Tag / Martha Coakley

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FOR REFORM FROM BOTH DIRECTIONS : CHARLIE BAKER & MAURA HEALEY

Baker and Local 26

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^ top : Charlie baker with leaders of Local 26 Hotel and Hospitality Workers Union

(bottom) Maura Healey with Charlestown State Rep Dan Ryan and (behind him) Chris Remmes, who was a Ryan opponent in the recent special St rep election

A few days ago i made up my mind whom I wanted to be our state’s net Attorney General. I chose Maura Healey. I had already chosen Charlie Baker to be our next Governor; so I put stickers for both on my car’s bumper, and I posted a picture of my Baker/Healey “ticket.”

To me, Healey and Baker were, respectively, the best candidates, of those on offer, for the offices at issue, and at that time I thought no further.

Tonight, however, after journo-ing Maura Healey’s meet and greet event at the Ironside Grille in Charlestown — more about this event later — I realized that there is a far more profound purpose than I had realized, in selecting Baker and Healey rather than any of their rivals.

That purpose is reform. “Reform from both directions,” i call it.

Baker brings a radical change vision to state administration, changes he is well gifted to accomplish and which are sorely needed : vastly improved data management; transparency; user-friendly online access, coherence, and hugely more effective dollar deployment. Waste, incompetence, obscurity, DCF failure, shady managerial hires (remember Sheila Burgess ?), health care connector collapse, legislative confusion : you name it, state administration during the past four years has fallen from grace.

Baker passes all the prerequisite policy tests — of women’s health rights, marriage equality, transgender rights, support for fair wages, even an ability to work with the state’s major private sector unions. On these scores, he supports what most voters in Massachusetts support. Thus putting him in charge of reforming state administration does not, at the same time, risk losing our progressive momentum on the issues.

At the same time, Baker, politically, cannot do things that Maura Healey can; just as Healey cannot, as attorney general, undertake reforms that Baker as governor can. Healey as attorney general can use the power of law enforcement and oversight to advance women’s rights, the rights of small people against the big banks and bureaucratic systems, the rights of transgender people, matters of public safety and gun regulation. She talks about these tasks all the time, and does so with passion and in detail.

Healey has the voice of a stump speech reformer; Baker has it too. The culture of Beacon Hill badly needs to hear both of these voices.

Yes, she and he are, otherwise very different. One is a Democrat, the other a Republican. One is managerial, the other a crusader. They complement one another marvelously.

Together, they have the power, and will have sufficient public attention, to force Speaker DeLeo to listen. DeLeo, like many Speakers before him, has used his complete control of the House to pass only the legislation that he wants, in the shape that he wants it, and to see off legislation that he does not want — even bills offered by the (Democratic) Governor have gone nowhere without DeLeo aboard. Martha Coakley, as attorney general, has made no moves — none that i am aware of — to use the force of office to bolster any of Governor Patrick’s initiatives. I suspect that Maura Healey will not be so shy; and on matters where she and Baker can agree, I suspect that their joint efforts will force Speaker DeLeo to change his priorities more than once.

In Charlestown tonight, in the neighborhood where she lives (and, indeed, was given her first job, so she told us) Healey showed her strength on the ground. The event was hosted by Chris Remmes, a classic city progressive who ran for State Representative in a special election this year and drew only about 550 votes. But midway through the event, the man who defeated him, State Representative Dan Ryan, showed up, as did quite a number of Ryan’s Teamster supporters. When Healey began her speech, the Ironside was packed, close to 100 people.

This of itself was news; unions form the base of support for Healey’s primary opponent, Warren Tolman. It was pointed out to me that Teamsters Local 25 supports Healey’s current boss, Martha Coakley, for Governor. Fair enough; but support for one doesn’t require support for the other. Perhaps the Teamsters Local 25 leadership has recognized that the guarantee of unionism’s newly improved political power in Massachusetts is to ally, at ;least in the Attorney General race, with the state’s progressives and reformers.

In that, i think the Teamster leadership has it right. There is, for a smart union, no further advantage in remaining faithful to old arrangements. The smart union is the one that sees the new coalition forming and moves to join it. This the Teamsters of Local 25 hae now done in the matter of Maura Healey versus Warren Tolman.

By making that choice, the Teamsters — and, so it seems, Dan Ryan — have probably assured that Maura Healey will win the hotly contested primary that she is in and will thereafter fairly easily beat her November opponent, a skilled lawyer to be sure but, politically, of unsympathetic instincts and scant imagination.

I wish the Teamsters would also choose Baker and not Coakley. Baker’s mentor, Bill Weld, enjoyed widespread union support when he was Governor, and for good and tangible reasons. The same can be true of a Baker administration, and he is making moves to demonstrate that to major unions in the state. The reforms of state administration which he voices are no less significant to labor than to anyone else, because all of us suffer from state incompetence.

If Baker can pass the issues tests — as Healey has done in her own way — he can bring other smart unions, if not this time the Teamsters, to his side, as she has.

Were that to happen, there’ll be a very, very different state leadership than we have seen these past eight years. All to the good.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

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MAGOV14 : IT’S GAME ON NOW, TO WIN BOSTON

Baker and Local 26

^ going to the flash point of a Boston election ; Charlie Baker meets with officers of Local 26 Hospitality and Hotel Workers

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The fight is on now. To win Boston, and thereby, probably, the entire election.

You may think my assessment wildly crazy. How can Charlie Baker, the Republican, win a city that has of late voted three to one Democratic, and more than three to one ?

Maybe Baker cannot win the city outright. But even if he comes close, he wins the election. And he is definitely staking his claim to doing just that.

