Like the Red Sox spring lineup, the roster for the next Plymouth Select Board is in soft focus. Whether it looks like a winning season ahead depends on your political perspective.
For those keeping score at home, five candidates are competing for two seats on the five-member board. Incumbents Kevin Canty and Dick Quintal are seeking re-election to another three-year term. Betty Cavacco, who served on the board between 2017 and 2023, wants back in. Scott Vecchi, a former longtime Plymouth police officer with a checkered record, is making another attempt at being elected after losing last year. Stevie Keith, who co-owns a local plumbing company, is the sole rookie.
Residents craving wholesale change on a board whose current members frequently don’t play nice together might find the field underwhelming. Then again, most registered voters don’t care enough to participate in the process. Based on recent history, fewer than two out of every 10 are likely to cast a ballot next month.
What’s really different about this year’s town election – set for Saturday, May 16 – is the tag team approach of Cavacco and Quintal. They’re positioning themselves as agents of change despite a cumulative tenure of nearly three decades – her six years and his non-sequential 21.
Considering the precarious state of the local government’s finances, it’s reasonable to wonder how two officials who already had plenty of time behind the wheel can steer the budget in a new direction.
No doubt, political alliances are necessary to get anything done in a governmental body, and the decision to meld their campaigns into one is not unprecedented. But it hasn’t been done in Plymouth since the turn of the century, and before that, in the 1980s.
The two are holding joint campaign events, including one set for Wednesday at Second Wind Brewing. Cavacco’s slogan is “People Over Politics.” Quintal is repurposing the “Experience Counts!” label he’s used before.
The genesis of the Cavacco-Quintal campaign has a friendship element – both told me they like the other and they previously served together – but there is an obvious political intent behind the effort, too. If Cavacco and Quintal were to win, they – unlike Canty and fellow board member Deb Iaquinto – would align with chair David Golden on most issues, giving them the three-vote majority.
This isn’t mere speculation.
In May 2024, when Golden was running unopposed for an open Select Board seat, Cavacco wrote on Facebook: “Wishing David Golden for Selectboard and Tim Bennett for Planning Board much success!”
Quintal also is a Golden backer, as evidenced by a disquieting moment during last week’s Select Board meeting. In what Independent reporter Fred Thys described as “mini revolt,” Canty, Iaquinto, and Bill Keohan demanded Golden schedule eight agenda items they said he had been slow to put on the calendar. Before a vote was taken to force the scheduling, Quintal turned to Golden and asked, “Are you all right with that?”
Golden, perhaps sensing it was not a good look, replied, “It’s your vote, sir.”
Quintal later told Thys he was trying to “calm” the situation, but the interaction implied he was seeking permission to vote against the chair’s wishes.
In a conversation prior to last week’s meeting, Quintal told me he’s running in tandem with Cavacco because “we got a lot of things done. I thought we stayed pretty focused…We work well together.”
“I was seriously going to retire this year,” he said. That was before the town’s fiscal forecast went from partly sunny to overcast.
“People just came up to me and said, `You know, you have the institutional knowledge.’ That’s what I hear from a lot of people. And that’s really why I’m doing it.”
Quintal objected when I suggested he and Cavacco harbor personal animosity toward Canty.
“I didn’t say I don’t like Kevin Canty,” he said. “I don’t like some of his ways…He’s the kind of person that doesn’t really listen to others and I think that’s why he’s not the chairman right now.”
The backstory is that Quintal was angry when the board reorganized following last year’s election and Canty replaced him as chair. After just four months, Golden enlisted the help of Quintal and – inexplicably – Keohan to oust Canty and install himself as chair, citing a need for a “restoration of collegiality.”
Six months later, it still sounds like Quintal won’t be inviting Canty to a backyard barbeque any time soon.
“I don’t think he’s called me once,” he said. “Maybe he texted me twice, when he was the chairman. Other than that, there’s no real communication…I want the board to start working as a whole, and that’s why I’m supporting Betty.”
In a phone conversation, Cavacco echoed Quintal’s take on the Select Board.
“Every board that I served on, of course there were little idiosyncrasies that we all had, but I have never, ever seen a board like we have now,” she said. “It’s so disconnected, and I hate it for the residents.”
Cavacco said she decided not to seek a third term in 2023 “because I was sick and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to give people my 110%. I didn’t think that was fair to the residents or the people that supported me.”
In a Facebook post at the time, she offered a self-assessment of her tenure: “My time in politics has been extraordinary. We have accomplished so much during my time in office. We were able to finally provide a fair and reasonable wage to all of our employees, develop the first steps in a long-term strategic plan and rebuild the morale across the spectrum of our departments. I can walk away knowing the town is on solid ground and will accomplish great things in the future.”
