MacLaughlin out of jail

NASHUA – Absent from city politics for five months, Alderman David Mac-Laughlin was released from a Massachusetts prison over the weekend – just in time to cast a ballot in Tuesday’s election.

The Ward 8 alderman won’t say who he voted for, but shared his enthusiasm about being a free man.

“I feel it did work. It did what it was supposed to,” MacLaughlin said of his sentence at Lawrence Correctional Alternative Center, a low-security facility where he also received treatment for alcohol abuse.

MacLaughlin was arrested in June for driving drunk on Interstate 93, and after almost immediately pleading guilty, he started serving a nearly four-month-long sentence. It was his third drunken driving offense in Massachusetts.

Despite Alderman-at-Large Fred Teeboom’s attempt to remove MacLaughlin from office, the board chose to allow Mac-Laughlin to serve the remainder of his term – until January – once he was released from prison.

He was released from the facility Oct. 31.

MacLaughlin did not seek re-election and his name is not on the ballot for Ward 8.

On Tuesday, MacLaughlin also said he wasn’t actively seeking election as a write-in candidate. He went to Bicentennial Elementary School, the Ward 8 polling station, only to vote and greet constituents, he said.

MacLaughlin said he heard some voters had considered choosing him out of dissatisfaction with Mary Ann Melizzi-Goja and Edmond Stebbins, the two residents on the ballot seeking the Ward 8 seat.

But MacLaughlin said he hadn’t persuaded anyone to vote for him.

He said because he was in prison, he knew he couldn’t run a grass-roots campaign and had to sit out this election.

MacLaughlin last attended an aldermanic meeting in May. He then seemingly disappeared. None of the aldermen publicly discussed his absence until August, when board President Steve Bolton said MacLaughlin was out of town.

Bolton later said he didn’t know where MacLaughlin was, only that MacLaughlin’s father had notified the city in June that his son would be absent for some time.

Many aldermen said in August that because there was only three months until the election, they wouldn’t remove MacLaughlin from the board because city charter requires a minimum of six months to hold a special election.

MacLaughlin later apologized in a letter for not informing his colleagues and constituents of his arrest and sentence.

On Tuesday, MacLaughlin said: “Life can just get better if you stop using what you shouldn’t use. Stopping the use of alcohol was essentially critical.”

Despite his release the weekend before the election, Mac-Laughlin said he knew there wasn’t enough time to run a campaign.

“Believe me: It killed me to not seek another term,” he said. “I believe my experience would have served this ward pretty well.”

He will not rule out running for office again in the future.

“I don’t go away easy,” he said. “I spent the first five months of this year preparing to run.”

Albert McKeon can be reached at 594-5832 or amckeon@nashuatelegraph.com.