[Full Disclosure by jconway: I work full time as the Field Director for the United Independent Party]
There has been a recent controversy regarding the differences between the United Independent Party and the un-enrolled designation leading up to the March 1st primary and tomorrows registration deadline. A more updated piece on WBUR goes a long way to explaining what the United Independent Party has been doing to anticipate this issue and what our message is to voters.
Mainly it’s two fold:
If you registered with us and want to vote in the 2016 presidential primary in either national party, please un enroll and register after March 1st. If you haven’t registered with us, be mindful that doing so will prevent you from voting in either primary and wait until after March 1st.
Fortunately I was able to clarify this with WBUR earlier today:
(If you’re registered as an unenrolled voter, you can choose which party ballot to pull on primary day. But if you’re registered with a specific party, you can only vote in that party’s primary. There is no candidate running for president this year from the United Independent Party.)
UIP Field Director James Conway attributes the spike in registration in 2015 to UIP’s heavy recruitment efforts, as well as increased enrollment the group saw during its campaign against a taxpayer-funded Olympics in Boston. McNiff also said he was aware of heavy recruitment efforts by the party throughout the year.
Conway said he believes the majority of party members are not registered in error. He says UIP has been consistently registering about 2,000 new members a month.
“Obviously, there is always the possibility of somebody doing that,” Conway told WBUR. “I think it’s very low, if at all.”
UIP leaders say the party has spent months telling its members to temporarily unenroll if they want to be able to vote in the state’s March 1 presidential primaries.
If anyone has any further questions about this I would be happy to reach out to you directly. I personally encourage everyone to vote in the upcoming presidential primary, and I will be vigorously asking you to switch to the United Independent Party after March 1st to ensure an alternative party can remain on the ballot and active in Massachusetts.
The name is misleading. Absent any legislation that would prohibit a party using “Independent” in its name, the UIP should find a new name. Perhaps EFP, the Evan Falchuk Party?
We agree there. Otherwise we’ve had over a decade to distinguish unenrolled the lack of party status from ‘Independent’ which denotes a fair minded and case by case approach to the issues.
One of those terms makes sense to describe a party committed to tackling issues that appeal to a broad number of people and is committed to making the hard long term decisions our Democratic legislature and Republican Governor consistently put off.
“Green Party” is accurately descriptive of both a political party and ideology. “United Independent Party” is misleading jargon, since it refers to a political party that can only do what is founder and near hundred percent funder allows. There is nothing independent about it, nothing united about it unless you count blood relations of the Falchuk family. I am looking forward to the day when OCPF enforces the law on maximum donations to the party, the DOR and IRS requires them to pay withholding taxes, and SS requires contributions to the retirement system.
Qadaffis movement was also called the Green Party complete with a Green Book and was different from Nader’s party. The Green Revolution in Iran was different from the one that brought the Libyan dictator to power. Some Green party’s in Europe are quite xenophobic compared to ones here.
And he isn’t any different from Deval Patrick, Steve Grossman, Chris Gabrielli, or Jim Rappaport to name four local millionaires hat bought a seat at the table in one of the two parties. The main difference is that he takes no corporate donors and decided to create his own party rather than co opt an existing one, concluding accurately that the Republicans are finished and the local Democratic leadership will always be more concerned with preserving their power rather than actually using it on behalf of people.
Your mention of the Quadaffi movement as “Green” ignores the obvious context in which he operated, where green is the color of Islam, not the tradition in the Anglo/Euro/Latino/African/Asian world, where green is the color of the environmental movement and some other mixed ideologies. Don’t be so dishonest as to ignore this.
The millionaires you mention bought themselves seats, as many other rich people do, at existing tables of power. Your boy wanted his own table, where if he does not like you personally, jconway, you will be fired. Don’t conflate having status as a political party with being either “united” or especially “independent.” Start thinking of yourself as a wage laborer for a political boss.
Green in non-democratic, non-western contexts has very different connotations, but in the US and Europe they often at least started as environmental parties and expanded in the progressive realm from there. I assumed you knew that.
And nobody has a monopoly on them. These semantic discussions operate under two assumptions
1) The two party duopoly has all the answers and is the only acceptable conduit of political power
2) Voters are idiots
I happen to think both points are complete bullshit, so do 21,000 other Massachusetts residents and counting. It is incredibly hard to argue with a straight face at this point that the Democratic party in Massachusetts is living up to it’s founding principles are purposes, especially when it’s leaders can ignore your organization with impunity Christopher. The number of disaffected progressives who have contacted me or gotten in touch with us is staggering. As are a few Republicans too. Things will get pretty interesting in 2018, but we have to lay the groundwork now.
More than any other term a political party could use, independent suggests exactly that. Using the word in a party name is the very definition of oxymoron.
My goodness, this conversation is really getting out of hand.
Some perspective please. There is nothing to gain from picking up on a small party who’s struggling to make a few converts here and there. If anything, this whole debacle gives it higher standing.
i need to repeat my hard slap to jconway’s comment that Qadaffi was a “green.” Muslims almost universally use the color/phrase green to describe their social movements. It is part of their faith. Jconway’s misuse of the word is grossly bigoted language. I am guessing that the boy has never been to a Muslim majority nation.
“Jconway’s misuse of the word is grossly bigoted language. I am guessing that the boy has never been to a Muslim majority nation.”
Your accusation is inconsistent. Are you calling him bigoted or ignorant? Jconway’s answer was a clumsy attempt at rationalization, but your dudgeon is overly heated.
Both. I am calling him out about the Middle East, Islam and a subject he thought he was competent to comment on.
Again, “green” is the word that much of the Islamic world uses to describe daily life. Drive for ten miles at night across the Islamic world and you will see the sky illuminated with green minarets. The Green Crescent is their equivalent of the Red Cross, the Green Revolution in Iran was their most recent democratic outburst. Grow up and join he real world before you criticize.
If either of you has ever been in a Muslim majority country for more than a week I will be happy to hear from you. Make sure you explain if it was a vacation or the work you did to help the local people (Indonesia is Muslim majority but Bali is Hindu, so I won’t buy that junk),
I pointed out the inconsistency of your logical argument. Just because somebody doesn’t agree with you 100% of the time doesn’t make them the enemy. So if you want to call him a “boy” and tell me to “grow up and join he [sic] real world”, go ahead. But you’re diminishing your own point. You don’t need to spend a week in a Muslim-majority country to understand the symbolism of the color green in Islam.
