Is Massachusetts about to return to its tradition of electing Republican governors?
Will a Republican soon govern the state that sent Elizabeth Warren to the Senate?
Many in Massachusetts are cautiously optimistic that GOP gubernatorial nominee Charlie Baker is on track to win next month’s race. Baker and his Democratic opponent are essentially tied in the RealClearPolitics poll average, and his support has generally trended upward in recent weeks.
The odds certainly seem stacked against Baker. Just 11 percent of the state’s voters are registered Republicans, and it has not gone for a GOP presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984. The House delegation has been all-Democratic since 1997, and Democrats have won every Senate race held in the state since 1972, with one exception: Scott Brown’s special-election victory in January 2010 to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat.
But Baker has a better chance than you might think. It was current Democratic gubernatorial nominee Martha Coakley, the state’s attorney general, who lost that infamous race to Scott Brown. Coakley would be the state’s first woman to be elected governor, and support from women’s groups helped her take the relatively staid September primary by six points over state treasurer Steve Grossman. Coakley has had trouble exciting voters, and despite 16 years in elected office, she is probably best known for losing the 2010 Senate race. Her experience is also not necessarily an asset in a state where positioning as the outsider candidate for governor has often led to success.
And Republicans have had real success winning the Massachusetts governor’s office, despite the state’s heavy Democratic tilt. The state is rated D+10 in the Partisan Voter Index, tied with Maryland as the fifth-most Democratic state, behind only Hawaii and neighbors Vermont, Rhode Island, and New York. But from 1990 through 2006, the Bay State was run by four Republican chief executives: Bill Weld, who won narrowly in 1990 and massively in 1994; Paul Cellucci, who became acting governor when Weld resigned in 1997 and then won his own term in 1998; Jane Swift, who took over when Cellucci became ambassador to Canada in 2001; and then Mitt Romney, who served from 2003 to 2007. That streak was broken only by Deval Patrick’s victories over former lieutenant governor Kerry Healey in 2006 and over Baker in 2010.
Republican candidates can triumph if they get crossover support, and Baker has shown signs that he can. In mid September, he was endorsed by Tom Koch, the Democratic mayor of Quincy, one of the state’s ten largest cities, and he’s also picked up numerous endorsements from other Democratic officeholders across the state. Early in October, he even garnered the endorsement of Dropkick Murphys member Ken Casey, a Democrat heavily involved with Boston mayor Marty Walsh’s successful campaign in 2013. In addition, many of the state’s more conservative Democrats backed Grossman in the primary, and polls have consistently shown that many of his supporters plan to vote for Baker in November.
Meanwhile, important Democrats have been absent from the campaign trail. Popular former Boston mayor Thomas Menino, who stepped down last year after 20 years, has stayed out of the race publicly. So too has Tim Murray, a former mayor of Worcester and Patrick’s lieutenant governor until 2013, when he resigned in the wake of a scandal arising from a mysterious traffic accident. Murray is still quite well regarded in the Worcester area, and he, like many other Massachusetts Democrats, is said to have a poor relationship with Coakley. Former Worcester city manager Michael O’Brien, whose service overlapped with Murray’s, also came out in support of Baker this week.
Baker’s running mate, Karyn Polito, has been a further asset, coming from the growing Republican stronghold in central Massachusetts and offering a gender balance to the ticket, too.
One community where Polito has made inroads is Everett, a working-class city just north of Boston. The city has long been dominated by Democrats who tend to consider themselves relatively conservative (full disclosure: I live there, too). City councilor Rosa DiFlorio, another Democrat vocally supporting the Baker-Polito ticket, says she’s found Polito particularly impressive.
“When she goes around talking with people in Everett, she connects very well because she’s very genuine. The city is made up of immigrants from many cultures, and she understands that,” DiFlorio says. “The Democrats have had their turn, and it’s gotten worse and worse. This is the year 2014 — party doesn’t matter as much as the person to get the job done.”
Baker began his political career under two former Republican governors, Weld and Cellucci, whom he served primarily as secretary of administration and finance, overseeing the state’s budget. He later became the CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, which he is credited with restoring after the company went into receivership.
Baker is running on a moderate platform, but a detailed one, too: Although he supports the state’s recently enacted $10.50/hour minimum wage, he’s also calling for tax breaks to small businesses who employ minimum-wage workers to mitigate the harm. His economic platform includes a number of proposals to cut a range of taxes as well as one to increase in the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit. Baker has long been a strong proponent of charter schools and has also offered plans to establish new degree structures at state high schools and universities to keep costs down.
In 2010, Baker lost his first run for governor, to incumbent Deval Patrick, 48.4 percent to 42. As Baker himself acknowledges, it was far from a well-run campaign, marred by a series of unfortunate sound bites in which he came across as angry and aloof, in stark contrast to Patrick’s energetic, upbeat persona. He seems more composed this time around, and Coakley lacks Patrick’s charisma. In addition, the three independent candidates running for governor this year are weaker than Tim Cahill, the Democrat-turned-independent who ran in 2010 and pulled white working-class voters from Baker’s tally.
If he does pull off the upset, Baker will face challenges governing a state whose legislature is overwhelmingly Democratic: Just 29 of 160 seats in the state house are held by Republicans, and only four of 40 in the state senate. The party is optimistic about gaining several seats in both chambers, but estimates of the likely swing vary widely. Those are challenges, however, that Baker is well aware of, and similar conditions held during the Weld and Cellucci administrations in which he served during the 1990s.
Twenty years ago, Massachusetts had a Republican governor, a Republican treasurer, and even two GOP congressmen. Heck, even Elizabeth Warren, a Pennsylvanian at the time, said she was a registered Republican back then. She’s unlikely to return to the GOP fold — but 20 years later, the Massachusetts governor’s office, along with some others, just might.
— Michael Cowett represents the Middlesex and Suffolk district on the Massachusetts Republican State Committee.