August 24, 2011; Source: Boston Globe | Earlier this week NPQ reported that the Boston Globe had discovered that City Year founder and Democratic Senate hopeful Alan Khazei had put his brother under contract with Be the Change, the nonprofit he led since 2007, without getting the board’s approval as required by the agency’s conflict of interest policy. In an editorial that appeared yesterday, the Boston Globe took Khazei to task for his unwillingness to take responsibility and move on:
Khazei explained to the Globe that he sought his brother’s help because the two “are very close’’ and Lance is “very talented.’’ So are a lot of other writers, though, and choosing Lance over them should have set off some alarms in Khazei’s mind. His failure to consult the board was a misjudgment which he rightly acknowledged. But the rest of his response—choosing to emphasize family closeness and faith in his own integrity—suggests a blindness to political appearances that’s unusual for a Senate candidate.
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Meanwhile, the man Khazei hopes to run against in 2012, Republican U.S. Senator Scott Brown, has some explaining to do himself. It was revealed yesterday that @CrazyKhazei, a Twitter account that has been mocking Khazei for the past month, was actually authored by Eric Fehrnstrom, a senior adviser to both Brown and G.O.P. presidential candidate Mitt Romney. NPQ, in fact, was featured in one such tweet.—Ruth McCambridge