Of course, it would be helpful if you realized that the Muslim equivalent of the Red Cross is the Red Crescent.
Once again, the color green is the color of faith in the Islamic world. Jconway’s comment about the subject was pure BS, trying to ascribe some kind of other meaning to Muslim greens. That is too obviously wrong and gross, only the kind of spin that could be made by a man who has never been to the Islamic world. I don’t tolerate that kind of religious bigotry.
Here are jconways comments:
“Qadaffis movement was also called the Green Party complete with a Green Book …” This was just awfully wrong in so many ways. Thank you for helping to defend his mistakes.
BTW, in the most populous countries in the Islamic world (Indonesia and Malaysia) we don’t call it the Red Crescent Society, but the Green Crescent movement. Get with the program.
Green has different political meanings depending on the context. Thanks for pointing that out and agreeing with me. That was exactly my point, just as independent has many meanings depending on the context. In Chicago it meant you were a Democrat not affiliated with the Daley machine, and if had nothing to do with party registration. Good corollary for modern Massachusetts Democrats actually, declare your independence from DeLeo and sign up with us!
Be clear that at no point did I agree with you. The Islamic “green movements” have nothing to do with your attempts to re-define the word green.
It has nothing to do with your political party’s (oops, you actually don’t belong to it today, you just cash Falchuk’s paycheck) attempts to wash his big money attempt to buy a party.
Never attempt a metaphor on BMG. They will attack the quality and etymology of your example and ignore the point you are trying to illustrate.
They sound like Key Club debaters.
(Watch, they don’t know what a Key Club is and will provide a long analysis about locks)
…you of course mean those big gates that control water flow through canals, right?:)
I guess we can agree that make it misleading. From “What We Believe” page, right near the top:
This does seem like an intentional conflation of the 53% unenrolled with the word independent, but we can say it was an accident. The fact is this confusion will not go away, the common usage of the term independent defined as people not enrolled in a party is just too ingrained in the discourse.
It the UIP cares about voter disenfranchisement, it should change its name. Virtually any name would be less confusing. There really is no other way to solve the problem. Unless, of course, accidental registrations are part of the business model?
Hillary is beating Bernie in the delegate count for NH despite losing to him by 22% of the vote in New Hampshire. Not particularly democratic to me. We are a super delegate free party not beholden to the donor class.
We aren’t going anywhere and we aren’t changing our name. Nobody has a monopoly on independent thinking and good ideas, we just want to be a clearinghouse for folks who feel alienated from the process and want to run under their own banner with the same organizational backing that a party provides. Again, it’s really not a complicated model. I can concede it’s certainly unique and if we are successful, disruptive to the parties that be.
late night incoherence
EOM
…except, again, if you are a party you are by definition no longer independent. I recommended the original diary because I thought it was a good explanation of UIP’s perspective, but c’mon, I don’t recall you ever being quite as obtuse as you’ve been in the comments here. This saddens me because you are one that respect and enjoy exchanges with most. Surely you know that the origins of our name reach back to the days of Jackson where it referred to the people vs. the powerful, something we hope we still have. We our proudly the oldest institutional party in continuous existence in the country and I believe the world.
I am disappointed that this is an exciting progressive movement and you are held up by a silly controversy created by Bill Galvin over names. It wasn’t a problem in his office last month when they gave us our data and told us everything was fine. It wasn’t a problem when we worked with them on language to send to voters.
But apparently it’s a problem the day before the filing deadline. We aren’t running to supplant the Democrats, the only Democrats we will run against are ones who deserve to lose who haven’t or won’t lose primaries anytime soon. Our short term goal is to be the second party in registration and become the new opposition party since the GOP is in it’s death throes.
If we let the other parties conspire to pick our name we are hardly an entity worth fighting with or fighting for. It’s an identity our voters are proud of and something that has brought us to this point. Seriously, see the comments on facebook. They are pissed off Galvin is calling them stupid, and they are right to feel that way. It’s a new party unlike the other two, hence it’s independent of their bullshit but committed to bringing the state in a new direction that unites us. The legislature and Bill Galvin had no problem with our name when we had 1,700 voters after month 1, but I guess we grew too quickly for them.
OR
Your arguments are all over the place- which I guess is understandable because it’s just reality that your party name is at best confusing and at worst deceptive.
People are and forever will be confused by it. If the title of this post- United Independent Party Working to Ensure Everyone Can Vote- is accurate, you would not be so defensive about a name change (many parties have done it). It’s literally the only way to ensure no one will be disenfranchised by this. Pick whatever name pleases you (or Falchuk), just don’t put the word independent or independents in it.
Bullshit. How about actually engaging with the voters and educating them on the difference for 14 months straight? Sending them links to unenroll from your party and enroll for the primary and re-enroll? This is the work we are doing. I fielded 10 calls today from voters who couldn’t get through to Galvin’s office and helped them find their way to the primary ballot of their choice. We have been honest and up front about this process from the beginning.
I am saying why are they important to you? You clearly will never join my party since bashing it is your sole contribution to BMG, so why do you care? Why can’t we call ourselves what we want to call ourselves and why should we surrender to outside pressure to change?
There hasn’t been a single voter confused or disenfranchised by our party name that Galvin can point to or that has called our office to complain. You’d think if this was a crisis they could point to examples and point to data. There isn’t. I am going to operate under the correct assumption that every voter is an adult, every voter knows how to read, and every voter is smart enough to know the difference between a label clearly marked NO Party and a label marked United Independent Party. That’s it. There is no debate.
that 99%+ of voters & potential voters are not at your meetings, calling you, on your email list or on Falchuk’s facebook page (where, even there) in the comments there is still much confusion on this issue, right? Even if Galvin spent millions to clarify this, some people still would be confused. I don’t think they are not smart, it’s confusing and most people have more important things to worry about day to day than the legal definition of independent, I mean unrolled.
You should change your name because it is confusing to people and de facto deceptive. There is plenty of evidence of that. Even your own website can’t keep it straight. The only reason no one has been disenfranchised is the election has not happened yet.
This is not my only contribution here, but I do think Falchuk is a fraud. I am relatively new though, should new things be dismissed?
It should be unacceptable for even one person to lose the chance to vote because of this and that will happen. Evidently, that’s just the cost of doing business to the UIP.
