And so farewell, Michael “Meatball” Morrissey, the obese, corrupt, lifelong-hack district attorney of Norfolk County.

He is retiring due to ill health. The voters got sick of him.

After the failure of his deranged second attempt to lynch Karen Read last year for a murder she could not have committed, a poll was conducted among 1,100 Norfolk County residents.

Only 4% thought the bloated 71-year-old fraud deserved reelection.

Think about that – 4% favorability, after almost 50 years in politics, coming from the largest city in the county.

After the poll came out, the only question anybody had was, who were these 4% who liked Meatball? Nobody knew anybody who supported this guy, even the payroll patriots who “worked” for Meatball and lavished cash on him to keep their phony-baloney jobs.

You know Morrissey wanted to run again for his $223,442-a-year job, even though he’d probably never admit it.

He’s raised nothing for his campaign account in 13 of the last 14 months (the one $200 contribution in 2025 came from a lobbyist who used to work for a convicted felon House speaker). Yet he still had $409,343.72 in the bank.

After a shot or two of Captain Morgan’s spiced rum, his electoral fantasy was to recreate the 1976 Ed Markey special-election model to fill a vacant Congressional seat.

Twelve candidates ran to replace the deceased incumbent. No one had to give up their seat. It was a free shot. Markey won in a landslide – with 21% of the vote.

The problem for Meatball was, only four Democrats had entered the race against him. He needed at least 15 candidates in the September primary to have even an outside shot of reaching that magic 6%-7% of the vote to prevail.

It wasn’t only that Meatball has compiled the most appalling, incompetent, corrupt record of any Massachusetts district attorney in this century. The other problem is that Norfolk County has changed.

Look at his hometown of Quincy. The current mayor, Tom Koch, a fellow townie hack of Meatball’s, is almost as detested across the board as Morrissey.

Koch used to have iron-clad control of the City Council. But his slate was utterly destroyed in the municipal elections two months ago. He’s down to, like, two supporters on the Council.

Same thing in hack-infested Canton, where Meatball’s had his offices all these wasted years. Of course Canton voters had the most up-close-and-personal view of the utter corruption of the Karen Read prosecution.

But the result in Canton has been the same as in Quincy — an utter repudiation of the tawdry good-old-boy crew.

The last McAlbert among the selectmen, Jailbird Chris Albert, is apparently not running for another term. (Not that he could have been reelected).

Former Canton selectman John “Don’t Call Me Zip” Connolly, who won the Meatball lookalike contest a few years back, was himself summarily ousted by the voters, after muttering under his breath at Town Hall about “bleeping random citizens” criticizing the attempted frame-up of Karen Read.

With Morrissey still nominally running for reelection, Republicans were trying to recruit someone to run for DA… just in case. I mean, if Meatball had somehow won the primary, any GOP candidate would have been a shoo-in.

Now that possibility of a Republican district attorney, no matter how remote, is gone.

The question is, which Democrat steps up next? You always have candidates who take an early stand against despicable incumbents – think Sen. Eugene McCarthy against LBJ in 1968. But once the horrible pol is gone, stronger but more cautious candidates emerge.

I don’t know, maybe Bill Phelan runs. He’s a former mayor of Quincy, but despite that black mark against him, he somehow manages to present himself as acceptable to the county’s blow-in suburban crackpots who would never have voted for Meatball.

Running for sheriff, he carried the People’s Republic of Brookline against Sheriff Pat McDermott (another county hack from Quincy).

So I guess the key to success will be, you’ll need that Quincy base, without appearing to be too… Quincy. Meatball has utterly destroyed the Quincy brand.

As fat, stupid and corrupt as he is, Meatball knew. For instance, he loved marching in those parades. The last couple of years, it didn’t matter how many of his fellow Norfolk County layabouts he surrounded himself with as he waddled down Washington Street or wherever, someone would invariably recognize him and point him out.

“Which one is Meatball?” you’d hear someone asking on social media.

“He’s the fat one!” would come the answer. “The fat one in the dirty jacket.”

His top assistant retired. His flack bailed. The State Police dismantled his entire “detective” unit. Trooper Michael Proctor was fired.

The only one on his staff who made a good career move lately was the one who decided to “transition.” He, er, she, will be nominated for a judgeship by Gov. Maura Healey in three… two… one.

Remember Adam Lally, the hapless prosecutor in the first kangaroo-court trial of Karen Read. A terrible lawyer – his nickname was “the human rain-delay” – he kept his job the old-fashioned way. He gave hundreds to Meatball at his annual August fundraiser.

Poor Adam Lally — $1,750 down the drain. Did he ever move out of that little apartment of his in Attleboro?

Norfolk County has always been corrupt. Framing wise guys on murder charges for Whitey Bulger, looking the other way on a gangland hit by a BPD detective in Canton in 1976, the list of scandals is too great to even list them all.

But even worse than Karen Read was Sandra Birchmore, a pregnant 23-year-old murdered in Canton in 2021. Meatball’s office ruled it a suicide. It was left to the feds to indict her townie cop boyfriend.

There were 32,000 text messages between Birchmore and the Stoughton cop who’d groomed her. Meatball’s State Police couldn’t find any of them, not one. Last May, even after the cop’s arrest, Meatball told the Quincy Democrat City Committee he still believed Birchmore had killed herself.

On the morning the cop was arrested, despite the overwhelming evidence, Meatball was stunned. He texted his coatholders in shock as he watched news of the feds’ pinch on TV.

“Is there any truth to this?” Meatball Morrissey typed, still clueless after all these years.

Sandra Birchmore could not be reached for comment.

Statement from Alan Jackson

Karen Read’s attorney didn’t want to let this news pass. Here’s what he told me: “Michael Morrissey didn’t so much step aside as the ground gave way beneath him.  His decision to not seek reelection comes amid the dismantling of nearly the entire Norfolk County detective unit, and the cloud of corruption that was finally brought to light during two failed and unjust prosecutions of Karen Read became impossible to ignore — and Mr. Morrissey knew it.

“Mr. Morrissey stated that he is ‘extremely proud’ of the office during his tenure. That speaks volumes about why public confidence in his office has collapsed and why his departure was not just necessary, but inevitable. Public trust in the justice system is eroded when political cronyism is rewarded over fairness, when accountability is resisted, and when devastating errors are defended instead of confronted. Pride, under those circumstances, is not a virtue; it is a warning sign.

“Karen Read and her team are honored to have played a role in ushering in a new era — an era of truth, accountability, and independence — for Norfolk County.”

(Order Howie’s new book on this and other related subjects, “Mass Corruption, Vol. 1: The Cops,” at amazon.com or howiecarrshow.com/books.)

Attorney Alan Jackson, with his client Karen Read, won against the DA’s team. (Nancy Lane/Boston Herald)