It’s been some years since the Massachusetts Democratic Party went off the rails. First, we watched their anti-gay smear campaign destroy the political career of Alex Morse, Holyoke’s popular mayor and Neal’s 2020 primary challenger, with Morse finishing 17 points behind Neal. A probe found party leaders “had played a role in … intentionally affecting the campaign and violating party rules.”

Six years later, Neal’s primary challenger, popular Northampton teacher Jeromie Whalen, finished merely 8 points behind, giving Neal the narrowest primary win of his career, according to NBC’s Steve Kornacki. Not hard to imagine the unpopular Neal and other Dem leaders entering panic mode. And panic demands a smear campaign.

This time, the target is Nadia Milleron, a smart Sheffield farmer running as an Independent. Just in time for Halloween, the Dems cooked up a scary mix of monsters, saturating the district with thousands of oversized glossy postcards explaining how Nadia is actually one of them.

Cue the Jaws music: this is where Neal warns that she “answers to the MAGA elite,” that her husband is a “top official in Trump’s White House,” that she plans to confiscate guns, prevent abortions, deny healthcare, and on and on. I wonder if he’s talking about some other Nadia, not the one I know is 180 degrees opposed to these horrors, the same one I interviewed on my cable program? (Watch it this week at Gateway Media’s website.)

That Nadia loathes MAGA, can’t wait to vote for Trump’s impeachment, and scorns Neal for abstaining in an earlier vote to impeach. Nadia will vote against Question 9 as worded; would get insurance companies out of healthcare by creating a trust to pay for it directly; and regards abortion as a form of healthcare — and a woman’s right to choose.

During the “huge travesty” of the Morse debacle, a UMass professor urged us to focus on “the damage Richie Neal is doing to our democracy.” His manipulations seem credible until we realize we’ve been had. As the saying goes, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.”

Wayne Klug

Lanesborough