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Massachusetts U.S. Senate Candidates Sending Print Jobs Out Of State
U.S. Sen. Scott Brown and challenger Elizabeth Warren, with horns locked in a high-profile, big-bucks race, have sent lucrative campaign-printing work outside the Bay State — arousing the ire of hard-pressed local shops.
Campaign finance reports show Brown has cut $440,000 worth of checks to a GOP junk mail brokerage in Dublin, N.H., while Warren made a $289,000 payment to a direct-mailing firm in San Francisco. Her local print-marketing company outsourced her lawn-sign work to a press in Lenexa, Kan., but could not provide a firm dollar figure.
But those gigs for out-of-state firms have some Bay State pressmen wondering: Why not us?“There are several of us, to say the least, who could be doing this work — the printing, the mailing, the whatnot,” Newburyport printer Steve Silverstein told the Herald, recalling how in his dad’s day, the family shop got the personal touch from one big-name campaign customer, the late U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.
“Years ago when I was a kid, I designed a brochure. It was the biggest printing job my father’s company did. We worked around the clock. Twelve-hour shifts for 13 straight days. And it was funny. Ted Kennedy came in to say thank you. They don’t see you nowadays,” Silverstein said.
Brown’s campaign declined to comment. Warren’s camp issued the following statement: “We purchased our signs through a Massachusetts company.”
That firm, Grossman Marketing Group, is the same print shop that catapulted current state Treasurer Steve Grossman to his personal and political fortune. Current company president David Grossman — the treasurer’s son — said the bulk of the work he oversees for Warren is printed either at company headquarters in Somerville, or at the union shop Standard Modern Printing in Brockton.
The Kansas printer, Gill-line of Lenexa, Kan., is “a union shop with which we have a significant and long-standing relationship,” David Grossman said. “It’s incredibly important for political candidates, especially on the Democratic side, to support organized labor.”
Warren’s campaign spokeswoman added that no union Massachusetts printer is equipped to produce the lawn signs, dubbed “bag” signs, which are double-sided and weatherproof.“Unfortunately there aren’t any union shops that will manufacture these types of signs,” spokeswoman Alethea Harney said.The out-of-state spending spree doesn’t look good for either campaign, GOP strategist Todd Domke said.
“The pressmen should press their point. Both Senate candidates claim to be populists, and they both have more money in their campaign coffers than they really need,” Domke said. “So they should demonstrate that they are truly trying to represent the working people of Massachusetts by spending a little more of their campaign money — much of which comes from out-of-state — on businesses that are in-state.”
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