Baker’s move on Boston didn’t begin last week. He has been working the city steadily for many months now, on e community at a time. But last week he made two moves that up the intensity of his Boston effort by a lot : first, he door knocked the heaviest-voting precinct in the city, Dorchester’s ward 16 precinct 12 — a precinct that Marty Walsh won, for mayor, by more than four to one. Second, Baker met with officers of Local 26 Hotel and Hospitality Workers. Local 26 last year made the move — endorsing Marty Walsh over their personal favorite, Felix G. arroyo — that started Walsh’s momentum rolling. Their endorsement of Baker, were it to happen, would surely do the same for him.

Baker hasn’t won the voters of that Dorchester precinct yet, nor has he gained local 26’s endorsement so far. But the fight for both is now on, and beyond it lies much ground : many Boston -based unions of great significance — SEIU Local 1199 in particular — and about 150 voting precincts, low and moderate income, in which the Democratic Governor candidates have yet to make much impact, their campaign having concentrated on the high income suburbs and on Downtown boston’s upper income areas.

Baker has much to offer the voters of these precincts and the members of the city’s major private industry unions. To the voters in communities of color, he offers support for additional charter schools — something that prompted State Rep. Russell Holmes to sponsor a charter cap lift bill that the Senate amended and killed. (Nor will Baker’s support for charter schools put him at odds with Mayor Walsh, who sat on a charter school board and is backing John McDonough’s efforts to transform how Boston public schools are managed). To voters in Dorchester (and beyond), Baker offers a continuation of Boston’s building boom — his proposal to dispose of much State-owned land for development — and thus continued work for everyone in the Building Trades. Continuation of the building boom also offers the workers of Local 26 a prosperous future, just as the recently enacted minimum wage hike — which Baker supported — offers the members of SEIU Local 1199 a chance to earn a decent living.

If all of this reminds you very much of last year’s Boston Mayor campaign, it’s no coincidence. Baker appears to be campaigning Boston very much on Mayor campaign issues, to constituencies (including Mayor Walsh’s core supporters in the Building trades, service workers, and Dorchester) ; and it is shrewd of Baker to do so, because this is what last year’s intense Mayor campaign ingrained into Boston voters’ political expectations generally.

Baker now has the pole position in the race to win boston. Of course the ultimate Democratic nominee can catch up; Boston is Democratic enough that a campaign to catch up to Baker in the city has plenty to work with. But if the Democratic nominee — probably Martha Coakley — has to spend time winning back Boston, that is time that she will not be able to spend winning votes in parts of the state far less favorable to her but where most Massachusetts elections are decided. And Coakley is hardly the candidate to win a game of catch-up. Her vague, surfacey campaign is geared for front running. A catch up candidate has to hit and hit hard and to be specific on the issues, sure of itself, pointed, forensic. I have yet, in five years of watching, to see Martha Coakley be any of these things.

I cannot say enough about the boldness of baker’s 2014 campaign, about its shrewdness, its instinct for how campaigns are run and won, its tone, its currency. We have become accustomed to seeing Republican campaigns run on spin-doctored talking points, delivered to robo-voters, or campaigns of virulent, petty negativity — who can forget Scott Brown making a fetish of Elizabeth Warren’s supposed Cherokee ancestry ? — that alienate everybody not of “the base.” Baker’s campaign — and that of his charismatic running mate, Karyn Polito — look, sound & feel entirely different from all that. theirs is not a campaign of think-tank manifestos but of outreach to actual voters and to what actual voters — of all kinds and in all neighborhoods — want and expect.

This is campaign in the classic manner, as big an effort as i have seen a Republican do in Massachusetts since 1990, maybe even since the days of John Volpe almost 50 years ago.

Little wonder that Baker and Polito continue to raise tons more money than any of their five rivals — and raised it from Massachusetts, not out of state PACs. Great campaigns give great confidence to those with smallish donations to give, from budgets that can spare only smallish funds. Baker will have all the money he needs to bring his city campaign to every urban precinct. The campaign to win them is now “game on.” Big time.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

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MAGOV14 : THE RIDDLE OF STEVE GROSSMAN’S CANDIDACY

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^ speaking to the few : steve Grossman at Merengue Restaurant on Blue Hill Avenue (to his right, Merengue’s Hector Pina and, to the left of Pina, Mrs. Grossman)

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Here’s the riddle ; Steve Grossman, Massachusetts’s State Treasurer, should be the front runner for the Democratic nomination, but he isn’t. In every poll, he badly trails his main rival, Attorney General Martha Coakley.

That he won the Democratic convention’s endorsement doesn’t seem to matter at all. It often doesn’t matter to ordinary Primary voters, but never have I seen a convention endorsee trailing a rival by 30 points, as Grossman has until recently.

Grossman is articulate and authoritative, Coakley glib and vague. Yet she leads, and he trails. badly.

Grossman attributes it to “lack of name recognition,” and he’s right about that ; over 50 percent of voters intending to vote in the Democratic primary ay they don’t know him at all, or too little to have an opinion. But why is this so ? Grossman was elected statewide in 2010, in a hard fought and close race, and for at least twenty years before that he was a major Democratic activist — party chairman, national committeeman. Granted that these are party offices, not general public. But you would think that most members of his party, at least, would be fairly familiar with their top leaders.

I certainly thought so, but I have been wrong. Grossman’s lack of name recognition tells me that in Massachusetts, party identification doesn’t matter very much. Who we elect to state offices — unlike to national ones — is pretty much a non-partisan thing.

That, i think, is the real reason that Steve Grossman polls so poorly only seven weeks before the Democratic primary ; nonpartisan is something he has scant experience at being. His entire career has blossomed inside the cocoon of Party.

This year, Grossman’s career as party man especially hurts, because in this election the Democratic party — Grossman’s party — has concentrated its efforts almost entirely in the high-income, technology-oriented suburbs that surround boston and drive its economy and culture : Newton (where Grossman lives, Brookline, Watertown, Belmont, Cambridge, Wellesley, Lexington, Arlington, Concord, Lincoln, Winchester. In these communities os the money that Democratic candidates need. And the activists : the first Governor Forum of this season took place in Lexington in January and was attended by at least 300 people. When Juliette Kayyem chose a location whence to re-up her underdog candidacy, she chose Arlington. even Don Berwick, the Democrats’ ,most outspoken progressive, voices the issues of the high-income suburbs.

