Boston Mayor Martin Walsh's political machine is "mobilizing his campaign troops to throw their muscle behind the city-backed bid" to host the '24 Games "amid declining support for the Olympics and the growing likelihood it will be put to the voters" as a '16 ballot question, according to Matt Stout of the BOSTON HERALD. CK Strategies Founder & Principal Chris Keohan -- a former Walsh strategist who is now consulting for the Boston 2024 group pushing the bid -- "fired off an email to nearly 100 supporters, inviting them to a 'Team Walsh' meeting tonight at Florian Hall to 'discuss the bid and our plans to begin reaching out to the residents of Boston.'" A source said that the mayor "did not instruct his former aides" to set up the meeting and stressed that it "was an 'informal get-together.'" Meanwhile, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and Gov. Charlie Baker yesterday both "threw their support behind a referendum." Baker's administration also said that state house leaders "plan to hire an outside consultant -- at a cost of $250,000 to taxpayers -- to study 'potential risks of overruns, to be borne by state and local government' of an Olympics bid" (BOSTON HERALD, 3/24). Stout notes Baker "will head the search for a consultant, with a plan to hire one by next month." The goal is to "produce a report by July" (BOSTONHERALD.com, 3/23).
SAME AS IT EVER WAS? In Chicago, Philip Hersh writes if Boston's bid for the '24 Games "meets what seems, at this point, ineluctably the same fate as Chicago’s, one can only wonder if that USOC leadership can maintain the trust and support of both its constituents and its corporate partners." The USOC's work to recover from failed bids from N.Y. and Chicago "may have been wasted on the Boston bid, a fiasco since the USOC announced in January it had chosen the city" over L.A., S.F. and DC as the '24 U.S. candidate. That is "a stunning situation," especially since both USOC Chair Larry Probst and CEO Scott Blackmun "repeatedly said that every step of a future bid, including whether to make one, would get due diligence in the aftermath of the embarrassing results for the two previous bids." Yet almost every day "has brought bad news about the Boston bid." If the Boston bid is successful, the credit Probst and Blackmun "deserve for ending two decades of USOC management follies might not outweigh the criticism over having made a poor choice that would follow having the Boston bid implode" (CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 3/24).