Hey boyo you ain’t been here for the last 14 months. Stop faking your stuff. It gets obvious.
Many of your comments offer genuine insight into difficult issues. That insight is obscured, at least for me, by your consistently hostile and combative tone. You are not a soldier here, we are not in combat, and your self-appointed role as guardian or protector of something or other is past stale. Whatever behavior might be appropriate in a war zone, your behavior here is tiresome.
Your repeated attacks on every participant here — christopher, jconway, myself, now sabutai — are over the top. I wish you’d find more time to share when you agree with something, and spend less time attacking.
I am not the one who choose to start a semantic discussion. What are all you Democrats afraid of? Your useless supermajority is intact and isn’t going anywhere soon, this is a 10-20 year project I am undertaking. And I had no choice but to start it outside the party since nobody had the infrastructure or capability needed to really look at every legislative race and find ways to put pressure on these folks.
And if you want to bring Jackson into the discussion, slavery and genocide aside, the year he ran there were four Democratic-Republican parties competing under different names, I doubt they were arguing about that the names, they argued about the issues. Let’s focus on those for a change.
…since as you say we’re probably doing just fine. I am a committed duopolist when it comes to parties though. The way I see it we have more stable coalitions and voter mandates if there is a left party and right party that fight amongst each other with winner’s taking on each other for the final, which guarantees one will get a majority. That said I do often wonder if MA could use a progressive party as a second party, but absent IRV I’d prefer in the interim progressives contest the Dem primaries.
IRV is never going to come since the politicians in power won’t let it happen, ditto Pablo’s jungle primary idea, though both are fine ballot initiatives if you can get them on and the voters understand. I liked fusion voting, the voters didn’t want it. And like I said in the Brockton and Fitchburg specials, the progressive minority female candidate loses every time when turnout is 11% or 8% for those obscure races. Ditto the September primary on a Thursday.
Instead let the 60% of the electorate that votes for the president and comes out every four years determine who gets to be the state rep or state senator. Let the Obama coalition have a choice when it shows up to vote. It’s a different way of pursuing this strategy and there is no reason we can’t reinforce each other. Let me party grow, let it call itself the name our voters asked us to keep, and register for it so we can stay on the ballot and provide external pressure.
When your progressive loses their primary, we can back them in the general. This is the kind of disruption our stale system sincerely needs, and it is not something anyone should find threatening. I find it exciting and exhilarating.
…and if you look at the platform we are theoretically very left. Really, you are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.
How many legislators with D’s next to their name have lately? Look at the scorecard and get back to me.
CentralMassDad has been right about this for ten whole years, and when I had the epiphany he was correct he and I suddenly found ourselves in the same party. There is room enough for me and him, and you and everyone else here. That would make a far bigger statement than the next round of platforms you put out the leadership ignores. We are still unsure how to put together state committees but tell me how it’s done and lead the effort. Run for office against your local DINO on our line and see how you do. I am tired of seeing your talents and passion wasted in an organization that doesn’t listen to you. And that applies to a lot of my friends here.
She will find when her state committee races happen next month that a lot of the moderates Baker is backing will have lost to the Tea Party which is increasingly moving the MA GOP into a socially conservative and electorally irrelevant direction. Baker is the high water mark of social liberalism in that party, which will likely be led by Donald Trump or Ted Cruz in the fall.
We are a pro choice, pro equality party to the core and welcome and value someone with her skeptical fiscally conservative soft libertarian bent. I’d rather be in a diverse room of misfits than in a room full of clones afraid of their shadows.
I am not a social conservative, you are right. But I also do not think that another government program is the first response to every problem. I align with JS Mill – CAN it be done by people instead of government? Can people do it BETTER than government? If not, is it worth the risk of further EMPOWERING government at the expense of the people? Mr. Falchuck is a Government First adherent.
Falchuk is also pro-casino and pro-tax hike. He defends the size of state government in the wake of featherbedding exposes. I also attended a presentation by Mr. Falchuk in Barnstable before he began the party (2012?), and while we NEED a responsible third party, we are apart on too many issues – not to say he is irresponsible, but his vision is not mine.
I will be a White Russian if the Liberty Slates win, and wish David Brudnoy was still around for a real Libertarian Party.
If the bridge is too far I can respect your stance as a principled one. I’ll add Evan was for a free vote on the casinos, but personally against them. A stance I’ve vocally disagreed with by the way, but it’s not a straight up pro-casino stance. All new revenue must be matted to reforms that make the state more transparent and efficient.
I entirely agree services have to be managed better and reformed to get voter buy in. I disagree with my fellow progressives who view patronage as the cost of doing business in this state, or tolerate a political culture that lives and breathes that.
But it’s not his party, it’s a party open to everyone. We have libertarian volunteers who liked Paul and Kasich and folks feelin the Bern. And we all get along! We are trying to build a presence on the Cape but our next scheduled meeting closet to you is in Weymouth (I know that’s still probably a hike), but email me and I’d be happy to send along a personal invite.
The Speaker actually has voted their way 2/3 of the time.
I have no doubt that Mr. DeLeo votes the “PM” way on the multitude of non-binding resolutions and irrelevant legislation that has no effect and no relevance whatsoever.
What is the record of the Mr. DeLeo on votes about taxes, spending, local aid, and so on?
In my view, three issues matter most to Massachusetts today:
– Wealth and income concentration
– Public transportation
– Education
I’d like to see more about the votes of Mr. DeLeo and, for that matter, the “Democratic” legislature about those three issues.
The platform has NOTHING to do with reality, you’ve argued exactly that on multiple occasions here.
When Bob DeLeo governs like a Republican (such as by refusing to admit that new taxes on the wealthy are needed, in spite of overwhelming evidence), your own argument is that the party is powerless over him.
The Massachusetts Democratic Party in practice is a completely different entity from the platform that it annually publishes and then ignores.
and actually utterly full of beans, Mr “slot machines are our best infrastructure investment”
I can never tell if you actually believe this kind of tripe or if you assert it out of malice.
I don’t write what I don’t believe and I certainly don’t do it out of malice. Even the PM scorecards bear out that almost all the Dems get higher progressive scores than almost all the GOP.