Meanwhile, the big cities, the most Democratic-voting communities in our state, have gone almost unattended until lately, and it shows. Last night Steve Grossman held a meet and greet at Merengue Restaurant on Boston’s blue Hill Avenue : about 20 people attended.

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20 for Steve : that was all…

This had to disappoint Grossman. He’s the convention endorsee, the meet and greet was hosted by a major Boston political player — Jovita Fontanez, a former election commissioner and veteran of 30 years of campaigns — and yet only 20 people showed up. Only two months ago, Felix Arroyo, running for a low-level office, Register of Probate in Suffolk County, put 100 people in the same room; and last year, Mike Flaherty, running or Boston City Council, drew at least that many to the same Merengue room.

Quite obviously, city activists have noted where the Democratic candidates have put their chips down and where not.

All three Democratic governor rivals — Coakley and Berwick as well as Grossman — are now making campaign stops all across boston, but it’s very late in the game, and it’s summer : many boston voters are off to Cape Cod or thinking vacation, not politics. it was so even in last year’s intense Mayor campaign. all the more so for governor candidates who talk the talk of Newton, Brookline, Lexington, and Arlington.

But Grossman is beginning to get it. campaigning to city voters entails something other than high-minded reform. it entails jobs. Speaking to the 20 attendees at last night’s meet and greet, Grossman hit a home run, not by voicing his strong support for the 1,000 refugee children now in Massachusetts — that was a given, for this entirely hispanic audience — but when he mentioned that “as governor i will supervise 85,000 jobs. imagine what it would mean for diverse communities if 35 percent of them were from diverse backgrounds !”

Jobs and more jobs. That is indeed what city activists want to hear. Jobs that won’t be laid off — as united Airlines is now doing to 650 gate attendees, whose $ 50,000 salaries will be replaced with minimum wage subcontractors. Jobs that can help a three-decker, renting family move up in life.

That Grossman cannot simply fire 35 percent of the state work force and replace them with his supporters didn’t seem to matter to his listeners. It was enough that Grossman at least understood what the objective is.

Grossman knows all the issues and articulates sensible answers to most. He spoke about the obstacles faced in Massachusetts by small businesses, especially those run by immigrants, women, and minorities — Merengue is just such a small business, nd its owner, Hector Pina, was in the room — and touted his work as Treasurer in securing $ 1.7 billion of bank loans for small businesses owned by women, minorities, and immigrants. No candidate for governor this year has a better handle on what such small businesses need; certainly Martha Coakley has yet to say anything of substance about it.

Grossman speaks with equal authority on just about every issue you can name, from state management to technology to energy to transportation, even education; yet it hasn’t mattered much — so far. That may be changing ; today’s Boston Globe poll has Grossman at 18 percent, Coakley at 46 : his best, her weakest showing yet.

A 28 point gap, however, is nothing to cheer about with so little campaign time left. And so Grossman is going to start door-knocking. He makes the point ; “door knocking, in a statewide race ? Yes. i want the people to see me and hear from me,” he told last night’s attendees.

He may well want voters to see and hear him; but the big reason for him to door-knock is that it will likely get him major media attention. door knocking, in a statewide race ? That IS news. And news, he needs. Lots of it, and lots more. Door-knocking is Grossman’s Hail Mary pass.

It may work. That and the one million dollars that he has in the bank, to spend on advertising, the final two weeks of the campaign, to all those 52 percent of primary voters — probably mostly City people — who don’t know much about him.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

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MAGOV14 : CHARLIE BAKER’S BEST POLL NUMBERS YET SEND A MESSAGE

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^ being a Massachusetts governor means speaking Massachusetts language : Charlie Baker speaking Massachusetts-ese to voters at a meet and greet

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The Boston Globe’s new poll of Massachusetts’s Governor election yields Charlie Baker his best numbers yet. He now polls 36 percent, while his likely Democratic opponent, Martha Coakley, draws only 39 percent.

Last week, the same poll had it Coakley 40, Baker 35. And that poll was a better Baker result than the previous Globe poll, which showed Coakley at 40, Baker at 32.

Clearly, Baker is amassing support, and doing so the best way : slowly, gradually, one voter at a time, so to speak. He is doing it as it should be done : by increasing his own support, not by taking support away from an opponent.

The strongest campaigns take care to run themselves : not to negate the other guy or gal, but to create a Yes and add many Yes’s to it. Positive support is hard to lose. Voters voting against one candidate can be swayed easily; their loyalty is to “dislike,” not to a candidate. Baker will surely take votes from people disliking his opponent, but he much prefers — or should much prefer — votes that want him no matter who the opponent is.

Baker seems to understand that in Massachusetts, voters for offices other than national do not vote party, they vote the man or woman. And though in November, there’ll only be two candidates, it’s much wiser for a candidate to run against all of his or her rivals than to pray for the “right” November opponent. Baker is doing that. He is running as if he, Coakley, Grossman, and Berwick were all in the same primary. This is how one wins in Massachusetts.

One runs for Governor of Massachusetts not on a party basis, because the issues aren’t party issues. 80 % of Massachusetts voters know what they want : a positive agenda, progressive but not pie in the sky, well managed, reformist, sensible and flexible, on issues economic, administrative, judicial; on energy policy, criminal justice, immigration. The one issue that almost all Massachusetts voters agree should be uncompromised is civil rights. A governor must voice passionately full rights for every sort of person. A governor candidate who trims on civil rights is in trouble; one who opposes them is toast.

