In Game of Thrones, the throne changes hands seven times across eight seasons. The king is the spectacle. Everyone watches the king.
But the show isn't really about the king. It's about the houses behind him — and the deals between them.
So is Plymouth.
Today you vote. Four candidates running for two seats. Two of them are running together. One was ousted by his own allies eight months ago. One is at open war with two of the others. The fifth house isn't even on the ballot — and was the only no vote on the night a $1.67 million building sold for $40,000. Five houses. Read this before you vote.
MAY 12
The vote took less than a minute.
On the consent block sat the disposition of the Simes House, the Town of Plymouth had spent $4,970,477 in public dollars to rebuild.
Three hands went up. One did not.
$40,000.
Bill Keohan, the one no vote, spoke into the silence.
This building should not be sold for forty thousand dollars. These are community preservation acquisitions. It feels like it's out of spite.
Then the next agenda item was called.
To understand how that vote happened, you have to understand the four years that came before it. The houses didn't arrive at the May 12 vote by accident. They moved.
HOUSE CAVACCO
The Cersei move. The earliest mover. The one running today.
Alliance through proximity. A federal case. A missing $5,000. Her own Hand on the throne.
Every Game of Thrones house has a play. House Cavacco's play came first — and it's the play every later move in this story responds to.
It started with surveillance.
In November 2020, Town Manager Melissa Arrighi was caught reading Select Board member Betty Cavacco's emails at Town Hall. The throne was watching its own council.
It continued with a note.
On April 20, 2021, Arrighi wrote in her notes: (Cavacco) "relentless 'override/veto my decision.' I'm doing 2nd interview — back off!" Three Plymouth town officials would later describe what was happening, on condition of anonymity to the Plymouth Independent in 2026 — five years after the fact — as Cavacco's "constant interference in lower-level hires." The three, still afraid to be named. In 2026.
It became a conspiracy.
In the fall of 2021, Cavacco and Quintal went to the DPW Director, a man named Jonathan Beder, and jointly promised him their support to replace Arrighi as Town Manager. Beder is now Town Administrator of Avon. He told the Plymouth Independent, on the record:
"I did meet with Betty and Dickie on occasion when they were looking for information about the things she was doing."
"There was a lot of blood in the water over what was happening with Melissa, and frankly, I didn't want to work with that board. I have nothing good to say."
Then Arrighi fell.
On November 30, 2021, Arrighi was forced out. Her separation cost the Town more than $300,000. Before she left, she read aloud in executive session a letter from Beder. "They made me do it," the letter said. "They" meant Cavacco and Quintal.
Then Cavacco installed her own Hand.
In March 2022, Cavacco led the 4-1 Select Board vote to hire Derek Brindisi as Town Manager. Six months later, she moved the extension of his contract through 2028. Today, Brindisi sits on the Plymouth Foundation board. On May 12, 2026, he recommended the $40,000 Simes sale.
And four years before any of this, there was a $5,000 check.
Six months after Cavacco was first elected, a $5,000 check landed in a foundation she presided over. The check came from the Herring Ponds Watershed Association. It was drawn by HPWA's then-treasurer, John Foye.
The receipts were never produced. The foundation's 2018 IRS filing reported zero contributions for the year. The $5,000 does not appear on the federal record.
She told the Plymouth Independent the money was "used solely for the charitable purposes of the Foundation." The next year, the only officer payment that foundation ever recorded — $2,000 — went to her husband. Asked about it, she said she had "no recollection of the payment."
And there is a federal case.
Cavacco is a named defendant in Sheehan v. Town of Carver, Town of Plymouth et al., 1:24-cv-12347-ADB, U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
On May 7, 2025, Judge Allison D. Burroughs denied her motion to dismiss the First Amendment claims against her — in both her official and her individual capacities. The defamation claim against her in her individual capacity also survived.
The case is in discovery.
On the Simes sale itself, Cavacco did not respond to the Plymouth Independent's requests for comment. She posted on her own Facebook page: "I am absolutely furious — last night Plymouth took a four million dollar bath."
She is on the ballot today.
HOUSE QUINTAL
The Tywin move. The patriarch in the background. The one running with her.
The family business. The family name on a foundation. The patriarch behind the throne.
Tywin Lannister never sat on the throne — he didn't need to. He ran the family business, financed the wars, and let his daughter wear the crown.
