Attorney General Defies Governor on Gay Marriages

With the state’s top law enforcement officer and the governor squaring off over same-sex marriage, folks on Beacon Hill last week were likening the Capitol to the OK Corral. If so, Atty. Gen. Tom Reilly was the cool-headed cowboy -- the one who stares dead-on at his opponent and dares him to blink.

“I just don’t think he’s gotten it yet,” Reilly said, explaining why he defied Gov. Mitt Romney’s request that he seek a stay of the court ruling that on May 17 will make Massachusetts the first state to permit gay and lesbian marriages.

“I think the governor is certainly disappointed in the court’s decision. But whether he likes it or not, that decision is the law of the land.”

Reilly, a 62-year-old former prosecutor, was not happy either when the Supreme Judicial Court ruled in favor of seven gay and lesbian couples who wanted to get married. Wed to the same woman for 37 years, he calls himself a traditionalist on the subject of marriage. He grew up in a staunchly Catholic family, the son of Irish immigrants. At one point, his parents hoped he might turn out to be a priest.

“That didn’t work,” he said. “I liked girls too much.”

Instead he became the only one of six children to graduate from college -- and then Boston College law school. Reilly and the law were a perfect fit. He loved the orderly nature of the field, and he loved the way the law took no note of social stature. He liked a system where the rules were clearly laid out.

“I believe strongly in playing by the rules,” Reilly said in an interview in his Beacon Hill office. “That is the way to live your life.”

Not only did Reilly oppose extending marriage to gay and lesbian couples, but he thought any decision on same-sex marriage should be made by the Legislature, not the courts. When the judgment came down against his office, however, he promised to uphold it.

“What is important is that throughout this entire process, no one has broken the law,” he said. “There haven’t been any bizarre stunts. Everything has been done properly. The plaintiffs took their case to the courts, which is every citizen’s right. And the end result is that on May 17, there will be lawful unions, lawful marriages.”

And, Reilly said, it really does not matter what he or the governor thinks. “This is not about him. This is not about me. This is about the law.”

Still, some observers saw Reilly’s willingness to oppose Romney as a remarkably unsubtle political hint. The Democratic attorney general was first elected in 1998. Before he ran unopposed for reelection in 2002 -- the same year Romney won office as a Republican -- Reilly was mentioned as a possible gubernatorial candidate.

He is careful not to deny his interest in the job.

“There’s a long way between now and the next election,” he said. As to whether he wants to be governor: “I have not made that decision.”

But Roderick MacLeish Jr., a Boston lawyer who has worked closely with the attorney general for more than 15 years, said he doubted Reilly was capable of political subterfuge.

“It think this is about as apolitical an attorney general as you could get,” MacLeish said. “This attorney general has represented Romney on numerous issues that involve decisions I know Reilly is opposed to -- budget cuts involving programs for poor people, things like that. He has had to go in and take positions on behalf of the governor that he does not like at all. So this is not a political move. Reilly is not that way.”

Indeed, former U.S. Atty. Wayne Budd, Reilly’s best friend from childhood, said that his pal’s political awkwardness was one of his more endearing traits.

“He is not the smoothest politician,” said Budd, now executive vice president and general counsel at Boston’s John Hancock Financial Services. “He is not going to sit back and think about the political returns or currying favor. In an interesting way, I think that is a political strength for Tom, because people are used to politicians who waffle and change their minds and speak out of both sides of their mouths.”

“Tom plays it straight,” Budd said. “What you see is what you get. If he tells you something, you can take it to the bank.”

Friends since age 12, the two grew up on the same block of a poor neighborhood in Springfield, in the western part of the state. Reilly’s mother was a maid and his father a city laborer. Budd’s father, a former Marine, was a police officer. When Reilly’s father died when he was 16, Budd’s father stepped in and became his surrogate dad.

Reilly said it never occurred to either of them in the 1950s that there was anything unusual about him, an Irish American kid, being best friends with Budd, an African American kid. After all, they were both Catholic.

Under Reilly’s leadership, the attorney general’s office issued a scathing report on the involvement of top Catholic church officials in the clerical abuse crisis that began in Boston in 2002. As he unveiled the report, Reilly startled even some close aides by digressing into a personal discussion of why he, as a Catholic, found the scandal so reprehensible.

It was an uncommonly candid moment for an official who normally keeps his private life private.

“You stand there,” he said, “and yes, you are the attorney general. But you are also a person. We all come to these positions with our own life experiences. You try to separate them in terms of your decision-making. But in that case, this was an important part of me.”

Reilly is trim, with silver hair, blue eyes and a disarmingly soft voice. In his office he keeps mementoes of past cases, including a photograph of Matthew Eappen, a baby who was shaken to death by his nanny, Louise Woodward. Reilly won a first-degree murder conviction against Woodward, but a judge reduced the verdict to manslaughter.

He also made Massachusetts the only holdout state in the U.S. antitrust case against Microsoft, arguing that the government caved in too easily. He is awaiting a U.S. appeals court ruling on whether the settlement against Microsoft was adequate.

Reilly also shot down a group of fellow lawyers who wanted what he considered to be an exorbitant payout for their work in the state’s tobacco litigation. And he took on one of the region’s most sacred institutions when he threatened to hold up the sale of the Red Sox to make sure the charities that were part of the package got their share.

As for Romney, Reilly said the governor may not like same-sex marriage, but at the moment, there is not much he can do to stop it.

“He’ll get over it,” Reilly said. “He has to get over it. We need to move on.”