Because 80% of Massachusetts voters agree on what they want and to what degree, the deciders become (1) who can do the job the best (2) whose priorities do we want and (3) who can best work with the Legislature to get them done.

None of this is a party matter. Baker gets this. His campaign has been devoid of party bias. He is campaigning in Massachusetts language and doing so convincingly.

Baker is quite lucky that none of his three opponents matches his command of Massachusetts-speak. Berwick cannot do so because his policy agenda is too radical. Coakley cannot do so because she speaks vague rather than competence. Steve Grossman can’t do so because his support rises from the Democratic party voters who insist on being Democrats first. The party Is their agenda, as it is not for at least two-thirds of Massachusetts voters. Only of late — probably too late — has Grossman begun to sound less like a Democrat and more like a Massachusetts. He remains far, far behind Coakley in the new Boston Globe poll.

But now to the Poll and its message about Baker.

Baker’s favorable-unfavorable-not well enough known numbers are 47 to 18 to 35.
Coakley’s numbers in this regard are 54 to 37 to 9.
Grossman’s numbers here stand at 33 to 14 to 52.
Don Berwick’s numbers embarrass his progressivism : 10 to 5 to 85.

Head to head, Baker gets 36 percent to Coakley’s 39; 37 to Grossman’s 29; and 42 to Don Berwick’s 18.

On the issues, Massachusetts voters differ hugely from voters in “red” states :

Do you own a gun ? 66 % say no, only 30 % say yes.
Should we have stricter gun control ? 47 % say yes, 35 % say we have enough; only 15 % say we should have less gun control.
Should the casino law be repealed ? 51 % say no, 41 % say yes.
Do you feel safe at night ? 96 % ay yes, only 4 % say no.
Do you feel safe walking your neighborhood at night ? 84 % say yes, only 13 % say no.

Clearly Massachusetts voters are not ruled by fear and thus are not obsessed by guns. Indeed, far more people (37 %) have a very unfavorable opinion of the NRA than the 17% who have a very favorable opinion of it.

28 % of our voters identify as liberals, 28 % as conservatives, although of the 39% who identify as moderates there is a 26 to 39 lean toward conservative. Query, however, what Massachusetts voters mean by “conservative.” i doubt that they mean Tea Party or Koch Brothers. Probably more a state of mind than a political agenda.

Massachusetts voters are optimistic about themselves and their community, pragmatic, open minded, wanting reform but not repeal — a way of saying “decided questions should remain decided” — and ready to think as citizens, not loners. Thinking as citizens, Massachusetts voters want a governor who knows what he or she believes in, who can articulate an agenda authoritatively, who speaks the phrases of flexibility, open to new facts and situations, able to change his or her mind if need be, to walk back inadequate remarks without hedging; a shrewd dealer and a good guy or gal who treats everyone as a friend and neighbor.

As you must already have surmised, that is a description of Charlie Baker.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

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MAGOV14 : BERWICK AND GROSSMAN DOMINATE SKILLS FORUM; BAKER ABSENT

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^ the five, but no Charlie Baker at Boston Foundation’

s Skills Forum at Roxbury Community College …

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The big news about the Boston Foundation’s Skills Forum on Wednesday night at Roxbury Community College is that Charlie Baker wasn’t there.

Every time looked at the five candidates who were there, or listened to them answer a question, all i could think was that the 200 or so people in attendance weren’t going to find out what the candidate most likely to be our next Governor has to say to Boston’s Skills community.

Even though his name was never mentioned, Charlie Baker had to be on everyone’s mind.
All the more so as many of the five — Don Berwick, Evan Falchuk, Martha Coakley, Steve Grossman, and Jeff McCormack — gave answers sometimes informative, occasionally innovative, once in a while brilliant, but also often vague or off topic.

Questions were asked by Forum moderator Peter howe and by some who he called “real people” : audience people, including young graduates, business hopefuls, and owners of growing start-ups, many of them immigrants.

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^ Agnes Young of new tech firm Equitron Inc., asks question

Don Berwick hit the evening’s home run when, in answer to a question posed to all, “what was your first job and what did you learn from it,” he said “I was a waiter at a summer resort in my home town, and I will never forget how hard that work was. Which is why I support a living wage !” Much applause ensured, the event’s loudest.

Still, Steve Grossman, who is never vague and rarely jejune, produced a much more detailed internship proposal — paid internships, half from business and half by the state — than Berwick’s generality answer.

Grossman also attacked Martha Coakley for her support of secure communities and her refusal to endorse driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants — ‘it’;s a public safety issue,’ Grossman insisted — and thereby evoked from the usually vague Coakley a pointed, feisty response : “Steve, you insist on misrepresenting my record 1 Yes, I supported secure communities at first, as did Mayor Menino. It then seemed like a good idea. Since then, we learned that it wasn’t, and i withdrew my support. as for driver’s licenses, we need to co-ordinate that with the Federal government. i am already looking into that.”

I fully expect to hear more clashes between Grossman and Coakley as Primary day approaches. We also now know that Coakley is fully capable of, and quite ready to, defend her positions, whether or not we agree with her.

Les dramatic, but informative, was independent candidate Jeff McCormack, who gave a business start-p executives’ answers to many questions. Being a governor is by no means the same as steering a start-up business, but McCormack was right to suggest that the next governor apply performance measurement — what we usually call ‘evaluation” — to state administration. i suspect that Charlie Baker will do all of that and more.

Forum attendees also heard from Evan Falchuk, who seeks to create a third party in Massachusetts, although it’s not clear what a Falchuk party stands for other than being a third path. he said that we need to elect people who are actually committed to doing what they tell the voters they will do : easy to say, but complete;ly oblivious to the complexity of the political process. Falchuk also took a demagogic swipe at Charlie Baker (without naming him) that did lttle to enhance his alternative politics.

