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Date: 9/13/2023
As I and the Reminder Publishing team have been intimately involved in the historic Springfield election season while watching legal battles regarding alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election rage from afar, I’ve found myself thinking about one of the wildest local elections I have ever been witness to.
Admittedly, a great number of the elections we cover are not overly compelling. Many result in low turnouts thanks to recycled candidates and uncontested races. Even Springfield’s recent mayoral elections have been snoozers with Domenic Sarno facing what can be most delicately described as faint opposition in his reelection bids. You can’t even really call them campaigns because, well, that would require campaigning.
Occasionally a ballot question will boost interest, and certainly this year’s Springfield election fields for mayor and City Council are quite robust (insert shameless plug to refer to the The Reminder’s special election section in its Aug. 31 Springfield editions here) but overall, it’s very seldom that we see fireworks. Usually those are confined to Town Meetings, at which I have seen everything from strong opposition to tattoo establishments (Kids will have devil horns! Devil horns!) to full-blown arguments over length of grass.
In the confines of the polling place, with a couple of exceptions, things have been pretty quiet around here, especially in the smaller communities we cover. But the election of 2012? Hooboy. That’s a story to tell. And given that the fiasco came to a close just about 10 years ago this week, I am overcome with the urge to re-tell CliffsNotes version of a tale almost good enough to be a made for TV movie.
It had a little bit of everything — an ambitious but narrow-focused antagonist and his unassuming and underestimated sidekick, espionage, police investigations, a passport and getaway bag, courtroom drama, a secret wedding, cryptic social media activity — all surrounding the kind of plan that makes you think, “They don’t think that’s actually going to work, right?”
In 2012, then-East Longmeadow Selectman and House of Representatives hopeful Jack Villamaino was running for a second time for a chance to represent the Second Hampden District, a district that was and remains represented by state Rep. Brian Ashe. Standing in Villamaino’s way in a primary to represent Republicans in the race was Longmeadow Selectman Marie Angelides, who had previously defeated him by 280 votes in September 2010. Villamaino had also previously run unsuccessfully for state Senate and was quickly veering toward the status of perennial also-ran.
As the campaign ramped up, a couple of residents got unsolicited notices that their voter registration status had changed from Democrat the unenrolled. Then more. Calls to Town Hall became more frequent. Something was off. Then, Town Clerk Thomas Florence and his staff sounded the alarm to state authorities in August 2012 when they detected irregularities in the number of absentee ballots requested — nearly 450 in the precincts represented by the Second Hampden District — and Angelides brought evidence of potential fraud to Reminder Publishing. The Secretary of the Commonwealth’s Office launched an investigation and seized control and oversight of election activities in East Longmeadow. Later that month, the Massachusetts State Police shut down the Clerk’s Office and gathered more evidence. At the time, Villamaino’s girlfriend, Courtney Llewellyn, had recently begun working in the Clerk’s Office at the selectman’s behest.
East Longmeadow at the time did not have a recall provision in its bylaws, so even amidst the investigation, there was no recourse to remove Villamaino, who was fast becoming a person of interest in the case. But Villamaino took care of that concern for the Board of Selectmen, resigning via letter, citing “matters of a personal and familial nature.” Villamaino wasn’t present at the meeting at which his resignation was accepted and disappeared from public view. In the meantime, he took down his campaign website and proceeded to periodically change the cover photo on his Facebook page from one movie poster depicting a heist or other crime to another — from “Catch Me If You Can” to “Ocean’s Twelve” to “Charade” to “The Italian Job.” For her part, as The Reminder’s coverage of the case continued, Llewellyn changed her Twitter handle to @gofyourselfmaza, something to this day I carry as a badge of honor of sorts.
Villamaino and Llewellyn also got married with social media depicting the couple cutting a cake, a move then-Hampden District Attorney Mark Mastroianni characterized as a “sham” intended to prevent the two from testifying against one another — witnesses told investigators Villamaino said he was marrying Llewellyn because she “held the key to his jail cell.”
Villamaino was arrested in October 2012 by state police at his Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority office. In his possession were his passport and a bag full of personal items. According to Mastroianni, witnesses said Villamaino had told them he considered fleeing to Switzerland to avoid prosecution. Llewellyn later turned herself in to East Longmeadow police.