Any discussion of state politics that starts with ‘it’s those bad Republicans stopping us from doing x’ is intellectually dishonest. They simply don’t exist in great numbers to halt the agenda. Any discussion that starts with ‘that mean old Baker is stopping us from doing x’ follows that same pattern. Baker frankly is the legislatures bitch. He can’t veto anything which makes him a fairly impotent Governor. Deval shows you what gubernatorial impotence looks like when it comes from a Democrat trying to pass his agenda with his ostensible comrades in arms exerting massive control over the legislature.
Look what Mark Dayton got accomplished in MN with initially just one house under Democratic control, or Malloy in CT or Shumlin in VT and compare that to Deval’s two terms. It’s pathetic. Baker couldn’t even get his one progressive policy, killing the film tax to expand EITC, pass DeLeo. He basically joked about who was boss at the State of the Commonwealth, ‘won’t do that again Bobby, lol’. So the Bulger/Weld bromance now has a 21st century counterpart.
Do you see now why the need for an alternative to that is so vitally critical to our Commonwealth and it’s future? We’ve had 65 years to replace bad Democrats with better Democrats and it hasn’t happened. If I still thought it would happen I wouldn’t be signing up with a new party.
but the change we need is not some 1%er buying himself a party, calling it United Independent in an effort to lure in the unenrolleds, and pretending he has some sort of constituency when he starts issuing press releases. We would be best served if the mainstream media sees Falchuk for who he is, and ignores his efforts to buy himself attention.
The phrase “The GOP is irrelevant in Massachusetts” comes from someone who has never tried to get get legislation passed in real life. Blogging counts minimally in real politics, unless you are an experienced participant.
What progressive legislation has the GOP managed to block lately on Beacon Hill? And in order to count this has to be progressive legislation that wasn’t already blocked by the ostensibly Democratic leadership.
I remember the days of Weld, when he had a veto-proof minority in the Senate that blocked progressive policies. It was ugly but you were not there.
And to answer your question, it is not what the GOP blocked, it is what that mushy middle of Democrats passed despite the GOP which benefitted: the LGBT community, women, the poor, racial and ethnic minorities. Yes, the Dems fucked up a lot of stuff but you have NEVER been part of this fight. Stop pretending to be part of a decades long fight that many of us have been involved in.
I cannot fathom why I am speaking up on behalf of a Democratic Party that is too often corrupt in ways that are politically immoral, but legal (F-U Tom)
More importantly, I remember hundreds if not thousands of conversations I have had with legislators who won’t subject themselves to an additional battering in public for doing something even vaguely courageous.
And most importantly I remember the anti-tax campaign of a guy named Baker who bashed the crap out of a good tax policy, but the guy who buys your food and shelter ran a vanity campaign to mess with the system. If you try to claim Falchuk thought he was going to win, I am will call you liar.
In the future, please post you snark directly on my posts so I can see them and respond.
Glad we are all civil here… Or is there another reading of F-U?
when a man calls me a liar as he repeatedly did, i claim the right to say FU. Heck, I did not even spell it out like SomervileTom did when he called me and others liars. When did this become an issue?
It’s not like him to get that personal. I suspect he suggested you were mistaken and you took it as being called a liar for the same reason you seem quick to accuse others of lying and making stuff up when they are simply mistaken. I say profanity, even censored, directed at another BMGer, is a violation of the rules.
I remember you commented on how much you enjoyed it.
That’s the short version of the story, got it. I get you allegedly spent more decades in politics around here than I have, I say allegedly since you haven’t given your real name and everyone here knows who I am and what I’ve been doing. I’ve been saying this since day 1, I’m not the enemy man. I’m really not. I’m a young man trying to make a difference in his home state. That’s all. I’m certainly not doing this for the money, or because moving halfway across the country in the middle of planning my wedding and applying to grad programs is just a fun diversion for me.
But it sounds like many of your years in government were spent fighting and losing fights within the party you admit you hate defending. I’m not your enemy, Evan Falchuk is one guy who got 60,000 votes last election with the goal of starting a new party that wasn’t connected to the same old fights you are a battle scarred veteran of. We are going to be running many candidates who look, think, and are very different from him. And that’s a good thing. They are also different from the folks in charge who you admit screwed you over and put themselves before the public time and time again. The definition of insanity is doing the same damn thing and getting the same poor result. My abusive marriage with the MA Democratic Party is obviously a lot shorter than yours, or even Christopher’s, but I’m glad it’s done and I’m happy to move on to something new, vibrant, and interesting. I encourage you all to do the same. If you don’t like it stay where you are, but don’t come complaining to me ten years from now when the same old song and dance happens again and the next DeLeo spawn keeps this state down.
Are you being intentionally silly? I have to ask the question since I have operated within and outside political parties in a lot of places, a lot of fstates, a lot of countries.When you wrote
who you admit screwed you over you made another of your desperate fabrications.
you made shit up.
I have never felt screwed over by any political party in any country. I have won some battles in a few places, been jailed in a few, helped a few movements forwards and I continue to tilt in that direction. That is far more than anything you have done in your six weeks back in MA on the payroll of Falchuk. I am guessing he will soon realize the damage you do to his brand name.
I did not mean ill will, but rather writing something untrue, known to be untrue, with the intent of convincing someone of something that is untrue.
Using the stupid platform, which zero politicians pay the slightest bit of attention to, when the LEADER of your party is anti-tax, pro-casino, pro-tax break, anti-education, anti-union, pro-big business, and anti-public transportation, while arguing, like an inch below this post as I type it, that this guy is really a progressive, is mendacity, plain and simple.
The local party is entirely corrupt. It leadership treats the entire political apparatus as a means of stealing money and giving no-work jobs to their in-laws at the Probation Dept. They are universally supported by doe-eyed idiot “liberals”, who are scared of anything else because a Republican in Texas said something awful last week. Any time they get any flak from their left, they throw a little shade on the GOP governor THAT THEY SUPPORT, and the left pretends that they are progressive. Then they and the governor have a little laugh while they prepare an announcement about how functioning public transport or higher education is just not something that is in the cards for Massachusetts, and the doe-eyed idiots say “Darn those 3 Republicans that somehow completely control everything!”
I don’t believe I have blamed a toothless MA GOP. I have only said that even if the differences are not as stark as some would like, the records DO bear out noticible differences. On the PM scorecards, for example, almost every Dem is above 50% while almost every GOPer is below.
Compare them to their voting record vis a vis the platform, not weighed against the GOP. If the Speaker is rejecting a third of that platform with his votes and leading his supermajority in that direction, that’s a real problem. Especially since the aspects of the platform he is against concern real issues like raising taxes on the wealthy, funding the T, and supporting public education.