Today, however, the ground is muddy. There is talk of budget cuts or even a Proposition 21/2 override in the not-so-distant future. It’s simple math: The town isn’t taking in enough new tax dollars to keep pace with the budget, which is increasing because of contractual obligations, GLP-1 weight loss drug costs, and expenses such as this winter’s snow removal bill.
“The disconnect between people on the Select Board is alarming. It’s dysfunctional, and I can’t complain if I don’t try to do something to fix it,” Cavacco said. It is one reason why she said she believes running with Quintal makes sense.
“When Mr. Quintal and I were on the board previously, we delivered a balanced budget. We didn’t have to argue and fight with any of our employee unions,” she said.
That prompted me ask about an accusation critics have levied: She curried favor with the unions to win votes. Not true, Cavacco said. In fact, she and Quintal helped negotiate a deal with unions that has “saved taxpayers more than $5 million” in health insurance costs.
There was “mutual respect” between her, Quintal, and the unions, Cavacco said, something she believes Golden has also worked to cultivate.
“I don’t know if you noticed,” she interjected, “I’m not talking about any other candidate” in this year’s race.
That was, untiI I brought up their mutual political nemesis.
“There’s no love lost between you and Kevin Canty,” I said.
“There isn’t,” Cavacco said, “because look at what’s happened…I’m floored that he lost the chairmanship after only three and a half months (in 2025). And you know, just the mere – it’s my opinion – the audacity of questioning our police department and our police chief.”
She was referring to Canty’s call to codify Police Chief Dana Flynn’s policy on how the local department interacts with ICE, an issue that will go before Town Meeting.
Referencing her “People Over Politics” slogan, I mentioned that during her time on the board Cavacco was known to be caustic on occasion.
“I don’t think anyone ever has to worry about [not knowing] what I have on my mind,” she said.
“People learn, you know. It was actually enlightening for me to have to step away and look at the way things were,” she said. “A lot of those things were teasing.”
Like Quintal, Cavacco said running together doesn’t mean they’ll always vote in unison, or as a majority block with Golden. Besides, if Golden is successful in his bid to be elected as a Republican state representative, he’d have to step down from the board.
“Dickie and I didn’t always agree on everything, but we have the common goal of how we want to govern and what we want for our town,” Cavacco said.
For context on the double bill, I turned to former Select Board member David Malaguti, a keen observer of town politics. In 1984, he and George “Tim” Butters, who died in 1999, were the first to run as a pair, according to Malaguti.
“Everybody said it was a mistake,” he recalled. “They said, ‘They’re going to like you and not Timmy,’ or, ‘People are going to like Timmy and not you.’ But we pulled it off.”
In the tradition of not fixing something that isn’t broken, they did it again successfully three years later.
I wondered if there was some grand strategy behind the decision. Nope, Malaguti said.
“We were really close friends and our families knew each other,” he said. “We just got along.”
The two often leaned the same way on issues, he admitted, but weren’t always in lockstep.
“No two people are ever going to vote the same on everything,” he said. “It’s impossible.”
In 2001, Malaguti again took the team approach with David Rushforth. Both were elected. Rushforth, who was a radiologist at the then Jordan Hospital, died in 2015. Malaguti remembers him coming up with an unorthodox campaign slogan: “Rush forth and elect David Malaguti.” It didn’t exactly roll off the tongue, he admitted.
As with Butters, Malaguti said, the alliance was formed out of friendship.
I also asked the three current Select Board candidates who are campaigning on their own to weigh in on the twin ticket.
Canty said in an email that he planned “to run a campaign focused on the issues I think are important – improving affordability for all residents and advocating for smart and balanced development for Plymouth’s future – and I think my track record of community outreach and engagement demonstrates my commitment to our entire town. I hope we have a great voter turnout in May, and I wish everyone luck in their campaigns.”
In a phone conversation, Keith said, “If that’s their plan, go for it. I’m running as an individual that wants to help Plymouth. That’s it. I’m not hitching my wagon to anybody except for the people at Plymouth.”
What’s happening in local politics is “like a microcosm of what’s going on on the national scale,” he added. “People are picking teams, and I don’t…I’m here to listen to everybody and try to make the best possible decisions based on the facts and the lived experience of people in town. The more we get into this divisiveness, the worse it is for Plymouth.”
Vecchi was less nuanced.
“We’ve gotta stop voting for the people that got us into this mess in the first place,” he wrote in a text. “Betty and Dicky running as a ticket shows that they care more about alliances and getting their way than they do about the taxpayers. By hiding behind Dicky Betty hopes that the voters will forget about her corrupt behavior the last time she served as select board member…I don’t know what Dicky expects to get out of this and frankly I’d expect better of him.”
Deep breaths, everyone – the election is more than six weeks away, and what this five-way race (or is it four?) portends for Team Plymouth’s political season is unknown. But this much I do know: As of Tuesday night, the Red Sox were in last place.
Mark Pothier can be reached at mark@plymouthindependent.org.