So where WAs Charlie Baker while all of this was going on at a Forum whose stated purpose was to promote job growth, business opportunity, and connectedness for young school graduates ? Out meeting voters, actually. He and running mate Karyn Polito attended two fund raiders, both on the North Shore, including one at Longboard, a Salem waterfront restaurant, hosted by Young Professionals of the North Shore.

Baker is concentrating a sizeable part of his campaign on the North Shore,. it’s his home base, and he is working it deeply and broadly. Carrying Essex County by a big margin is essential to his win strategy, and from what I have seen of it — quite a lot, actually — the plan is working.

Still, it would have been good to see him at a Forum. He has eschewed most of these. I wish he would change his tactic. He can handle all of his rivals and should do so face to face.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

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OF BUFFER ZONES AND IMMIGRANT KIDS

1 abortion protesters

^ the reality of no buffer zones ; perfect strangers getting in the face of women seeking pregnancy counseling

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Much there is in today’s news here in Massachusetts about immigrant children being sent here for ICE detention and of the legislature’s crafting a law to replace the recently struck down Buffer Zone Law.

Both situations present Massachusetts people with basic questions about what kind of a society we are. Being a “values state,” we are well situated to make the right decision. Below, I will write what I think we should do. First, however, a few words about today’s Boston Herald, which screams loud headlines about the busloads of immigrant children being sent to detention at county lock-ups in our state : the gist of Herald immigrant headlines is that “we don;t want these dirty foreigners bringing their diseases into our society.” Yes, to the Hera;ld, immigrants are pests, locusts of a plague, so to speak. And there are voters out there who think the same, or worse, of immigrants driven to refuge with us.

When you actually look past the “plague of locusts” headlines in the Herald, however, what you read is much ado about nothing. The Governor says that it’s an ICE contract with local sheriffs — he’s not involved. The sheriffs want the Feds to pay for the kids they must house. Steve Grossman attacks Charlie Baker for not voicing our state’s concerns in Washington. Charlie Baker berates the Governor for not doing so. Martha Coakley says she isn’t sure of what the ICE is up to.

Yawn…

Meanwhile, the kids await closure. Will they be welcomed into our society to grow up safely and, maybe, prosperously ? Or be sent back to parents who sent them here for safety ?

I see no good resolution to these questions. I see failure on our society’s part, and it hurts me.

Meanwhile, the legislature is hurrying to enact a new abortion clinic law that will provide women seeking pregnancy counseling space within which no stranger can assault, harass, intimidate, or imcede their access. The proposal includes a moving 25-foot protection zone and specified hours during which protesters can protest. The bill also enacts quite severe criminal liability for those who assault, harass, or intimidate women coming to pregnancy clinics.

Will this new proposal succeed where our 35-foot Buffer Zone Law did not ? I think the criminal liability sanctions will be approved, because no free speech rights give speakers any right to assault, harass, or intimidate anyone. The moving 25-foot zone, and the restriction of what times of day protests can take place, may not survive, however. If panhandlers can get in one’s face by way of the First Amendment,and if Jehovah witnesses can ring my doorbell every morning to find out if I know the Bible, why can’t abortion protesters ? I really think there’s no good answer to the intimidation of women seeking abortion counseling than a large police presence at clinics, all day long, to keep the peace. At great expense to taxpayers.

I hope that I am wrong.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

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#MAGOV14 CHARLIE BAKER STUMBLES. RECOVERS — AND POLLS WELL

1 Baker and Coakley BG

^ Baker stumbles, recovers, and polls well ; Martha Coakley pounces — but mishandles even that.

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Charlie Baker, GOP candidate for Governor, got a huge present yesterday : a new Boston Globe poll according hm his best numbers yet. In a matchup with likely Democratic nominee Martha Coakley he now gets 35 to her 40, with a full one-quarter of voters still undecided or supporting one of the non-party candidates.

This was good news indeed — and there was more: I’ll discuss it below — especially after days in which Baker, running as the accomplished manager of state government, stumbled in his management of himself.

On Wednesday he told the Boston Globe that “Hobby Lobby doesn’t change a thing in Massachusetts, because our own health care law accords women all their health care needs.”

Immediately all three Democratic candidates charged Baker with going South on women’s health care — Coakley, in her typical classless fashion, used Baker’s remarks to fuel a fundraising letter.

Actually, all three Democrats didn’t know the whole story. On Wednesday night Baker’s wife Lauren and his running mate, Karyn Polito, were on stage at NARAL’s “Supreme rally.” Both gave me — I was there as a WGBH journalist — statements in which they made very clear their outrage about both the Hobby Lobby and Buffer Zone Law rulings. I thus knew that the statement that Baker gave to the Globe could not be the entire picture.

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^ GOP Lieutenant Governor candidate Karyn Polito at Supreme rally : she gave me this statement : “I have always supported women’s rights to access health care and am here to protest the Supreme Court rulings !”

Next day, in fact, Baker reversed his remarks. He agreed that there might be some corporations in Massachusetts that would qualify under the Hobby Lobby ruling (in which the Court gave closely-held corporations an exemption from the ACA’s requirements on Freedom of Religion Act grounds)  for an exemption from providing women employees full access to contraceptive health care. “If that happens,” Baker said, “my administration will provide these women contraceptive health care through public funding.” Baker also encouraged Governor Patrick and legislators to devise a new abortion clinic “protection zone” in light of the Buffer zone law being struck down.

All good; and, in fact, the misspeak gave Baker a chance, in the full glare of news, to make clear his uncompromising support for women’s full access to health care, including pregnancy care.

