POLS AND POLITICS:
No passes on ticket friction.
The tickets are in the mail, but the promise of passes to the presidential inauguration has done little to quell the friction between the MassGOP and President-elect Donald Trump’s Bay State supporters.
A week after their clash went public in the Boston Herald — spurred by Trump delegates’ cries that the state Republican Party was doing little to secure them spots in Washington, D.C. — the Presidential Inaugural Committee Wednesday fired off an email to supporters with ticketing information.
Terry MacCormack, a Mass GOP spokesman, said “everyone” on the list the state party submitted received the email with instructions of how to secure passes to the swearing-in and other events.
“We have not heard of instances where that is not the case,” MacCormack wrote in an email.
All good then, right? Not so, says Tom Mountain, a Trump delegate who’s been in touch with dozens of others. Though promised tickets, he had yet to receive his by yesterday — now less than a week before the inauguration — and he put a “low estimate” of about one-third of the delegates were still unsure if they’d even secure passes, some after already reserving pricey D.C. hotel rooms.
MassGOP officials said some had submitted their information to the party late, meaning they couldn’t be guaranteed passes to the swearing-in or other events. The inaugural committee had requested a final list last Friday, according to the state party, which has consistently pointed to the committee as the source of the delay in meting out tickets, not itself.
It’s done little to convince the local Trump camp.
“I have experienced people who went to both Bush inaugurations and they haven’t received tickets,” said Mountain. “The inaugural committee, they naturally assume when they send out feelers to the state Republican parties’ leadership across the country, of course these parties are going to be zealous and active in getting tickets. That hasn’t happened in Massachusetts. It’s simply been a clash of political personalities.”
Massachusetts, of course, will have representation in D.C. come Friday, between delegates, party leadership and Gov. Charlie Baker. Here’s guessing they won’t necessarily be raising a drink together at an inaugural ball.