Dick Quintal is the Plymouth Select Board Vice Chair. He owns Quintal Brothers Wholesale Fruit & Produce, Inc. He sits on the Plymouth Foundation board.
He was the second house in the 2021 conspiracy — Beder's "Dickie" in the on-the-record quotes. He stood next to Cavacco when Arrighi was forced out. He stood next to her when Brindisi was hired. The Plymouth Independent characterized their alliance, in its March 18, 2026 piece by Mark Pothier, as "apparently in an attempt to take down Canty."
Then he put the family name on a foundation.
In June 2022, a small private foundation in town — one that had received the $5,000 check from the Herring Ponds Watershed Association five years earlier — was renamed the Quintal Family Foundation Corporation. Its registered address became the Vice Chair's business address. Its registered agent became Betty Cavacco — the woman he is running with.
In June 2025, the Massachusetts Secretary of State involuntarily dissolved the foundation for failure to file annual reports.
Then came the quid-pro-quo allegation.
In the Plymouth Independent's March 18, 2026 reporting, Quintal alleged on the record that Scott Vecchi — the former police sergeant also on today's ballot — had come to Quintal Brothers and proposed a deal.
"If I got him a job back in the police department doing details, he wouldn't run."
Quintal told the Independent: "It's certainly improper. I said, 'You do what you gotta do.'"
Vecchi denies the framing but does not deny the conversation. He told the Independent it was "off the record."
Two candidates. On the same ballot. Contradicting accounts of an alleged back-room offer between them.
And then there was his contradiction with his own running partner.
When HPWA President Don Williams sent a 2023 letter about the missing $5,000, he copied Quintal. Quintal replied with a hostile email demanding a corrected letter clearing his family's name and threatening legal action.
Cavacco, in her response to the Plymouth Independent, said Quintal had been offered to take over the foundation that was later renamed for his family.
Quintal told the Plymouth Independent flatly: "I know nothing about this $5,000."
Two running partners. Two contradicting accounts of the same transaction. On the record. To the same reporter.
He is on the ballot today.
HOUSE CANTY
The Theon move. The reformer who switched sides.
The heir raised in the reform house. The reform he proposed. The vote that betrayed it.
Theon Greyjoy was raised in House Stark. When his moment came to choose, he chose the other side, and spent the rest of the saga trying to figure out who he was.
Kevin Canty is a staff attorney for the Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services. He arrived on the Select Board as a reformer. He spent the last year showing he doesn't know which house he belongs to.
The reform came first.
In August 2025, Canty proposed Article 6 — a Land Acquisition Special Revenue Fund. A statutory vehicle that would have let the Town acquire land using Chapter 61 rollback taxes through Town Meeting authorization. It was the exact machinery that would have prevented closed-room land disposals like the one that happened nine months later.
The ouster came five weeks later.
On September 17, 2025, Canty was deposed as Select Board Chair by a 3-2 vote at an off-site meeting at Manomet Elementary School. Golden, Quintal, and Keohan voted to remove him. Canty and Iaquinto opposed.
Plymouth Town Clerk Laurence Pizer, in his 28th year on the job, told the Plymouth Independent he could not recall a public rebuke like that ever happening in Plymouth.
The betrayal came eight months after that.
On May 12, 2026, Canty voted yes to sell the Simes House for $40,000.
He told the Plymouth Independent: "It seemed after many years of trying to find a good use for the property that would benefit the community, that this opportunity was the best option."
Ten days before the sale, at a Walton Trust event, Canty had affirmed on the record that he preferred to preserve the Chapter 61 land at issue in the Landers Farm matter as open space. A Plymouth resident stood up at the May 12 meeting and read Canty's own published counsel back at him from the floor:
"Plymouth has too often neglected to take the big picture and gotten carried away and then later had to chase after an issue trying to correct what is virtually an unfixable problem."
That was Canty, quoted from his own prior advice, being asked from the floor why he was about to vote yes.
He voted yes anyway. He is on the ballot today.
HOUSE VECCHI
The Hound. The exile picking fights with the throne.
The exile. The settlement. The meme war.
Sandor Clegane was never part of anyone's house. He served the throne, hated everyone in it, and spent the saga picking fights with people more powerful than he was.
Scott Vecchi spent twenty-five years on the Plymouth Police Department. He has, on the public record, the documented résumé of an exile.