So far Democratic conventions have rejected resolutions calling for an official party scorecard indicating fealty to the platform (and those are the hardcore activists!). I am assuming, though maybe a closer look is warranted, that PM vote priorities and preferences match the Dem platform fairly closely. Besides, weighing against the other party is EXACTLY how you show that there are in fact differences, which some seem to be questioning.
…if it were up to me, the party WOULD make it a priority to not only match proposed legislation to platform language and communicate same to our legislators, but have a record of that. We would also consistently mobilize our activists, both official and unofficial, to contact their legislators to encourage them to vote the platform. This is a big gap in MDP function IMO.
It’s a bit more complicated. Legislators can’t do everything they want, because as soon as they think of raising taxes, they are slammed by a ballot question telling them to lower them back. If it were not for the ballot, taxes would have been raised long ago, and the dynamic of the debate would be entirely different.
I uprated your post but add a note as I am uncertain about your use of the phrase “The local party is entirely corrupt.” In my experience in the MetroWest, North Shore and South Shore democratic organizations, most of the folks are pretty honest but many are not particularly well informed about what really happens in the political world. Some of them engage in a minor form of idolatry of local pols.
In my neck of the South Coast world, the Dem Party sucks and is all about people jockeying for some imagined notion of having power. On an individual basis, it is sad as they are often people who are trying to claim some measure of control in a world that has decided they and their children are not worth a social investment so they try to grab whatever power they can. It won’t get their kids the education they need, it won’t keep the ‘hood off of drugs that are killing my community, it won’t revive the old fishing industry that is dying. So my neighbors too often embrace casinos and jingoism instead of digging in for the long haul. OTOH, there are community of faith, volunteers working in soup kitchens and groups like Habitat for Humanity that are doing the work that our society has decided to ignore. Even a secularist like me is welcomed amongst them.
YMMV
So why keep picking on the new party trying to change all that? It doesn’t make any sense.
I do not pick on either UIP or you. UIP is irrelevant in the real world, especially here. I just insist on honesty. You might consider a similar policy. Am I a hard ass? I plead guilty.
And if UIP runs a serious candidate in any of my local/state/federal districts, I will gladly vote for her (or him)
Just ask the Dems in Maine. If you’re not happy with our Dem Legislature, or the MassDems Party, join us to make it better. Third parties just enable the likes of George W. Bush and Paul LePage.
‘Evan Falchuk Party?’
Pablo, you have one of our own BMGers working to enroll people in the UIP. Are you saying that UIP is not his party?
When Deval won the nomination partly as a self funding candidate it should’ve been renamed the Deval Patrick Party. Or the Steve Grossman or Don Berwick Party had either of those millionaires won.
Martha wasn’t a millionaire but she was a regulator who took money from industries she was supposed to supervise. She and Baker were both in the pocket of Partners just as Baker and Walsh have taken several thousand from GE.
We aren’t breaking this wheel of corruption and getting the money changers out of our temple of democracy by doing what everybody else does. It will require a new movement and it has 20,999 members who aren’t Evan Falchuk.
out of there own pocket to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars the way Falchuk is then that would be an excellent point. But, there is all the difference in the world between putting your own money into your own campaign account to run for an office and using your campaign account to pay for and run an entire party. Also, those guys did have substantial monetary support from real voters and Falchuk/UIP has got very little.
BTW- still waiting on your promise to JimC to explain how this can be legal when there is a 5K limit on party donations. It certainly violates all spirit of campaign finance laws.
I imagine 75 of us could rule a UIP convention…
You have to have deep memory to even remember than name. I had to google it to re-capture all of the details but it brought a smile to my face.
n/t
We actually care about real education policy unlike either of the two parties.
He sought the nomination of a pre-existing Democratic Party with an institutional structure and platform already in place, not to mention plenty of financial and human resources from the co-ordinated campaign.
The only substantive difference is he choose two of the existing parties to co-opt and run in and we are starting from scratch. But at the end of the day it’s a political outsider with some connections and capital who gets a group of volunteers to put his name on the ballot and work to build a grassroots campaign for governor. You don’t buy 60,000 voters. Ask Jeff McCormick, who outspent Falchuk, how money can buy you votes. Or Jeb Bush for that matter. You gotta earn it and work for it. We got double digit results in parts of Western MA no candidate from the two parties bothered to visit.
This is about empowering the people the two parties leave behind. So of course all the folks on this thread who have benefited from or work only within the status quo feel threatened by it. Pablo I love that you love Bernie, when the superdelegates quash his insurgency you’re welcome to come over here where the water is clean and free from corporate contamination. Ditto JimC who has been feeling the bern lately.
Christopher, I love that you bust your ass for the DSC. When DeLeo ignores you for the 40th time you are welcome to come over here where we actually believe in progressive taxation, transit funding, public education, and would actually provide an opposition to Charlie Baker and his corporate cronyism from the GE deal to his cozy relationship to Partners.
Or we can argue every single thread or post I bring up about quibbles between independent and unenrolled or argue that the OCPF which has approved all our financial arrangements somehow will burn us down the road. I won’t trade in that cynicism anymore. I want to build something new.
…is all the difference in the world in my book. I look askance at parties of personality, sort of like Ross Perot’s Reform Party in the 1990s.
Evan’s not on the ballot, but several state rep candidates might be. He wasn’t on the ballot when those three councilors won their races. This is about building a movement, it’s issue driven rather than personality driven. And it’s the issues that frankly Beacon Hill has persistently ignored while our state has grown increasing unequal, unaffordable, and the Massachusetts dream has become unattainable for far too many people. So that’s what I want to fix.
The Democrats have had 65 years of uninterrupted control of the state legislature to do so, and have not. If a Republican is in the corner office, the explanation is that it’s his or her fault. If it’s a Democrat, it’s the fault of that awful Speaker, always a white ethnic conservative who we never seem to get rid of and always seem to re-elect and remove constraints upon. In 1998 it was Alice Wolfe telling us she had no choice but to vote for Finneran, now it’s Majorie Decker in the same seat singing the same song about DeLeo nearly 20 years later. I admire both women, but come on, we can do so much better in this state.
…but for now at least it does seem to be his money and his issues.