That part of the flap will end; and it’s likely that Baker will now have many media opportunities to repeat his strong support for women’s health care. But he did stumble; and as the “competent manager’ candidate, Baker should not be stumbling how he manages his own statements. It better not happen again. Baker needs to be sure of himself, to speak his true mind and not to try to hedge — which is what I think he was attempting. Vital issues like women’s health care cannot be compromised away or smoothed; a Massachusetts governor has to be vocal, strong, morally sure of the right thing — as was Mayor Marty Walsh in his speech at the Supreme rally. Baker would do well to study vidclips of that speech and to adopt Walsh’s indignant moral certainty about the rights of women and of all. it’s what we expect, — and always have expected — here in Massachusetts, of our political leaders.

And now to the Boston Globe poll. If its findings are accurate, Baker stands in a very good position to be our next governor :

His favorable-unfavorable rating is 47 favorable, only 18 unfavorable. Yes, 20 percent of voters still don’t recognize his name. that needs be worked on.

Coakley’s numbers ? Not quite as good as Charlie’s. 54 favorable;le, 36 unfavorable. But only 6 percent of voters don’t recognize her.

Coakley’s the dominant Democrat.  Steve Grossman’s numbers are 32 percent favorable, 13 unfavorable, 55 percent unsure or don’t know him. Don Berwick, for all the news noise he has made, barely registers with voters : 10 percent favorable, 4 percent unfavorable, a full 86 percent unsure or don’t know him. Two months from primary day, Martha Coakley absolutely commands : 53 percent to Grossman’s 17 and Berwick’s 5.

The poll also shows that Massachusetts voters feel optimistic about our state’s economy and lifestyle. Asked to agree or disagree with the statement “living in Massachusetts is very expensive but worth it,”  a full 65 percent say it’s worth it, only 30 percent say it isn’t worth it.

Those who oppose casinos will also have to accept that their view is, thankfully, a minority position. 51 of voters say “keep the casino law in place”; 41 percent say repeal it.

Charlie Baker in this poll looks well positioned, despite all — despite the national GOP’s depressing negativity–  to be our next Governor : IF he can win a majority of the 20 percent still undecided. He will find himself leading voters who are glad to live in Massachusetts, even at great expense; who feel confident about the future; who care a lot about women’s health care rights, and who want an open, tolerant, liberal society — and will have it, well managed from the State House, assuming the manager candidate doesn’t fumble his advantage away.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

by hereandsphere

MAGOV14 : MONEY TALKS, AND HERE’S WHAT IT SAYS

1 Baker and Coakley BG

^ Charlie Baker(right) trails Martha Coakley (left) in votes but he has already won the money campaign. He had running mate Karyn Polito have on hand more money than all three Democrats combined.

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Recent polls of the Massachusetts governor race show that Charlie Baker and his running mate Karyn Polito have plenty of catching up to do. If Attorney General Martha Coakley becomes the Democratic nominee, as seems most likely, Baker and Polito will find themselves nine to twelve points lacking. Much of that gap represents votes now going to independents Jeff McCormack and Evan Falchuk : about 13 percent, a tally larger than the gap between Baker and Coakley. Yet there is no reason at all to suppose that all these votes would be Baker’s were the two independents not in the race.

Yesterday i analyzed the huge catching up that baker and Polito will have to do if they are to win over Martha Coakley in November. Today I will analyze the strengths of the Baker/Polito campaign. First of all is the money. Below is what the four chief governor candidates reported for the second half of june :

Baker began the month at $ 881,184.92; he raised 311,968.50o; spent 84,998; and ended the month with $ 1,108,155.42.

Baker’s running mate Karyn Polito began the month with 421,284,48; raised 123,25.62; spent 43,536.75; and ended june with 500,953.15

Add Baker’s and Polito’s ending balances together, you find $ 1,609,108.57 — a huge amount compared to numbers reported by the three Democrats :

1.Martha Coakley began mid-June with 447,673.29; raised 134,155.23′ spent 91,572.33; and ended june with 490,296.19.

2.State treasurer Seve Grossman began mid June with 896,059.85; raised 103,993.19; spent 68,156.92; and closed out with 931,897.02.

3.Don Berwick reported 199,547.55 at mid June; raised 82,343.39; spent 57,012.30; and ended with 224,878.64.

the advantages here are all to Baker and Polito, and hugely so. because :

1.The Democratic candidates for Lieutenant Governor also raised money, but i do not parse it because on the Democratic side there is no team. None of the three Democratic candidates for Governor knows who his or her running mate will be, and none can team up with either of the two whose names will be on the Primary ballot.

2.Baker alone has raised more money, and has more on hand, than either of the three Democrats. Adding in Polito’s totals, the team has far more money on hand than all three Democrats combined. these are telling figures, because all the money raised by the candidates so far comes almost exclusively from individuals, not PACs, and represent actual voter support.

Baker continues to lack in votes what he gains in donations. Nonetheless, his — and Karyn Polito’s money raising represents solid strength which, if it continues, can reach a kind of “critical mass” as voters begin to feel the issues strength of the Baker/Polito campaign. I have said all along that Baker possesses two critical advantages : first, he has an actual running team mate and can thus project to voters both how he will govern and why he will be able to govern. Second, he and Polito have amassed an independent power following, easy to assess through their donor list, with which to confront Speaker DeLeo when legislation is at issue.

This argument has not registered with many voters yet;l with most it night never register, as such. But baker and Polito can project it by way of their focus on management and innovation — a major campaign theme for Baker at least since his party’s convention back in March. Being able to get Speaker Robert DeLeo to advance the governor’s legislative agenda is no minor matter,. it’s the essence of being governor in more than name only. Governor Patrick has time and again had his legislative priorities rejected or amended almost beyond recognition; and Democratic Progressives have made no bones about being shut out of the Speaker’s agenda. If Baker — by his argument, his bio, or his vast fundraising base, or by all of these — can convince activist voters that he can move the Speaker as the three Democrats cannot, he can win this election, even though the polls right now do not show it.

