EVERYONE loves a rematch. Sox-Yankees. Celtics-Lakers. How about Brown-Coakley? That would be high political drama.
Her arguments? First,
Brown is popular and comfortably ahead of any potential Democratic rival. But Coakley comes closest to giving him a real fight in 2012. According to this poll, which surveyed 957 Massachusetts voters from June 2 to 5, Brown beats Coakley 49 to 40 percent, with 10 percent undecided. She’s not in the race, but she’s the most likable and well-known Democrat in the survey.
Second, Coakley continues to do a good job as D.A.
I say by all means: add our esteemed A.G. to the primary mix. The more potential challengers to international terrorism expert advised-by-Facebook Brown, the better. May the strongest survive.
Sen. Scott Brown fooled by picture of bin Laden corpse: MyFoxBOSTON.com
I remember a whole lot of people who were mighty pissed at Coakley after her loss. She has mostly smoothed that over by taking responsibility for it and refocusing on her work as AG. That would all get thrown out the window if she jumped into the race again.
Then all we need is Pags, and the band is back together.
Do you think “Tea Party darling” Scott Brown will be inviting them back to his posse the second time around? That will really make it just like The Winter of Our Discontent all over again. And even then, he only won with the same number of votes as McCain got in MA in 2008: that’s his base.
The Tea Party in general has quieted down a lot — probably overshadowed by the starting presidential campaign. (After all, they are Republicans, nothing more.)
I worry about Scott’s strength with independents. I have no objection to Martha running, but she’ll have a really uphill battle to win the nomination.
Remember Scott Brown won a special election which took on national significance with no other elections of consequence going on anywhere in the country.
It seemed that every hate group in the country sent money and goons to MA to work for Brown. The polluters and Wall Street profiteers gave massively.
In 2012 there will be other elections that will attract these jerks.
as did Scott Harshbarger, Tom Reilly, and Frank Bellotti years before, that the personality that would get an ADA elected as DA, and a successful DA elected as Attorney Genera,l would not be the kind of personality that would be successful convincing the electorate to elect them governor, or in Coakley’s case Senator. It seems that what makes a good legal professional in the system, will be acceptable to voters for AG, but not the other offices. Coakley has failed miserably at this once, and even though it was the start of an unusual time, politically speaking, I couldn’t support her in a search for a Democratic nominee against Brown.
Martha Coakley is a middling AG, an abysmal campaigner, and utterly unsuited for the office of Senator. Whatever the private Martha Coakley is like, the public Martha Coakley lacks the passion, vision, and empathy demanded of the office of Senator.
In my view, Mike Capuano remains my favorite choice for this office.
IF Coakley is an abysmal campaigner…
…and…
IF she beat Capuano (rather handily, actually… garnering nearly 50% of a four way race…)
…then…
What does that say about Capuano and his ability to campaign???
this is a big part of my problem with the whole “Cap for Senate” thing.
It says to me that the local Democratic party is badly out of step with the larger electorate. The primary season was short, and few except loyal Democrats turned out. I grant you that Martha Coakley was (and perhaps is, I don’t know) well-liked by true-blue Massachusetts Democratic Party movers and shakers. I think the results demonstrate how badly those movers and shakers understand the larger picture.
If the party process that nominated Martha Coakley in the special election repeats itself, so will the final results.
Explain to me how that particular issue is (somehow) ameliorated by Capuano yet (somehow) excacerbated by Coakley??? Honestly, if your problem is with the greater party being “out of step” then where is your justification for either supporting one candidate or denigrating another? If the problem is at the party level, then no single candidate is going to change that dynamic… and you can’t use it to support one candidate or downgrade another…
Perhaps the primary season was short… but it was still longer than the general election…
Martha Coakley filed papers as a candidate on September 1 2009. The Primary was on December 8, 2009… September, October, November and one week into December. Approximately thirteen weeks.
The General election was January 19, 2010. Five weeks later.
I’m certain this is not the case. We had a normal turnout in the primary, well in line with other elections. The general election also had results well in line with past elections, and with the later statewide Gov race in 2010…
I think you are the one who doesn’t understand the larger picture. You’re too invested in anger at Coakley. Fine. That anger, however, doesn’t entitle you to your own facts or a willful spindling of the truth.
Martha Coakley isn’t worth my anger. I think she’s a terrible, embarrassingly inept politician. That isn’t “anger”, it’s a simple appraisal. The only feeling Martha Coakley generates in me is scorn.
The truth is that Scott Brown drubbed Martha Coakley in the special election. Martha Coakley got 47% of the Democrats that turned out in the primary. She also got 47% of the voters who turned out for the special election.
Perhaps every Democrat who voted for Mr. Capuano, Mr. Khazei, and Mr. Pagliuca chose to vote for Scott Brown instead of Ms. Coakley in the special election. I think that’s unlikely. I think it’s more likely that a certain share of the voters in both elections pulled the lever for “Not Martha Coakley”. I think another significant share pulled the lever for “Not another Democrat”. I think those results themselves suggest rather compellingly that the result of the primary was not representative of the larger electorate. Martha Coakley won big in the primary and lost in the general.