Bought and paid for by Evan Falchuk. 1%er buys his own party.
andreiradulescubanu wrote:
Exactly. We have one of our own BMGers being paid to enroll people in the United Falchuk Party by the same Falchuk who paid a bunch of signature gatherers to get on the ballot, and the same Falchuk who paid for television commercials to promote his candidacy.
Look, I get it if someone signs up for the Independent Party thinking he is, in technical terms, an unenrolled registered voter.
But here’s what I don’t get: how could the same person just ignore the word “United”? As in, how on Earth does a person registering think to himself: Self, I don’t want to be in a political party. I want to vote in any party’s primary, but don’t want to be a member of that party. Which choice is that? Oh! I see it! It’s the United Independent Party. I’ll bet that “United” is just, you know, because America is awesome or something.
That’s what I don’t see happening. I don’t see how someone could enroll in the United Independent Party and think that means the same thing as “independent”.
…but I can’t say I have the same faith in the average voter.
But they might miss the fact that choosing UIP means they can’t vote in the presidential primary.
Which, again, goes back to the problematic name. We could argue the merits of open primaries, but we don’t have them. So I don’t blame Galvin for this situation, I blame UIP.
We have had 14 months of communiques sent to every single registered member informing them of their rights if they want to vote in the primaries, we have worked with the Secretaries office to rectify this and welcome the postcard. They wouldn’t miss that fact if they went to our website at all in the last 14 months, interacted with us over social media or were on our mailing list. We were going to mail all of our members and then Galvin informed us of the postcard and we didn’t want to further confuse anyone.
Meanwhile out of the calls I have received in the last two weeks ten were from people who thought they had to be in a party to vote in the primary and who didn’t know what unenrolled was. They called us because the Secretary of State couldn’t or didn’t want to help them. Apparently their website crashed last night.
That’s all on Galvin and his $7 million operation that informs voters via the modern technology of postcards and had no room in it’s lavish ad budget to inform voters on how to vote in these primaries. That’s on Galvin for opposing same day registration for his nearly three decades in office, that would solve this problem and make our process more open, more transparent, and more democratic. Our party endorses it, he doesn’t. This problem persists whether my party is on the ballot or not and no matter what our name is. This is Galvin covering his ass and having an axe to grind, per usual. Last week it was homeless veterans, this week it’s the UIP.
The same folks might also miss that being enrolled a Republican means that they can’t vote in the Democratic primary, etc.
Look, it’s got the word “United” (in caps) indicating that it’s something other than pure independence. It’s got the word “Party” just like the Ds and the Rs do. If they’re not connecting those dots, there’s not much that distinguishes them from the group in my first paragraph.
At some point there’s a kvetch about every party name. I’m no UIPer, but I’m not buying the critique that there’s a problem with their name.
… of a sideshow. The UIP has no dog in this hunt. The wheel is there, but the hampster is not. The UIP is a spectator. It is an onlooker. It is the proverbial “innocent bystander.”
THERE IS NOT ONE SINGLE CANDIDATE REPRESENTING THE UNITED INDEPENDENT PARTY ON ANY BALLOT IN ANY PLACE IN ALL THE COMMONWEALTH.
Why, pray tell, are we talking about them at all…???
Because they whine when we talk about them and whine when we don’t. They are people who want to belong to one party but think they should be able to vote in another they want to beat. Some may be legit, others just nasty POS. jconway?
“Mommy, mommy, look at me, I am about to do something stupid” (followed by face plant in compost heap). We don’t all have to follow a face plant into cow turd.
In state legislative races across the commonwealth. Unlike other new parties we are starting from the bottom up rather than the top down. And we have three city councilors already elected last cycle, so starting small.
Who gives a sh** if you claim to be running candidates for legislative races. It doe not make UIP anything other than a political toy owned by a rich man and the pets that he hires.
If you’re so smart and so awesome and know all the players and have better ideas than everyone else, why aren’t you still in office? Maybe I’ll ask Marty Walsh, hear he’s a good friend of yours when you’re in a pinch.
Not sure why you think I was in elected politics but I was around a lot of them, and still am when I work outside the US. There is a wide spectrum of behavior among them from purist ideologue to machine whore, but most live in the middle range. Politicians usually behave as they perceive the way their electorate wants. Different electorates have different expectations.
A few months back I mentioned two MA legislators who bucked the trend and were pretty out of step with their constituents in wonderful ways, Senator Alan Sisitsky and Rep Paul Kollios. They were admirable men. Some people in government are worth supporting.
Don’t waste your time with this participant.
A two-way radio can’t receive while the “talk” button is pressed, and neither can anyone else on the same frequency. The best thing to do when this participant enters the channel is to select another one.
Including the first latino and LGBT councilor elected in Holyoke, a young woman elected in Greenfield, and a working dad in Amesbury. Meanwhile in Brockton two women of color were unable to break the glass ceiling against a well connected insider in a special election primary, neither was a black female social worker in Fitchburg.
All three women would’ve made awesome additions to the legislature, instead we got two old white guys trying to get a better pension. That’s the sad reality we are trying to change, and I feel bad for you and others on this thread who are so seeped in the cynical cesspool of local politics they can’t see us as anything other than a threat or a hoax. We’re neither, we’re really a lifeboat for those who want off a ship going nowhere.
Can you provide us with details about these people, and how UIP had an impact in this state where party affiliation does not appear on the ballot in municipal elections. This is s genuine question, not snark.
I am genuinely curious about the UIP candidates in municipal races. I found nothing about them on the UIP website, no names and no cities. Did any of them win? I cannot tell from your description.
Who were the “two old white guys trying to get a better pension” (your words, a pretty ugly smear) who won. Brady in Brockton was endorsed by Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Gloria Fox and a large number of progressive organizations and unions. I will be among the first to acknowledge that endorsements move towards those who are viable candidates, many occur after a primary (for this instance when we are talking about state, not muni elections), and Dem elected officials are not likely to endorse candidates in other parties.
I think it is smart politics for UIP to run people in muni elections in gateway cities if the candidates have genuine potential for the future. I would be happy to see new progressives of any party affiliation enter the legislature, especially non-Dems as they won’t be under the same kind of pressure to suck up to DeLeo. But if this is akin to the Greens running certain losers in order to maintain their ballot line then it is more of the same old nothing. I will usually vote for the better of two indeterminate middlings instead of the ideologically pure candidate if they are not really running to win, although I often vote for GOPers if I think a bad Dem is going to get a mandate to do right wing junk.
