Letter to the Editor
September 12, 2023
One for the Road? Kendra Lara squeezes in another ethics scandal prior to Preliminary Election Day. This time one of her biggest boosters, the JP Progressives organization, is involved as well.
by “A District 6 Resident”
The Boston Herald reported on Friday evening that members of the Jamaica Plain Progressives (JPP) leadership provided money to Lara's defense attorney to pay for an independent analysis of the event data recorder (“black box”) on the Honda Civic that Lara crashed into a Jamaica Plain home in late June.
The report, by Crash Lab, a New Hampshire-based accident reconstruction group hired by Lara’s defense team, purportedly shows that Lara was not driving at more than twice the speed limit at the time of the crash, as had been previously reported.
Notably, that report has not been provided to the media or otherwise vetted. Boston Police’s own investigation put Lara’s speed at between 53 and 59 miles per hour.
Two JPP Steering Committee Members, Krista Magnuson, a co-chair of that committee, and Ziba Cranmer, a co-chair of the group’s Elections Committee, confirmed to the Herald that they contributed financially to the Crash Lab report.
When asked about the contributions, Lara displayed her usual lack of candor, telling the Herald that “[m]y attorney was the one that wrote the check and I am going to pay for it, and how that is paid for, how I’m paying my private legal fees is not the business of the Boston Herald.”
Then, in an interview with NBC 10’s Sue O’Connell taped on Monday morning that would’ve short-circuited a polygraph machine, Lara shifted from the cagey response she gave the Herald to outright lying, saying the Herald’s reporting was “definitely incorrect” and that “from what I understand there is some fundraising going on” but claiming that neither she nor her lawyer had received any funds. This is even though Magnuson and Cranmer explicitly confirmed their contributions to the Herald’s Gayla Cawley.
One of Lara’s opponents in the current D6 City Council race, Jamacia Plain attorney Ben Weber, also initially downplayed the controversy, telling the Herald that “as long as individual contributions didn’t exceed [the state’s $1,000 individual contribution limit], there would not be an issue of whether they were illegal.” (Her other opponent, William King of West Roxbury, was more pointed in his criticism, stating that the funding imbroglio was “ethically questionable at the very least.”)
But both Lara and Weber are missing the bigger picture: the monetary contributions by Magnuson and Cranmer sure seem to meet the definition of a campaign “contribution” under Massachusetts General Law Chapter 55, Section 1, which includes “a contribution of money or anything of value to an individual, candidate, political committee, or person acting on behalf of said individual, candidate or political committee, for the purpose of influencing the nomination or election of said individual or candidate."
Under Massachusetts campaign finance rules, and as Lara herself stated, neither a candidate for office nor an elected official can use campaign contributions for personal expenditures. Lara acknowledged to O’Connell that her legal fees “are not considered by OCPF to be a campaign expense at all.”
JPP, which also endorsed Kendra in 2021, has supported her through thick and thin this election cycle. Earlier this month, the organization’s 10-member Steering Committee voted to recommend endorsing Lara again, and after a week of online voting, it was announced on Saturday morning that at least 60% of the group’s total membership voted to accept that recommendation.
Members of the Steering Committee, including Cranmer herself, stood behind Lara at the press conference she held on Friday afternoon—days before the Preliminary Election—to announce the favorable finding in the Crash Lab report.
Another member of the JPP Steering Committing, Martha Karchere, appeared on Sunday’s episode of NBC10’s @Issue (which was pre-taped on Friday) to promote Lara’s re-election and spread the word of the Crash Lab report.
It would be hard to view the contributions of two very active JP political operatives toward the report’s funding as not being “for the purpose of influencing” Lara’s re-election.
As Lara herself has admitted, the charges she faces related to the June crash are personal in nature and are not related to Lara’s role as a City Councilor or her campaign, and to date, her campaign account expenditure reports filed monthly with the Office of Campaign Finance (OCPF) indicate that she hasn’t used any campaign funds to pay her legal fees.
But what’s the difference if she is soliciting and/or accepting donations from JPP members, but directing them through her lawyer rather than her campaign account? Either way, OCPF requires that all monetary contributions be properly and publicly documented and deposited to the campaign account.
It's not only Lara who may be in trouble for these violations—Magnuson, Cranmer, and any others who participated in this “fundraising” scheme may find themselves held liable.
Just this week, OCPF posted a public resolution letter making clear that it can sanction individuals who knowingly violate campaign finance laws, even if they are not candidates or public employees.
By the way – even leaving aside the various potential campaign finance violations, State Ethics Law prohibits public employees from accepting gifts of more than $50. As we know, the State Ethics Commission is already paying an embarrassing amount of attention to the Boston City Council.
JPP sent an email to its listserv on Sunday morning claiming that “the Steering Committee was not aware that individual members were involved in fundraising efforts to support obtaining the event data recorder…”
And, as others have pointed out, JPP’s own stated policies require Steering Committee members to disclose when they have contributed to a candidate who is being considered for endorsement.
No matter what the legal implications, this looks like a real failure of internal governance. Whether the group’s rank-and-file members find the explanations plausible, or the outcome acceptable, is anybody’s guess.
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