One could make an argument (and several have) that the reason why Deval Patrick won re-election was that the “Not another Democrat” vote was split in the gubernatorial election. Perhaps Ms. Coakley needed a Tim Cahill to split that segment. The point remains that the Democratic Party did not win a majority of the votes in the gubernatorial election and did not win a majority of the votes in the special senate election.
That’s the “larger picture” that one of us sees and one of us apparently does not.
Martha seems to be working hard to restore her reputation after her bruising defeat and that is a good thing. She should stick right where she is and be grateful that she did not have any real race to speak of for reelection. She will probably retire after this redemption term. Her husband who is a retired policeman was not an ideal political spouse and probably would still not want her to do the kind of campaigning it takes to win…he was not an asset in the US Senate race for that reason and probably would not be any better in the future. many people who were supportive of Martha financially and politically in the US Senate race will not be there again to help her. Not because she lost, but because of her judgement during the campaign and lack of loyalty to those who were loyal to her.
I was just as down on Martha as you could be last year, but I have to say she’s really proven me incorrect. I’d encourage her to run again and would gladly pull the lever for her. Bob Massie has a great story and is a passionate speaker but I just don’t see him beating Scott Brown.
This is a typical “I’m too bored with what I know about the candidates to write about this race, and too lazy to learn enough about the actual candidates to craft an interesting column.”
I feel like the subtext of Joan’s column is that, if Martha were a man, the idea of a rematch would be banded about more. I disagree, but I think Joan thinks that or at least suspects it.
Martha beats any and all of the announced (to date) Democratic candidates for US Senate if she gets in.
Coakley’s support was an asset to Deval in 2006 (remember the ads with her defending Deval). If she was the damaged goods that somerville tom “scorns” then why no Democratic challenger in the 2010 primary?
Martha Coakley ran a great special election primary. She used the tools she had, was aggressive in getting her vote and won a crowded field by 19 points. The she made a political mistake. She allowed the “rope-a-dope” strategy to be used and she failed to recognize the voter anger being generated by a do nothing Democratic US Senate. She paid a big price for one poor mistake in judgement.
Then she came back, Stood tall. Took responsibility and campaigned very differently for the November 2010 Final.
I was proud to support her for DA, for AG, for US Senate and for AG again. Smart, tough, aggressive, bold and extremely competent elected official.
And she cleans clock on the announced field. But I suspect she won’t run.
and after she cleans weak Dem. clocks, she gets beaten yet again by Brown.
If she is the nominee, I’d give her even odds to beat Brown in a presidential year. She lost by 100,000 votes and Obama on the top of the ticket will bring far more Dem leaning voters to the polls.
John Walsh showed in 2010 what voter turnout means. I suspect 2012 will be a higher turnout that benefits Coakley (or another creditable nominee).
Make no mistake, Brown will be tough to beat. Going against $10-12 million and short election window is not a campaign I would volunteer to run but the right candidate can pull it off. If Martha Coakley was the nominee, I’d be in the trenches. Same goes for Mike Capuano, and Tim Murray and Warren Tolman but you gotta announce to be in the game.
Deval Patrick won a squeaker mostly because Tim Cahill split the opposition. Martha Coakley triumphed over a challenger, James McKenna, who had to run a write-in campaign to even appear on the ballot as a Republican. He, nevertheless, got 37.2% of the vote.
It would be self-destructive and self-defeating for the Massachusetts Democratic Party to again nominate Martha Coakley to run against Scott Brown in 2012.
Deval did not win a “squeaker.” He won easily. Cahill took some votes from Patrick, and probably more from Baker. It likely would have been closer had Cahill not been in the race, but I think Deval still would have won.
As for McKenna, it’s pretty standard for the non-Democrat to start with 30-35% of the vote around here. Happened even with Ted Kennedy for years. Remember Kenneth Chase? Me neither. He got 31% in 2006. Even Jack E. Robinson and Carla Howell – unusually weak opposition – combined in 2000 for 25% against Kennedy.
I meant that a majority of the voters chose someone OTHER than Deval Patrick.
I am not convinced that Tim Cahill took many votes from Deval Patrick, but we’ll never know. What we do know is that Governor Patrick did not obtain a majority, and that is what I meant by “squeaker”.
which usually refers to a particularly close election. And though it’s true that we will never actually know how many votes Cahill took from Baker vs. Patrick, what we do know is that polling fairly close to the election showed that the second choice of Cahill voters was far closer to 50/50 Patrick/Baker than anybody really expected. Don’t have time to dig out the link right now, but I wrote about it at the time.
MassINC ran a post-election poll that seems to confirm what I said above: more Cahill voters would have gone to Baker than Patrick, but not by very much. Pre-election polls showed similar results. The “Cahill did it” myth is convenient for Charlie Baker and his consultants, and for Howie Carr, but it’s a myth.