The man at the center of this big ball of crazy is Congressman William D. Delahunt (D), who is expected to announce this month whether he will run for re-election. There’s been a lot of idle speculation that an eighth term isn’t in the cards, and that speculation intensified last week in light of several news stories detailing $560,000 in campaign spending in 2009, a lot of it on things only somewhat related to actual campaigning (like expensive meals and fees to relatives in his employ).

The theory is that Rep. Delahunt is spending down his financial reserves, and we’ll soon all know whether that theory is true.

On paper, there’s a small army of Democrats waiting for Rep. Delahunt to withdraw so the Great Cape Cod Political Shuffle can begin. One scenario has State Senator Robert A. O’Leary (D – Barnstable) running to replace Delahunt and State Representative Sarah K. Peake (D – Provincetown) running to replace Sen. O’Leary.

Sen. O’Leary, by the way, has confirmed he would take a shot at Congress should Rep. Delahunt retire.

Ah, but this game of musical chairs might not be so simple. Scuttlebutt is that William Keating, who is officially a candidate for Massachusetts Attorney General, will abandon that race and instead run for representative of the 10th Congressional district. Folks have been wondering about Keating’s plans since fellow Democrat Martha Coakley, following her botched US Senate bid, decided to run for reelection as AG.

If Delahunt goes bye-bye, it’d give Keating someplace safe to go — meaning, a race that doesn’t pit him against an incumbent from the same party. And, as a bonus, he wouldn’t have to face Joseph P. Kennedy III, grandson of the late Robert F. Kennedy, who this week officially denied rumors that he’d run for Congress if Rep. Delahunt retired.

There’s still a rumor floating around that Senate President Therese M. Murray (D – Plymouth) could also throw her hat in, but she’s said nothing herself to suggest this.

***

Another word on Sen. O’Leary’s seat. Last week I mentioned that he did not have a prospective challenger. Well, it appears that he in fact does: a gent named Eric Steinhilber, who kicked off his campaign last weekend with an event in Hyannis.

Apparently Mr. Steinhilber has been planning this for a while — the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance indicated his paperwork was filed last year — but he’s not done a spectacular job about getting his name out there. Better rectify that double-quick, m’man.

Although he’s a Barnstable native, Mr. Steinhilber is a former Arlington resident who, in 2004, ran unsuccessfully for state representative of the 26th Middlesex district. He may be familiar to some folks in his capacity as development director for the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound (gee, can’t imagine THAT coming up at all during the campaign).

Look for a full introductory feature in the Barnstable and Mashpee Enterprises.

***

It took a while, but it looks like the political scene at the county level is starting to come to life.

I mentioned last week that James M. Cummings, Barnstable County sheriff, was going to be running for re-election, and now we can add County Commissioner William Doherty to the list of county officials aiming for another go-round.

The ever-amiable Mr. Doherty is currently gathering signatures on his nomination papers for what will be his second re-election bid. He’s a fun guy to chat with, so take advantage of it if you see him.

***

Interest in the state treasurer’s post continues to increase. Democrat Stephen Murphy, a Boston city councilor, has entered the race, and word is that State Representative Karyn Polito (R – Shrewsbury) has pulled papers for that race and will be leaving the Legislature. Mr. Murphy has an official Facebook campaign page, but neither have a formal campaign website.

***

Carole A. Fiola, who has served as governor’s councilor for the first district for the past 10 years, announced this week she will not seek reelection to a sixth term.

Ms. Fiola said in a statement to the media that “serving 10 years in this office will be enough for me. I have never intended to spend my lifetime in this position and it is important to continually evaluate your life’s endeavors.”

The governor’s council is responsible for approving gubernatorial appointments to the courts, and weighs in on payments from the state treasury and on court-issued pardons. The first district includes 48 municipalities in southeastern Massachusetts, including the Cape and Islands.

Walter Moniz, a New Bedford businessman and former mayoral aide, is seeking to replace Ms. Fiola, a fellow Democrat.

***

Last call for F. Randal Hunt’s campaign kickoff event! The Sandwich Republican officially launches his campaign for state representative of the fifth Barnstable district on Tuesday. That’s at the Sandwich Hollows Golf Course from 5 PM to 7 PM. The guy he’s hoping to succeed, State Representative Jeffrey D. Perry (R – Sandwich), is the guest speaker.

***

All right, looks like it’s time for my traditional election year spiel about “independent” candidates.

Here in Massachusetts, we have three recognized political parties (Democrat, Republican, Libertarian) and 18 political designations. The sole perk of being a party rather than a designation: a formal “party” gets to hold primary races to determine which candidate will be on the general election ballot, a “designation” does not.