He will have to regroup. The success that he seemed to have, at the beginning of June, in drawing city voters yo his side has faded. He needs to recover his city voter groove. He also needs to convince women voters that their health care concerns will be a priority for him. Polito will have to be the point person, a role that she is marvelously capable of. Indeed, if Baker wins, it will be because of Karyn Polito, both for her fundraising strength and her appeal to Worcester area voters and women generally.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

by hereandsphere

#MAGOV14 : THE BUFFER RULING AND THE HOBBY LOBBY DECISION

 

 

1 Baker and Coakley BG

photo (69)

^ difficult days for Charlie baker, good days for Martha Coakley and Don Berwick

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Two rulings handed down by the Supreme Court last week threaten to affect Massachusetts’s Governor election significantly. the boost Martha Coakley — already a clear favorite –and Don Berwick, and they set back those of Steve Grossman and Charlie Baker.

The Hobby Lobby ruling has the wider impact. Because it allows corporations to deny contraceptive health care to women on grounds of “deeply held religious faith”: — faith that permits men to obtain Viagra, by the way — it arouses all women voters : score for Coakley. but because the High Court also suggested that women could obtain contraceptive health care from the Federal government as part of Medicare, it seemed to endorse the “single payer” (Medicare) system : and that’s a score for Don Berwick, who has made adoption of “single payer a priority of his campaign.

The Buffer Zone Law ruling — it was found unconstitutional by 9 to 0 — probably impacts the campaign even more deeply. The law at issue was our state’s. Hobby Lobbys there are none here, and few corporations that would use religion as a route to denying health care to women. But every woman who seeks clinical advice on a pregnancy is now faced with being confronted by perfect strangers getting into these women’ s most personal private body business. It;s not a prospect that anyone I know would welcome. It has happened to me, on other matters. I was able to see off, with a pleasantry or an unanswerable question, these interrupters of my life. Women confronted so might not be so lucky, nor want to chance it. And even though the Buffer Zone Law ruling was unanimous, and certainly correct from a first amendment point of view — after all, as a supporter of the ruling pointed out to me, the Curt allows panhandlers to be in our faces, what’s different here ? — women affected won’t take it as such. They will feel, see, almost smell the confrontations they now must put up with, ad they can’t like that the Court put them in that space.

Martha Coakley defended the Buffer Law fiercely. She has promised to forge a different means of safeguarding women from such confrontations. So has Governor Patrick. i hope they find a way, because otherwise it means hiring hundreds of special duty police to patrol outside pregnancy clinics.

While Coakley has gone on the attack — as she should — Charlie Baker has said nothing. He has avoided the issue. I fully understand. It aggravates his weaknesses. As the GOP candidate, he heads a coalition that includes the state’s “pro life” voters, who tolerate his solid pro-choice position because they suspect that he will, at least, listen to them and will not make protection of women’s health rights a priority, and because they know that Coakley, Berwick, and Grossman will in fact make women’s health care a priority. I think these Baker voters are right, and that’s the problem; I suspect that the crucial block of women voters who will decide this election also know it.

Or, if they didn’t know it, or care much, because women’s health rights are so firmly established in Massachusetts, they do now care because even in Massachusetts those tights are now threatened by Supreme Court decisions.

Baker has not had a good two weeks. Today’s Boston Globe poll has him losing to Coakley by 40 to 31 and drawing only 9 % of Democratic voters. In Massachusetts a GOP candidate usually needs 18 to 20 %^ of Democrats to win — in his 2012 loss, Scott Brown won 12 % of Democrats. (I shall analyze the Globe poll in a separate column to come later today.) The recent WBUR poll had even les good news for Baker. It showed him losing to Coakley 42 to 28; and though it also shows him beating Steve Grossman and trouncing Don Berwick, Coakley has maintained a strong lead almost throughout this year and can only get stronger as a result of the High court rulings. Baker’s campaign has also begun to narrow its focus : business, business, business. we all like businesses; but Massachusetts is a “values” state — fortunately our values are entirely progressive ones — and for Baker to not step to the forefront of voicing Massachusetts values is to concede the election. No more can — or should — a Massachusetts election be only about business than it can be only about Labor.

When a candidate narrows his focus, retreating to his core, as did the campaign of Scott Brown in 2012 after polls turned against him, it’s a sign that he is being pushed out of the center. Baker ran a smart, aggressive, ground breaking campaign until mid-June, one that connected him city voters, voicing city voters’ concerns and turning the flank of a very suburban, high-income Democratic Primary. now that has all changed. The Democrats have taken back much of the city voter action. they’ve held Forums in the city, dug deeply into voters who have been theirs all along until for six months or so they were ignored.

Baker will still do better in the big cities than Scott Brown did. He can’t be dislodged in Essex County, and he likely has a solid core of support in Worcester. In Boston, too, he holds strong cards in several ethnic communities. But I see no sign right now that the receptivity to baker that held sway six weeks ago still rules. How can it after these two Court rulings ? For women voters, it’s now war time. And war time means, fr these women, supporting Martha Coakley, like her or not. My guess is that the Court rulings gain her two to four points — a lot in what might have been a close election.

The only person who I see with a chance to stop Coakley is Don Berwick. In a Democratic Primary, his strong advocacy of single payer now makes timely sense, compelling sense. and if he is not a woman, as is Coakley, he is trusted by Democratic activists, as Coakley is not, and addresses Massachusetts values far more eloquently than Coakley and with passion that she utterly lacks. Given that Grossman cannot out-woman Coakley or even begin to compete with Berwick’s passionate advocacy, it would mot surprise me to see Berwick win the Primary.

Could he then beat Baker ? In such a race baker would be the Coakley : the hard to pin down, long explanation, out of focus candidate — versus Berwick, the ultimate heat of passion candidate. Baker could win that comparison if he sounds wise and competent, as he usually can, and Berwick sounds like a hell-burner, as he often does.

