So the epic primary battles of 2013 are over. What did we learn?
- Newspaper endorsements don’t mean sh!t. Everyone pretty much knew this already, but wow – what an emphatic demonstration we got yesterday. Republican Dan Winslow absolutely ran the table on major newspaper endorsements. He got the Globe, the Herald, the Lowell Sun, the Springfield Republican, the Fitchburg Sentinel, and the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune. Yet he didn’t just lose the primary, he got blown out, netting only 13% in a three-way race. And to make matters worse, this seems like the sort of election in which newspaper endorsements might actually have some influence – nobody really cares who the Globe or any other paper supports for president, but if you’re coming late to an election that you know is important (it’s a US Senate seat, after all), but that you haven’t had the time to delve into, you might place some stock in the views of what you consider to be a reasonably like-minded editorial board. But apparently not. In the future, if I were running an editorial board, I might save my effort. (Of course, the BMG Kiss Of Death never goes out of style!)
- Polling works. I keep saying this every time, and still, somebody always refuses to believe it. But look at the results: on the Dem side, polls consistently showed Markey with a double-digit lead, and he won by 14. And on the harder-to-predict GOP side, polls picked up Gomez’s momentum toward the end, and Suffolk’s bellwether poll (which is designed to predict results but not margins) pretty much nailed it. Indeed, the two localities Suffolk used as bellwethers for the Republicans – Boston and Shrewsbury – reported results that were eerily close to the statewide result, suggesting that Suffolk chose well. The actual Gomez-Sullivan-Winslow statewide result was 51-36-13; Boston went 51-34-15, and Shrewsbury went 51-38-11. I’m not sure anyone accurately predicted the margin by which Gomez would end up winning, but going just by the polls, a Gomez win would have been the safe bet just before election day.
- The Republican wing of the Republican party is pretty small in Massachusetts. Maybe Mike Sullivan ran a really crappy campaign compared to Gabriel Gomez; honestly, I wasn’t paying that much attention, so I can’t say for sure. But if you’re one of the small but merrie band of social conservatives in Massachusetts, you didn’t have much choice. Both Gomez and Winslow favor same-sex marriage; Winslow is pro-choice, while Gomez is a waffler but at least said he wasn’t planning to make restricting abortion a priority. And of course, Gomez sent a letter to Deval Patrick claiming that he’d support the Obama agenda if Patrick appointed him to the Senate (more on that below). Not surprisingly, RMG endorsed Sullivan, expressing serious reservations about Gomez:
his sophomore run for office (he previously lost a race for Selectman in Cohasset, in which he came in last) has been painful to watch at times. Incredibly green as a candidate, and often muddled on issues (he’s pro-life, but supports abortion, for example), we question his chances in June vs. the Democrat nominee. Worse, his large donations to both Barack Obama and Alan Khazei leave us amongst many who question his loyalty to our party. Gabriel Gomez is simply not ready for primetime, or our Party Nomination.
Actually, I can’t say I disagree with any of that. Anyway, obviously, Gomez slaughtered the field, clearing 50% in a three-way race. I gather he was the only one with any presence on television, and maybe that decided it. But of course, that will not be the case in the general, which promises to be a high-dollar affair – likely featuring the dreaded third-party ads as well, since Gomez has rejected the People’s Pledge. It would seem that, to the extent that conventional Republican wisdom is that you have to run to the right to win a GOP primary, that’s not the case in Massachusetts.
- The Gomez Letter didn’t hurt him (much) – yet. As noted above, Gabriel Gomez initially thought he had a quicker and easier route to the U.S. Senate than winning elections, namely, as the appointee of Governor Deval Patrick. He made his desires known to Governor Patrick in a now-infamous letter requesting the appointment, in which among other things he said he’d back Obama’s agenda on guns and immigration. (He later said that that’s not really what he meant. Whatever.) I thought that the letter might harm his candidacy with primary voters, both by making him look like a craven opportunist (which it does), and also by making him look dishonest (it does that too). But obviously I was wrong about that – maybe some voters cared, but not enough to keep him from winning handily. I do think, though, that the letter is a big opportunity for Ed Markey and the Dems, if they play it right.
What’d I miss?
We did none in Needham. No visibilities at the dump, no lawn signs, no stand-outs at the polls.
Neither did Lynch. There was ONE official Lynch lawn sign. A couple of jerry-rigged Markey signs from window placards.
Markey won Needham (which was, until 2012, represented by the very same Stephen F. Lynch) 74/26.
was a hard call. I couldn’t figure how Lynch would win a low-turnout Democratic primary. Independents weren’t going to make a difference, the primarily liberal party base would and did. I suppose Lynch figured it was one of the few shots he had at the senate and took it.
I didn’t pay much attention to the GOP. As Republicans go, I like Dan Winslow, based on my BMG experience. It sounds like Gomez had the GOP machine (such as it is) behind him. There wasn’t enough time to build an organization, so the Mass GOP ruled. Organization in small elections is almost everything.