The two were accused of hatching and attempting to carry out a plot to steal votes by changing voters’ registration status from Democrat to unenrolled in order to request absentee ballots in their names with the intent of submitting votes in Villamaino’s favor. For context, those registered unenrolled could vote in a Republican primary. There was no Democratic primary, so perhaps they thought those registered Democrats wouldn’t notice? Either way, the two were caught through security camera footage and computer records sneaking into the Clerk’s Office after hours to change the statuses. Llewellyn then processed the absentee ballot applications and Villamaino took the ballots from the Clerk’s Office, saying he was going to put them in the mailbox outside. They were never mailed. The number of absentee ballots? About 280. You guessed it — “just about a name-for-name match for all the people who had been unenrolled from the Democratic party,” Mastroianni said — and just about the same number of votes by which he lost the previous election.
Villamaino and Llewellyn were initially charged with 12 counts of various election violations — including felonies — and were back in court in January 2013 on 26 and 46 additional charges, respectively. With a trial date closing in, Villamaino pled guilty to 11 charges in August 2013, including felony counts for perjury, forgery and conspiracy to commit a voting violation, and was sentenced to a one-year split sentence — four months in prison and eight months suspended — plus an additional year of probation. Shortly thereafter, with a tearful courtroom performance, Llewellyn avoided jail time and a felony conviction by pleading guilty to five charges.
It’s a story I think about and tell often, not only because it is just a flat out wild story, but because it illustrates to me that there are those who will do anything to win, and on the other end of that spectrum, how well protected our voting rights are when the right people are paying attention. Some at the time considered the East Longmeadow town clerk to be a problem for allowing such a thing to happen under his watch or a victim because the circumstances “happened to him.” Rather, I’ve thought of him as one of the heroes of this story, complete with a Clark Kent-like mild-mannered way about him, and the glasses. He and his staff identified the irregularities almost immediately and helped prevent what might have been a much larger issue. After the fact, he had to maintain and rebuild public trust in the system, and I think his handling of the Villamaino situation ultimately aided in that effort. For their part, state and local authorities were swift in their response. And though I fought Mastroianni in court through various motions in attempts to get impounded evidence and documents made public, and questioned the ultimate outcome of the case, his interest was the same.
But ultimately, while protections exist, it is incumbent on us to ensure the freedom the ballot box represents by actively exercising it. The ability to choose our representation in government is a right we should jealously guard. The best way to combat corruption of the process is to be involved in the process, to understand the mechanics, check our voter registration status, and, most importantly, participate when the opportunity to be heard is made available.
Apathy is the greatest avenue through which those who wish to violate the system can do so.
A heartening election cycle for Springfield
By the time you’ll be reading this, the preliminary election for Springfield’s mayoral race, City Council at-Large and city councilor for Ward 6 will have been decided. While I made mention of it earlier, I think it bears repeating that this has been a truly historic election season. For the first time since perhaps Charlie Ryan was upset by Sarno, the incumbent mayor has faced true opposition. Whether that will result in a changing of the guard remains to be seen as of this writing, but the fact that Springfield does, indeed, have a number of qualified people carrying the goods to lead it and a passion for the city should be heartening to residents.
Also encouraging should be the number of candidates who threw their hat in the ring for City Council, specifically the at-large seats. None can remember a field quite so big, and while that presents an interesting challenge for candidates of determining how to differentiate themselves from the field, and for voters of learning and keeping straight those differentiating factors, it has produced a truly diverse field that offers perspectives of residents of many of the city’s 17 neighborhoods.
These races have raised and reiterated important issues facing the city and its residents and the resultant discussions and critiques are important in ensuring fair representation and actionable change for the community. While in some ways it can certainly be argued the city is in a better place than it was 15 or so years ago, in others, we have not progressed or found ourselves in less desirable situations. Sarno’s administration to this point has been seen as positive by many both inside and outside the city proper, but it is certainly not beyond reproach or absolved of criticism. As a resident of the city, having grown up in what is now Ward 5, bought my first home in Ward 8 and currently living in Ward 7, I look forward to the continued debate and review of the current leadership’s performance and potential change.
Other quick election thoughts