How does one become a formal party? If a given political organization receives three percent of the total vote cast in a biennial statewide election in which a member of said organization is a candidate for a federal (President, US Senate, Congress) or statewide constitutional seat (governor, attorney general, etc.), that organization is granted full-fledged “political party” status. Any that do not meet the three percent threshold are “political designations.”

There is no party or designation in Massachusetts called simply “The Independent Party.” The closest we come in this state is a political designation is called the “American Independent Party.”

The Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth’s Office refers to any candidate who does not belong to a recognized party or designation as “unenrolled.” Sometimes it’ll use “non-party” but “unenrolled” is the official term it uses to avoid confusing a self-proclaimed “independent” (not capitalized) with any kind of Independent (capitalized) party.

All clear? Cool, then let me confuse things: even if a political organization is officially a “designation,” it’ll almost always be referred to as a party because they almost always use “party” as part of their name, but that doesn’t mean they’re actually a party. Got it?

Politics is hard. Let’s go shopping…

***

In closing, here’s an entry for the “What’s could possibly go wrong?” file: last month State Representative Ellen Story (D – Amherst), in an interview with the State House News, said, “I can’t think of a single rep who is going to lose their seat” due to growing anti-incumbent sentiments in Massachusetts.

Someone remind me to revisit this quote in November so we can see how far off this prediction is.

Political news and announcements may be sent to Michael Bailey, Region editor and senior political reporter, at bailey@capenews.net

(I’d have worked in a crack about how his pitchfork is also lethal to any seafaring birds within a one-mile radius, but I already had one hell of a run-on sentence going.)

Over the years I’ve been asked dozens, perhaps hundreds of times: What do you think of the wind farm?

My answer has always been a very sincere “I don’t really have an opinion. I’m waiting until all the facts are in.”

It dawned on me last week that I will never have an opinion unless I lower my standards, and lower them a LOT; I am convinced that no one will ever have ALL the facts, and even if we do, none of them will be 100 percent concrete, unassailable, unquestionable, unchallengeable. It won’t happen.

I say this because of the ponderous epic story I wrote last week about the economics of the project. This topic is what you might call a fractal, in that every time you get closer the picture becomes more complex; every answer only reveals two new questions.

I lay the root cause of this probelm at the feet of the two main parties involved with this always-hot topic: the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound and Cape Wind Associates, the Tom and Jerry of offshore wind energy. Watching them go at it on any given issue is an object lesson in conversational physics: for every claim there is an equal and opposite counter-claim.

CAPE WIND: The turbines will be invisible from shore.

ALLIANCE: Are you kidding? They’ll be visible!

CAPE WIND: No they won’t. We’ll paint them blue to match the sky.

ALLIANCE: You won’t be able to match the shade properly.

CAPE WIND: We’ll give ‘em stealth technology…you know, like the alien had in “Predator.”

ALLIANCE: They’ll glow like radioactive fuel rods! They’ll be visible from space!

CAPE WIND: Only if you squint through the HubbleScope.

ALLIANCE: Or are standing at a reasonable distance…like, in Long Island!

CAPE WIND: Lying wench!

ALLIANCE: Snake-oil salesman!

CAPE WIND: I hate you!

ALLIANCE: I hate you more!

(Smoldering looks are exchanged. Passionate kissing ensues.)

And so it went with my research for my story. I’d speak to one side about the Charles River Associates report, they’d contradict its findings; I’d go to the other side, they’d contradict the contradiction; back to the first side, where they claimed the opposition’s “expert” was paid off to say what he said; back to the other side, who claimed their foe’s expert got his degree out of a box of Frosted Flakes, ad infinitum.

Trying to throw the brakes on this proved nigh-impossible, because I’ve yet to find a resource who is well-versed about this situation yet so neutral and objective and beyond reproach by either side that his word is law and all must bow before his Solomonian wisdom. After working on this for a few hours (yes, I am that crazy) I staged a strategic withdrawal before my mind imploded under the increasing weight of constantly contradictory “facts.”

I say “facts” because both sides insisted their data were accurate and truthful and the other was wrong, wrong, oh so very wrong — and damned if I could figure out who was right. I’m told ISO-New England, the great faceless entity that dictates the cost of our electricity from on high, could provide a solid answer or two, but you know who told me that? The Cape Wind folks. That, in the eyes of the Alliance, taints the process and invalidates the answer.

You don’t think so? Hey, man, I’ve been to this dance before, it was just a different band playing; I spent many a long night in the early part of the decade listening to people furiously attempt to discredit studies of the Pave PAWS radar facility in Sagamore, often on the flimsiest of pretexts. All it took is for anyone involved with the study to have the vaguest and most distant of connections to the military and, in the eyes of the hardcore skeptics, all credibility went poof. The US Air Force is funding the study? DISQUALIFIED! One of the scientists involved with the study works for a company that had contracts with the military? DISQUALIFIED! The secretary transcribing the notes once owned a G.I. Joe doll? DISQUALIFIED!