You see, some of us who have been politically active for a half century know what messages we send when we act, when we vote.
I am inviting you to tout your candidates. You are getting paid to do it so please do it. You do not know in which South Coast place I live and one of your candidates might actually get my vote. But don’t ask for it by smearing somebody like Brady in Brockton with “two old white guys trying to get a better pension.” The haters are mostly voting for Trump in that other party.
Those are all non-partisan elections.
That is why I asked so many questions. I have very rarely heard a candidate for muni office tout a party credential since most of the electorate does not like either party. I have often heard a candidate claim to be the more conservative or more progressive candidate.
Even Marty Walsh, whose name is often followed by (D-Boston) became Mayor via a non-partisan process, though Boston IS a city where touting your Dem credentials is seen by many as a plus anyway. However, both major parties have been known to employ the “farm team” strategy, whereby they recruit people known to be registered with and sympathetic to their party. Sometimes (less so it seems in MA) this is to advance policy goals at the local level, but more often I think it is to get voters accustomed to voting for them so in a few cycles they can run for state legislature on a partisan ticket.
Brady didn’t have a website so I have no idea what he stood for or what issues he was running for. I do believe that a minority-majority district such as that one should have a minority representative, the pension comment was directed towards the Fitchburg race which was a quote from the current Democratic nominee there who beat a very interesting black social worker and school committeewoman named Kim Maxwell who got a lot of good endorsements but came up short.
I will be happy to post the bios of our elected officials as soon as we finish the press release. Should be ready next week and BMG will be he first place. Feel free to look up Nelson Roman in Holyoke right now if you’d like, he’s the kind of guy we want to run for higher office but he is focusing on doing a great job as a ward councilor right now.
And no, most municipal officials don’t mention parties but he is excited to build our town committee up and has taken the lead on that. We are also naming him our diversity director and hope to expand his role in the party apparatus. We mentioned him in our blog and on our Facebook page, and Evan was happy to accept his invitation to attend his inaugural. Ashli Stenfeld in Greenfield and Steve Staganelli in Amesbury are the other two, both wanted to win on their own name and record and reached out to us after their races were won. Nelson was a more activr volunteer in the 2014 race. Taylor DiSantis fell short two places of an at large seat in Pittsfield and was our fourth candidate.
But the official press release will have much better info than what I just provided, and I’ll be happy to share it on BMG first.
BS jconway about the lack of a Brady website, as I looked him up when my friends at the Environmental League of MA sent me notice of their endorsement of a candidate in a neighboring community. It was not hard to find and I did not do what you did, which is accuse him of seeking a big pension. That was gross, disgusting, odious.
The candidates that run claiming UIP affiliation deserve better than being associated with your smears against other party candidates. It is hard to believe that you are being paid for this junk.
Gerry Cassidy was the candidate without a website. That’s my mistake, but it was the the special to replace Brady. And the pension line was from a Sentienal and Enteprise debate in Fitchburg, it didn’t apply to the Brockton race.
I learned in my high school civics class (yes, my Montgomery County MD public high school taught civics and history classes in the late 1960s, and they were required for a diploma) that America is a republic and that we are also a democracy. I’m also an independent SOB.
Surely there are voters who mistakenly registered with the Massachusetts Republican Party because we are a republic (well, ok, since the Massachusetts Republican Party has only 17 members total, this one is speculative). Surely there are voters who mistakenly registered with the Massachusetts Democratic Party because they believe in democracy.
This argument is silly-season silliness. The name “United Independent Party” is no more confusing that “Massachusetts Republican Party” or “Massachusetts Democratic Party”.
Maybe we should start thinking about a better way to vote in primaries. It seems like we are placing obstacles for people to vote. I doubt UIP is confusing voters who register, but rather people want the opportunity to be involved.
Put an end to this nonsense once and for all.
but that’s worth of a thread all its own 🙂
Same day registration would clear a lot of this up. I find the deadline 20 days before to be an obnoxious barrier to participation, and something the Secretaries office failed to advertise.
And I am on board with jungle primaries and have been a long time proponent of IRV, it would actually make third parties more competitive without having to deal with the Nader effect. But the voters killed a far tamer reform in fusion voting, so I just don’t see the will to pass it.
The Democrats should adopt IRV in their primaries though. I’ve been saying that since the CD-5 special of 2013, and it looks like the winner of the Suffolk and Middlesex Senate special will probably be the first to get to 20+1%. That doesn’t sound all too democratic to me. It also would make it more likely that the progressive candidates don’t split the vote.
Until we get either, the UIP ballot line is there for a progressive challenger to continue to the general election when the largest number of voters most likely to elect them will turn out.
Therefore a law would have to be enacted to provide for IRV primaries, rather than simply a party rule.
Isn’t it amazing how fast you went from being the ally to the enemy?
You can also see how little fun it is to verbally fence ten people at once.
And you’re welcome to sign up with us. Appreciate your sympathy, but I expected the piling on a lot sooner and have largely been happily surprised at the positive reaction most folks here have had. But if we’re pissing the right people off we must be doing something right.
and some of its history (immigrants, JFK and Ted, Tip) has conspired to make one tribe much stronger than all others.
I say tribe because it’s not always about policies or politics. As discussed thoroughly here the Democratic Party in MA is a lot of things and it gets a lot of support out of habit.
Good luck on your venture. Often things that are logical though are an uphill climb. You’d be amazed at some of the discussions inside the MA GOP, like “we would get more votes if only we were more conservative” when logic would say that if the whole party was remade in Charlie Baker’s image (shorthand: embrace MA social issues, work with others, act moderate at all times), it might actually grow.
In your party’s case I would suggest that recruiting candidates would be the toughest nut, as it is in the MA GOP.
I am happy the registration controversy led to an uptick of regular party members emailing me asking to be candidates. But then we have to train new people on how to fundraise, what issues to talk about, and how to overcome some entrenched incumbents. Do I want to field many candidates in many races where few will win or field some candidates in selective races where most will win? So it’s been a learning curve for sure.
What’s fascinating is how little loyalty the lower rung electeds have to their current or anticipated party, they would love to run and win on our platform and our ballot line but they just don’t see the pathway in front of them at the moment. Part of the tribal part that does apply is fear of upsetting the chiefs, but few are worried about leaving the party of their grandfather which I’ve found quite surprising.
