“Would you like some fries with that cheeseburger?”
That decidedly minimum wage proposition may well be the next words out of Maine’s main rogue assistant prosecutor, Mary Kellett, as the political power of her office just got dropped in hot grease by the voters in Hancock and Washington Counties.
There’s a new sheriff (make that DA) in town. His name is Matt Foster, and he is not here to serve Happy Meals. Foster took the election soundly from distant runner-up Bill Entwisle, a holdover subordinate from Carletta Bassano’s office and participant in her prosecutorial reign of terror, which included using Mary Kellett as a legal mercenary against the (primarily male) citizens of the two-county area.
Foster ran a simple “clean up the mess” campaign, regularly citing the actions of Kellett and crew as evidence of why change was so desperately needed in that office.
With the final ballot bell still ringing in the ears of the fighters, this may also be a good time for many in the Ellsworth office to start looking for empty boxes and to start loading up their personal belongings. It is a chance to salvage football mugs, memorabilia, pictures of children, ceramic lobsters, and other memories of their time spent there, and to get them out before the inevitable broom in Matt Foster’s hands starts doing its promised duty.
If Foster holds to his campaign message, we are about to see a slate wiped clean for the first time in 40 years.
The true hero of this story remains, at least in my mind, Vladek Filler. For over half a decade, he has stood defiantly with guns trained on him by the scurrilous likes of Carletta Bassano, Paul Cavanaugh, Bill Entwisle, and of course the now infamous Mary Kellett. He has never flinched. He has never backed down. And he has never quit fighting; for himself, for his children, and for justice.
We also must acknowledge the tireless work of the men and women in the Men’s Human Rights Movement. The MHRM has played a clear and convincing role in proving that a minority of people, armed with integrity, truth, determination, and raw grit, can indeed change the course of history.
There are just too many of you to name, so I won’t try. But I do hope that each and every one of you who helped, those who gave money, who wrote officials, who signed petitions, who tirelessly commented on the many news stories covering this monumental judicial indecency, take just a moment today to stop and reflect on what you have accomplished.
For a brief, precious moment, justice has finally been served, and you were the ones with the iron forehand. You drove in the point till the voters of Hancock and Washington Counties walked into the polls and drove out the cockroaches.
The work, however, is not over.
Soon Mary Kellett and her cohorts will be dusting off their CVs (along with their pride), making trips to the dry cleaners, and scouring their contacts for more work.
Kellett’s promises are limited. She is damaged goods; the first prosecutor in the history of Maine to have been sanctioned and had her license to practice law suspended on multiple legal and ethical violations.
This will not read particularly well under the “special accomplishments” header of her CV.
But we can assure you at AVfM that wherever Kellett finds work, if it is in the capacity to further harm the lives of innocent human beings, we will be dogged and tenacious about making who she is known to her new employer, to the public at large, and especially to the people whose lives she may seek to ruin over nothing more than her own ideological hubris.
Corruption and evil are like water. They never really get destroyed. They just change form or occupy another space.
Wherever that is, we will be there on top of it.