The bypass.
The Massachusetts Civil Service Commission ruled in February 2023 that the Town was within its rights to bypass him for a Captain promotion. The 29-page decision also noted that the bypass had been preceded by interference from numerous Town and County employees and office holders who overtly sought to interfere. The outside investigation that informed the ruling found that Vecchi had, over his career, "abused, belittled, and demeaned" subordinates. It documented more than thirty civilian and internal complaints. More than eleven were sustained.
The settlement.
He left the Department in December 2023 with a $283,981 settlement, structured as non-taxable on the basis of post-traumatic stress disorder. He has since self-funded more than $128,000 of his own state-level campaign expenditures. He sits on the Plymouth Redevelopment Authority — a public-sector parallel to the Plymouth Foundation, with its own legal authority over municipal property.
The meme war.
In March 2026, Vecchi posted an AI-generated image of Cavacco on Facebook captioned "Betty the Crook." During his time on the force, he had posted a similar image — a rat in a police cap — after a fellow officer complained about him.
The charges.
He has accused Cavacco, on the record to the Plymouth Independent, of presiding over an "$11 million budget deficit which was never adequately explained" during her 2018-2023 Select Board tenure. He has also accused her of having "conspired with Flynn and other members of the police department to violate Civil Service law and distributed a slander packet to the Select Board and others about me."
He is the one candidate on today's ballot not credibly attached to any of the three foundations. No Plymouth Foundation seat. No Simes House Foundation seat. No Plymouth Youth / Quintal Family Foundation seat.
That, on the public record, is part of why he is on the ballot at all.
He is the Hound. Not a house. Not a Foundation. Not anyone's man.
HOUSE KEOHAN
The Stannis move. The lawful dissenter with a past he hasn't addressed.
The lawful heir. The dissenting vote. The unaddressed past.
Stannis Baratheon was the rightful heir. He had the law on his side. He had the better case. He also had a past — Renly, Storm's End, the leeches at Dragonstone — that he never publicly answered for.
Bill Keohan founded Plymouth's Community Preservation Act in 2002. He chaired the Plymouth Community Preservation Committee for twenty-two years, through approximately $4 million in annual CPA appropriations.
Then they took the chair from him.
In June 2024, Keohan was removed as CPC Chair by Select Board vote, in a dispute over the Committee's independence from town officials. A house that had controlled the treasury for two decades lost its seat to a 4-1 vote.
Then he won his own.
In May 2025, Keohan ran for Select Board with Deb Iaquinto. They won. The Plymouth Independent called them "a team of like minds." Both reformers. Both term-protected through 2028.
Then he switched sides.
On September 17, 2025, Keohan voted with Quintal and Golden to depose Kevin Canty as Chair. Iaquinto voted with Canty against the ouster. The reform pair that had won the 2025 election split four months later.
Then he became the lone no.
On May 12, 2026, Keohan cast the only no vote on the Simes sale. He named the working alternative from the dais: lease the building, the way the Town leased the Sundial for the Arts, the way the Town leased the SPY at the Dada. "These are community preservation acquisitions," he said. "It feels like it's out of spite."
The Town had a playbook. The Town had used the playbook twice. The Town chose not to use the playbook here.
And there is the past he has not addressed.
In IRS Form 990 filings indexed by ProPublica, William J. Keohan is listed as a Director of the Simes House Foundation Inc. — EIN 27-3543531 — in fiscal years 2014 and 2015.
He appears on no Simes House Foundation 990 before FY2014 and on no Simes House Foundation 990 after FY2015.
Between June 30, 2014 and June 30, 2015 — the two years he sat on the board — the Foundation's reported net assets dropped from $1,924,357 to $95,637. Reported expenses for FY2015 were $1,833,264. Against $20,210 the prior year.
The FY2015 filing includes IRS Schedule N — Liquidation, Termination, or Significant Disposition of Assets — and IRS Schedule L — Transactions with Interested Persons. The board shrank from eleven directors to seven across the same window.
The public record does not establish what role, if any, Keohan played in the FY2015 disposition. It establishes only that he was on the board in the two fiscal years the disposition occurred, and that he has not — in twenty-two years on the CPC, his 2024 write-in attempt, his 2025 election, or his current term — publicly disclosed the directorship.
He is the dissenter.