This state still has an Irish vs Anglophile Brahmins complex, even though Beacon Hill hasn’t been that way for multiple decades, and SBoston hasn’t been for years, and the political conflict among them (both here and abroad) essentially ended nearly a century ago.
This entire thread is surreal–all the complaining about how important the information conveyed by a name is, when the name “Democrat” conveys literally zero information in Massachusetts.
Some really bright and capable women of color were shut out in special elections in February, and my contacts on the Eastie based Senate Special are feeling the same thing will happen there. Granted, I’d take a fellow white male Irish Catholic over a candidate of color or woman I disagreed with. Biden would always get my vote over Rubio or Cruz. Bernie is getting my vote over Hillary.
But I can’t help but wonder if the results would be the same if you ran those elections on the general the same day the Obama coalition comes out to vote. You ain’t beating the insiders on a Thursday in September either. My contacts in Lynn told me that whole Fennell resignation leading to a special was arranged over a year ago. We shouldn’t tolerate the process being manipulated like this, since outsiders be they ideological and or women or minorities always seem to lose when the decks get stacked.
The Fennell thing was long in the making. Bob is a likable guy and non-ideological. He is the guy you want living on your street because he will give or loan to you anything he has. He is nice but emotionally clumsy, and does not feel in his gut gender equality, even though he is cool with racial equality (I guess that is what happens when you run a diner).
But he has achieved pretty much nothing in his tenure in the House. His management experience is limited to his diner. He is completely unqualified for his new job but it gives him a 70% percent pay raise, and an equal bump in his pension which all of the taxpayers of the Commonwealth will shoulder.
Generally, legislators are bad administrators and administrators are bad legislators. They require very different skill sets.
of this thread.
I’m ambivalent about 3rd parties, but enthusiastic about James Conway. When I do that math, I’m somewhat in favor of the UIP, in spite of my Democratic partisanship.
With that said, the Green Party still annoys me.
We won’t be running anyone for President until we at least have won a state rep race.
jconway was never an ally. (joke)
But more seriously — I feel like an outlier complaining about UIP. The blue carpet has been out at BMG, and most people have been really receptive.
Unlike the Democratic legislative leadership, I value what you and Christopher think and have enjoyed bantering with you both for years. Unlike them, I am open to adapting my approach to meet your concerns. Hope to see you both at Saloon next month!
Pablo was a very gregarious and gracious foe in person on this issue and my urbanist opposition to town meetings. And we are both feelin the Bern which shows how these disagreements can intersect with agreements elsewhere. Real electoral success that moves the state forward would be my best rebuttal to your charges, but until we deliver on that the burden of proof is on us. I totally get that.
Meeting up at Saloon was great fun, in a beautiful location a couple of blocks from Tip O’Neil’s former home. I think Evan Falchuk is an evil, egotistical 1%er, jconway wants to pull my Representative Town Meeting out from under me, we can make bold and passionate arguments, and enjoy a pint together and share a few laughs.
It’s the way politics should work.
Evan is a very smart and engaging person and when you meet him it should dispel most doubts, certainly a candidate I’ve already had a beer with. But the ‘falchuk party’ perception is one we hope to shake, our forthcoming press releases about our local candidates will demonstrate that our party is more diverse and varied than one person and frankly already doing better at recruiting minorities, women, and LGBT persons than the Democrats.
You can keep your town meeting in Arlington, and actually I’d be happy to email you about an ongoing issue one of your constituents (my uncle) is having with the town government.
And lastly Tip O’Neil is a personal hero of mine. We shared the same barber, Frank Minelli, same parish, and a life long devotion to Verna’s donuts. And I spent a good chunk of my childhood in the library named for his wife.
I’m a firm believer in respectful disagreement.
I have to add that I’m not feeling the Bern just yet. I remain undecided. I like aspects of both candidates and have issues with both. If O’Malley was still in I’d strongly consider him.
Secretary of the Commonwealth mails 10,000 registered Democrats and says,
How many of them do you think would do so?
…10,000.
Sorry, I thought this was the snark thread:)
Very few.
If there was a single Democratic POTUS candidate, then perhaps some would take the time to register with the clerk as independents so they could vote in the GOP primary.
But frankly, I think the group of people who think like that have already done that once, and are part of the set of unenrolled voters who nearly always pull the D lever in November but dabble with GOP primaries from time to time.
So far I’ve talked to to 10 voters this week we called with issues about this stuff, and got two D’s asking how to switch to unenroll so they could vote in the R primary who couldn’t get through to Galvins office whose website apparently crashed. To date, I have yet to get a phone call from an accidental UIP voter. We’ll see how that holds up after March 1st. Galvin forwarded less than 10 emails to the Herald, so I do wonder how much of a crisis this really was and how much of this is him playing politics.
A declaration of independents.
That was great. Carry on.
Just this week on Wednesday morning I found a new citizen who mistakenly registered UIP when he intended to be “unenrolled” or as he mistakenly thought an “Independent”. Luckily for him I got him to go online and re-register on Wednesday.
On Thursday I spoke to a second voter who had recently moved. He is a smart guy, very educated with advanced degrees (Not in Politics though). He had done the same thing. Unfortunately I found out too late for him. He’s disappointed.
Before the UIP even existed I would be working at a polling location at a Primary and a few voters would come in and ask for the Independent Primary Ballot and were mad that they had to choose Dem or Rep. They thought there would be an Independent Primary Ballot where they could choose whoever they wanted from both Democrats and Republicans.
So while people reading Blue Mass Group understand what unenrolled means…the majority of people think they are Independents.
I am very appreciative of the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s public website where it is easy to look your self up to see your registration status and also that people can easily register online with RMV ID. It is a huge step forward for voting access in our state. We still have a ways to go, but this is progress.
People calling me complained the website had crashed while they were trying to enroll or unenroll in our party, another member had to submit his registration three times before it said UIP. Your friend can feel free to call me office and get a personal apology, I’d love to engage with people who made this mistake and help them out. And welcome back to BMG-it’s been a long time since we heard from you. Glad to see you posting here again.
According to the town clerk:
But this is entirely the fault of Bill Galvin and danged budget cuts. Though he did send out a mailer that prompted 5,500 people to preserve their ability to cast a vote in the presidential primary (Falchuk totally was going to anyway), Galvin was unable to fully wipe from people minds the widely, deeply & commonly held meaning of the word “Independent” in the context of an election.