So it appears that the two candidates generally recognized as frontrunners -- Basile and Drago -- are the least eager to share their points of view with the electorate. One way that voters can learn what the candidates think is a debate, which I’ve heard a whisper about from one of the campaigns.

On a final note, it seems that there may be a Republican opponent for the winner of the Sept. 25 Democratic primary. I’ve been told that a woman named Jacqueline Smith was gathering signatures in the neighborhood recently. The deadline for submitting the names was Tuesday, so we should know soon if she made it on the ballot.