He is also the only Select Board member who sat on a board of the Foundation that held public money for the same building he voted no on May 12 to protect.
Both things are true.
THE IRON BANK
The institution older than every king.
In the show, the Iron Bank of Braavos finances the wars, chooses which king to back, and outlasts every king it lends to. The Iron Bank will have its due.
Plymouth has one too.
The "Plymouth Regional Economic Development Foundation" — the Plymouth Foundation — was incorporated in 2002. From 2002 through 2016, it filed as a public charity. Beginning in 2017, it reclassified as a private foundation under IRS §4941, the federal self-dealing rule.
The reclassification has never been publicly explained.
Its December 2024 Form 990-PF lists thirteen directors. Among them: William Hallisey Jr. (President, owner of Shiretown Glass & Home Center, former Plymouth Selectman); Mathew Muratore (former State Representative, eleven years); Rick Vayo (President of MEGRYCO Inc., one of Plymouth's most active private developers); Derek Brindisi (sitting Town Manager); and Dick Quintal (sitting Select Board Vice Chair, on the ballot today).
Hallisey doesn't just run a hardware store. He holds Massachusetts Construction Supervisor License #101550, doing business as Shiretown Home Improvements, with 212 building permits totaling approximately $1.17 million. His advertised specialty: "historical storefront and residential reproductions."
Hallisey sat on the Plymouth Foundation board during the years the Simes House restoration was being built and financed. The Phase 2 general contractor on Plymouth building permit A1348 — the largest single construction expenditure on the Simes House, $2.6 million between 2014 and 2017 — has never been publicly named. The Phase 1 contractor on permit A1025 was Vareika Construction. The Phase 2 contractor's name sits on the permit application, on file in the Plymouth Building Department.
The donor cluster.
Massachusetts OCPF records show that approximately eleven Plymouth Foundation officers and the Foundation's paid Executive Director have collectively donated approximately $19,100 to State Representative Mathew Muratore — the Foundation board member they sit alongside.
Hallisey alone has given $10,600 in fifteen separately recorded contributions, every year from 2014 through 2025. Quintal: $2,500. Vayo: $1,000. Brindisi: $600 in two checks, both filed under occupation Town Manager. Foundation VP Kimball: $800.
The list goes on. Ten more names. All officers or directors of the same private foundation. All writing personal checks to the legislator who sits with them on its board.
This is the small council. It does not appear on the ballot today. It does not appear on any ballot.
It is older than any chair on the dais.
On the same night the Simes sale moved through the consent block in three minutes, the same Board heard a different proposal in front of the same CPC.
Brendan Annett, Vice President of the Buzzards Bay Coalition, presented the proposed acquisition of the Mann Property. $6.25 million purchase and sale agreement, signed. 18-month closing window. Public Conservation Restriction filing. Funding stack disclosed — NOAA, state DER, $750,000 CPA ask. Engineered restoration plan. Guaranteed public access. An accredited land trust as buyer of record.
Same room. Same week. Same CPC.
The Mann Property is what a transparent land transaction looks like. The Simes sale was its opposite.
WHEN YOU VOTE TODAY
Two seats. Four candidates.
Cavacco. Quintal. Canty. Vecchi.
The Town Manager seat isn't on the ballot. The Plymouth Foundation board seat isn't on the ballot. The Simes House Foundation board seat — the one Bill Keohan held in 2014 and 2015 — isn't on the ballot. The Quintal Family Foundation registered-agent listing, with one of today's candidates as the legal agent at the Vice Chair's business address, isn't on the ballot. The federal civil-rights case in which Betty Cavacco is a named defendant isn't on the ballot.
None of it is.
The houses are.
Across four years, a network the public didn't vote for has:
— Replaced the Town Manager.
— Taken the CPC chair from its founder.
— Deposed the Select Board Chair who pushed for transparent land machinery.
— Severed the Town's appointed officials from the local press.
— Sold a $1.67 million asset for $40,000 on consent.
— And walked into today's election with two of its members on the ballot.
Each move was procedurally permissible. Each move was decided in a room the public was not in.
Today is one of the few times the public is in the room.
The Open Meeting Law complaint window for the May 12 executive session closes June 11.
Betty Cavacco's federal case proceeds to discovery.
The throne is Plymouth.
Today's ballot decides who sits closest to it.