I was grateful to be pulled off that assignment because I was starting to feel like Sisyphus with his recalcitrant rock, and damned if I’m not having a heavy deja-vu flash right now.

I know, you might be thinking, Hey dude, Ken Salazar is going to make a decision by April, it’ll all be over soon.

Are you new around here?

If Salazar says nuh-uh, this thing ain’t happenin’, then yeah, MAYBE that’ll be the end of it. But what I’m expecting is that he’ll give Cape Wind the long-awaited thumb’s up, then I get to spend the next decade writing about the endless string of obstructionist lawsuits…and if there is one thing I do not want to be, it’s an entrenched reporter in a litigious war of attrition.

So, what’s my opinion of Cape Wind? My opinion is that if Jim Gordon could harness the power of rhetoric he could light up the eastern seaboard like frickin’ Times Square. That is a truly bottomless resource.

For the most part, the thing was a Deval Patrick Lovefest, which was a profound disappointment. People had a golden opportunity to ask some hard questions and (maybe) get some straight answers, and boy, did they flush that down the toilet in short order. One audience member waited patiently to ask Governor Patrick what his dog’s name was and if he could give her a cookie. No jive.

Another simply wanted to tell Patrick, “Darling, you shine.”

People who asked real questions weren’t that much tougher of the governor. The hardest question, from a D-Y High School teacher, asked Patrick why there still hadn’t been any movement on Chapter 70 reform and said she was “disappointed” in him for not making things happen. Even then she was far from belligerent; she spoke more like she was telling an old friend she was disappointed that he blew off her birthday party to stay home and watch football with his buddies.

No one hit Patrick with any probing questions about his various proposed tax increases for the FY10 state budget. No one asked about his increasingly strained relationship with Senate President Therese Murray. No one asked about his low poll numbers and how they could bode ill for his re-election bid. Hell, no one even went for a cheap shot about his continued use of the infamous Cadillac. If there was a single Republican in that entire crowd, he or she didn’t announce it.

Note I said “if,” and that’s because I doubt there were any hard Patrick critics in the group. Generally when there’s any kind of poltical rally ’round these parts, it’s only the loyalists who show up. I saw the same thing at the “Hardship Listening Tour” State Reps Jeff Perry and Sue Gifford hosted in Sandwich; there was a lot of Republican rah-rah talk and denouncement of the Democratic majority (locally and nationally) but nothing critical of the GOP, which is ripe for constructive criticism these days.

Far be it from me to say anyone should be barred from addressing the governor, but these things could sure use some guidelines to make the most of the time, for everyone’s sake…it’s not every day Joe Average gets to bend the ear of our highest elected official in person, and it seems a criminal waste to squander that time with feel-good accolades and insipid questions about Zoe the golden lab.

Or the wind farm, for that matter. Good lord, will I ever attend a forum with the governor in which the same faces don’t ask the same questions over and over? Even Patrick remembered Glenn Wattley of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound asking the same question he asked at last year’s forum about the cost of wind farm-generated power to consumers. That’s a sign you need to keep it to yourself this time around and let someone else speak.

So what about your incisive question? you might well ask. What were you going to ask the governor?

I had planned to ask about his and the Legislature’s disingenuous presentations of their respective tax increases. They say things like, “A 19 cents-per-gallon tax increase will equal per fill-up what you spend on coffee in a week,” and “This income sales tax increase means you pay an extra penny and a half on every dollar you spend.” Has there been any thought of the cumulative impact of all these increases? I’d have asked. I’d have requested the governor provide a solid estimate on how much extra per year the average person would be paying out if any given package of increases were to receive approval. It’s all well and good to present this data in a compartmentalized fashion that diminishes the apparent financial impact without ever technically lying about the true cost, but screw that noise — I want honest figures that paint an accurate picture of how much more of my paycheck the state plans to rook me out of in order to pay for its own incompetence and inefficiency.

Anyway, that’s what I would have asked, and not during the forum proper. See, as a member of the media, I get to participate in these things called “press availabilities,” in which reporter-types like myself get a few minutes of private time with the governor to ask our questions. That’s where I would have pounced, baby.

Except 45 minutes after the forum formally ended, Patrick was STILL talking with people, and since I was already suffering from mild hypothermia — it was bloody cold out! — I decided I didn’t want to turn into a Mikesicle and went to my car to thaw out.

So, my message for anyone out there planning to hit a future forum: give other people a turn, huh? Can the kiss-up platitudes and innane questions that no one really cares about. Keep them to yourself. Every minute you eat up is one minute someone else can’t use to ask what might actually be an important question.