Mr. Gomez has been silent on his role at Advent International and Summit Partners. It may not be as stellar as he presents on a superficial level. Further these are buyout and sell off venture capitalist ala Mr. Romney. Further his faux up by the boot scraps hinting, his family was always solidly middle class with no issues of paying for his education or anything in general. Opportunities were a family heirloom, not hard fought for propositions. His story is one of privilege and his stances on economics reflects this. Check out his web site on issues: http://www.gomezforma.com/issues/
Adams: Lynch 61%, Markey 39% (263 total voters).
Monroe: Lynch 50%, Markey 50% (12 total voters).
The rest was all Markey-land, save for these two towns. What’s the story?
Adams is more urban and blue collar than most towns in that area. Monroe, as you said, was a 6-6 vote. It would have been 58-42 for Markey, similar the statewide total, if one person switched.
I took a look at November’s results. Monroe went 27-26 (that’s votes, not percentages) for Scott Brown in November, a tiny red dot in a Western Mass. sea of blue. Adams went 69-31 for Warren, slightly (but not much) behind most nearby towns.
If the liberals found one activist in Monroe, it’d be enough to ensure that Monroe’s primary and general election outcome was roughly as blue as their neighbors.
Kate — know anybody in Monroe?
the vote in Monroe.
Here are some stats on the voters:
67 People
40 Doors\
4 Republicans
9 Dems
Three of the Dems live at the same address and one each live in the next two houses down. I don’t know any of them, but I think that I could canvass them all in one day.
I was just saying that I’d like to canvass in every community in the Commonwealth. Maybe I’ll give Monroe a try. Wouldn’t it be awesome to say that you canvassed every home in a whole town!
The turf in Monroe It actually looks quite compact. Heck of a drive to turf though!
working class. The northern Berkshires are Democratic, but generally more conservative than the southern Berkshires. Someone must have been working for Lynch. Scott Brown, I recall, stopped in Adams in his senate race too.
That’s also an extremely low turnout. In Granby, we had Markey with 245 votes and Lynch with 175. We have a population of 6,132. We mirrored the state average very closely. Adams has a population of 8,485 and many fewer votes cast. We did have a local contest that may have brought people out, though many people were taking the local ballot and skipping the state ballot.
right on the head:
With so few votes and so little attention, one worker can make a big difference in some of these towns. Let’s make the difference in June for Markey!
A propos, I just posted about the geographic patterns of yesterday’s Democratic vote and the effect of turnout, especially in smaller cities.
I wonder (without being interested enough to actually do any research) how well the Lynch vote correlates with weekly RC Mass attendance in the various towns.
My precinct in Amherst was 207-8 for Markey. Amherst and Leverett may have been his strongest towns at 95% each.
263 in a town of 8,485 is just 3%. By comparison, Somerville had 8,739 voters in the Dem primary out of 75,754 total residents, which is 11.5%. The state as a whole had 8.2% of its residents take a Dem ballot.
Sharon: Lynch 23%, Markey 77% (1,847 voters).
Surrounded by communities who preferred Lynch, what’s the story with Sharon going so strongly for Markey?
is heavily Jewish. Its neighbors are mostly blue collar, GOP-friendly towns with a lot of Irish late of Southie and Dorchester.
Lynch’s Congressional District does *not* include Sharon but *does* include many of the bordering cities towns (including Canton, Norwood, Walpole, Stoughton and Easton).
The Irish Riveria
a republican?
he REALLY wants to go to Congress and couldn’t get the Democrats to nominate him.
Steve Lynch lost big time.
And, Linda Dorcena Forry won her State Senate primary. That’s big news. That seat was formerly held by Jack Hart, Steve Lynch, and Bill Bulger,
A lot of firsts, as Forry is NOT a white irish catholic male.
Is that worthy of note?
My wife’s married to one too, but she’s still Puerto Rican.
Superficially similar: Looks good on TV, will claim to be all bipartisany, has a military background, trying not to get pinned down on the issues, somewhat light on actual governing knowledge and experience. Is this going to be the GOP playbook for statewide races in the foreseeable future? If so, then they’re willfully ignoring how big a part Martha Coakley’s terrible campaign played in Brown’s surprise special election win in 2010.
He raised more than twice as much as the other two, only one who got on TV. Sullivan annoyed the social conservatives, his natural base, by not appearing at their rallies. Winslow never really got traction.
If they did plan it that way, they would be “willfully ignoring how big a part Martha Coakley’s terrible campaign played in Brown’s surprise special election win in 2010.” But what else can they do? Gomez vs. Markey, I think, gives them their best shot at winning this seat. Still don’t think it will happen (and I work to make sure it doesn’t) but it’s their best chance.
I don’t get it–there’s no real upside (no one remembers who “called” a race first) but a huge, humiliating downside. It’s meant to be a kind of science, combining early results, exit polling, and remaining precinct demographics. But it should be treated with extreme caution, as almost something that tampers with the civic process. I feel like if you get one wrong, you should give up on the whole enterprise for good.
Oh, they’re all in Mattapan? We couldn’t possibly predict that they would vote differently than the district as a whole…