As far as I can tell right now, this prospect is Baker’s only chance of winning the office he is so naturally fit to perform.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

by hereandsphere

MAGOV14 : DIVISIONS AND UNITIES SHAPING THE OUTCOME

2 Speaker DeLeo3 Cha Baker

^ allies even though neither can admit it : the two men who dominate Massachusetts state politics today : Speaker DeLeo and GOP governor candidate Charlie Baker

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No one should have been surprised to see Don Berwick, the most vocally progressive Democratic candidate, win 15 percent of the Democratic convention vote last Saturday. The surprise was that he won much more : a full 22 percent, only one point behind second place finisher Attorney general Martha Coakley, who leads all polls but whom activists remain skeptical of and rightly so).

Berwick now commands a solid position in the Democratic field. Fringe he may once have been seen. No longer. He continues to win power endorsements, adding State Senators Ken Donnelly and Dan Wolf to his list. Wolf would have been a leading candidate himself, had the state’s Ethics Commission not caved his candidacy (as you may recall). His endorsement of Berwick will certainly matter for the Democrats’ September primary.

Berwick is surging because Democrats of an ideological bent want to be heard and felt and listened to. Progressives, as they style themselves, see that the state’s legislative leadership — all of it Democratic — does not share their concerns or support their agenda and that that leadership has the power to snuff progressive voices out. Time and time again i have heard progressive Democrats complain — bitterly — about “the legislative leadership,’ by which, of course, they mean Speaker Robert DeLeo. Berwick is the progressives’ answer to what they see as DeLeo’s shutting them out.

The current Speaker is definitely no progressive. His constituency is business. That and traditional labor, but business first of all. It’s about the money. Business interests have the ear of Speaker DeLeo — a fact he does not try to hide. As such, he is no friend of tax increases; when Governor Patrick last year called for $ 2 billion in new revenue for his Transportation Bill, the DeLeo-led House gave him $ 500 million, and that grudgingly.

That said, DeLeo’s business friendly agenda is no departure at all from the priorities of past speakers who, if anything, have been even more conservative than he.

In a state as Democratic voting as Massachusetts, business interests cannot afford to be exclusively, even primarily, Republican. Business has huge money to spend on lobbying its agendas, and it does so. Almost always, these past 25 years, business lobbying has dominated both the governor and the Speaker — the State’s two most powerful elected offices. In few states, if any, does the partnership between state government and local business go this far this successfully. Significantly that’s because a large portion of the state’s well-paying jobs, in building trades, health care, and education, arise from state government funds and legislation. In Massachusetts, the interests of business coincide with the interests of a great many wage earners and salaried people, and these people dominate the ranks of our state’s political activists. it’s no surprise at all that the current Democratic governor campaign has concentrated on the upper income suburbs of Boston and on the City’s highest income wards.

Unfortunately for Speaker deLeo, the state’s high-income voters (and some of its businesses are not uniformly as tax-skeptical as he is. Our state’s Progressives inhabit primarily the upper income city wards and suburbs. as such, now that they have hit upon the Governor primary as a vehicle to make themselves seriously felt, Democratic progressives have managed, with Don Berwick, to seriously inconvenience the Speaker and his very powerful legislative and lobbying allies. most of these would, I suspect, like to see Steve Grossman the Democratic nominee. They know him and they believe they can bring him to their side. In this they aren’t wrong. Grossman talks “job creator’ talk so aggressively you’d think he was Mitt Romney.

Yet even Grossman now calls himself “the progressive job creator.’ Obviously he sees himself being gouged from the left.

the division between the DeLeo constituency and the Progressives is causing big problems for Martha Cockney. Who, exactly, are her voters ? certainly not the progressives; almost certainly not the DeLeo people. as i see it, her voters are the non-involved, people who know her name and he work as Attorney General and not much else. Will that work in a Primary, in which the involved vote big time, the less involved not so much ? maybe so; because Coakley is the only woman in the race, and she polls very strongly with women voters. But we will see.

Meanwhile, as the Democrats split between progressives and DeLeo-ites, Charlie Baker is presenting a campaign perfectly attuned to alliance with DeLeo on business interests and also with DeLeo on labor issues. it is axiomatic in Massachusetts that only a Republican governor has a power base independent enough to face the Speaker on equal terms. the Progressives tally about 25 to 33 percent of Democrats, maybe 15-20 percent of all voters; much less than Charlie Baker’s 30-32 percent core.) Beyond the axiomatic, however, is baker’s current campaign, in which support for a $ 10.50 minimum age — the nation’s highest — is accompanied by expanding the earned income tax credit and initiating some tax credits to corporations for hiring welfare recipients and offsets to the wage hike. if you read Baker’s plan — see the link below ** — you’ll find it remarkably like what Speaker deLeo wants to enact. What is more, baker is having success bringing city voters to his side, communities of color included and several ethnic communities. He’s doing it in Boston and in Worcester and in Lynn, next door to his home town of Swampscott. Baker’;s Lynn campaign has drawn no media attention at all, but recently he has held several Lynn rallies at which hundreds of folks — mostly communities of color and immigrants — have gathered. Lynn is usually a 7500 vote victory for a democrat. I think Baker will carry Lynn this time. A 7500 vote turn around isn’t that big, but it is significant of Baker’s concentration upon Essex County generally : his home base, and one that he is pushing hard to win, as he probably must.

** Link to Charlie baker’s economic plan : https://charliebaker2014.com/opportunity

Some Democrats want to compare baker’s campaign to that of Scott Brown in 2012. The comparison is false. The Baker campaign is sui generis and quite ground breaking ion its unification of many voter groups who have much in common that has not been attended to by our state;s governor campaigns since at least 1994 if ever. While the Democrats split, the baker campaign unifies. i suspect that Speaker DeLeo is quite happy to see it. Nov ember’s result is beginning to take shape.

—- Mike Freedberg / here and Sphere