Pols’ vote-buying is never right

Timing is everything in politics. And so it is that the last weeks leading up to Election Day tomorrow have featured big handouts to cities and towns.

Gov. Charlie Baker knows how the game is played. As the Herald’s Mary Markos and Sean Philip Cotter report, the Baker administration has doled out more than $88 million in grants to cities and towns statewide in the past two weeks — in an all-out pre-election blitz that one financial watchdog called blatant “vote-buying.”

Since Oct. 16, Gov. Charlie Baker, Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito and Housing and Economic Development Secretary Jay Ash have traveled to various parts of the state handing out 26 grants ranging from $100,000 to $4.9 million, generating positive local media coverage for infrastructure projects in the run-up to tomorrow’s election.

David Tuerck of the Beacon Hill Institute cut to the chase: “Well, it’s obviously vote-buying — that’s not a stretch.” Citing the proximity to tomorrow’s election, he said, “What a coincidence.”

We’re all adults here. We all know that politics brings with it shell games, smoke-and-mirrors deception and every craven sales tactic ever concocted. It is worth calling it out when we see it, though, because it is detrimental to the social fabric and, of course, downright cynical.

For the first two years under Baker’s administration, the awards largely came in November — after election season — but the state moved the timetable up starting in 2017, so the awards started being announced earlier.

Grants were doled out in every corner of the state, and cities and towns were glad to receive them, but our elected leaders should keep in mind that even the smallest maneuvers made for political expediency compile in the minds of voters until they are understandably jaded.