Say, did you see the Globe’s front page today? There, above the fold, there’s finally an article about Charlie Baker and his vision for the future of … oops, no, sorry – it’s yet another story about Mark Fisher’s lawsuit against the Mass. GOP for not letting him on the ballot. Thus proving once again that Mass. GOP chair Kirsten Hughes should have taken BMG’s advice to heart. Our own TedF notes that it is a curious story indeed, and the Herald’s website has the latest hilarious response from Fisher.
Anyway, some of the most interesting factoids in today’s Globe article are buried way at the end:
several other Republican statewide candidates, including the GOP’s choice for US senator, Brian J. Herr of Hopkinton, and state attorney general, John Miller, an attorney from Winchester, are struggling to get enough certified signatures.
Herr, who is the GOP choice to challenge Senator Edward J. Markey, has 6,475 certified signatures registered so far in the database kept by William F. Galvin, Massachusetts state secretary. Miller has 6,489. Both need 10,000.
Still the GOP’s signature-gathering this year has been lagging. Galvin, who has overseen state elections for almost 20 years, said after Tuesday’s deadline passed that he has never witnessed such a last-minute scramble by either of the two major parties.
“This is a very unusual situation to have so many people at this late date not having ballot status,” Galvin said.
Unbelievable, right? Ed Markey is a partial-term Senator up for his first November election. So not only does the Mass. GOP run a classic “some dude” candidate against him, but they may not even be able to get the poor guy on the ballot, leaving Markey to run unopposed. And the state Attorney General is an open seat, for God’s sake, yet the GOP may fall on its face there as well – even though AG would seem to be an office they’d have a decent shot at winning if they could mount some sort of plausible candidate. Seems as though while Hughes has been spending time, effort, and resources on keeping one of her own party members off the ballot, she has forgotten about several others who she’d presumably like to get on.
When your feelings about a major political party start to verge on pity, it’s not a good sign.
but…but…EBT! DCF! Illegals getting tuition! Drapes!
This isn’t hard. The largest share of voters in MA is unenrolled and could thus sign papers for either party. Cambridge might not be fertile ground, but there are plenty of areas with unenrolleds and even GOP leaning districts. The vast majority of people will sign for anyone out of the principle of democracy. They can’t blame this on their minority status.