MONTPELIER — The state of Vermont has reached a punishing settlement with the man who became famous not for his role in helping to craft President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act — but his remarks boasting about how a lack of transparency was crucial to the passage of the sweeping health care bill.
Word of the settlement, stemming from the discovery of economic consultant Jonathan Gruber's bogus billing practices, trickled out from Vermont Attorney General T.J. Donovan's office on Friday afternoon.
He seems nearly uninterested, certainly unmoved, by the potential link to a lineage of rich Massachusetts political history. He would be the first sitting state representative to win election to the U.S. Senate since Republican Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. upset popular Democrat governor James M. Curley in 1936. He would also be the first Republican to beat an incumbent Democrat senator in a general election since Lodge defeated David I. Walsh (after Lodge returned from serving in WWII) in 1946. And he would be the first Republican to claim victory in a general election for the Senate since Edward W. Brooke III (the first African-American elected by popular vote to the chamber, in 1966) was reelected in 1972. Geoff Diehl, however improbably, would simply be content to "represent all the people" of Massachusetts after the 2018 senate race. He is undaunted being underestimated.
Dressed in summer khakis with blue Oxford shirt, and seated in a booth at the Fireside Grille in Middleborough, Diehl appeared disarmingly comfortable during the interview for this column. Relaxed, in fact.
