It’s not primary season yet. Heck, the Democratic State Convention is still a month away. Yet, Charlie Baker has already started with the negative attacks. Can’t say that I have ever seen a strong campaign starting attacks this early. Certainly it’s not a sign of strength. We’ve seen the Cahill attack ads, now Baker has released an attack on Patrick.
In his posting over at our friends at RMG Baker says that we are on a path to financial ruin.
Governor Patrick’s first term has been marred by aggressive spending and government expansion
That is troubling, so I went over the Mass Budget’s Budget Browser added a few fiscal years, adjusted for inflation and got the budget figures of this run away spending:
Romney:
FY 07 33,825,826
Patrick:
FY 08 33,399,983
FY 09 33,166,348
FY 10 32,464,076
Hey Charlie,”aggressive spending” – is that when budget numbers are lower each year?
Charlie posts another whopper:
Patrick and Cahill have had the last four years to put Massachusetts back on strong financial footing and have failed.
Moody’s and other bond ratings say something very different. This is their opinion of the work of Deval Patrick during his administration:
Effective management during economic downturns, with a willingness and ability to promptly identify and close gaps through use of both new revenues and spending reductions
I guess we can debate which is better, running a campaign with ideas or one that attacks others, ask Kerry Healey. But it’s another issue altogether when you don’t deal with facts. As someone once said “he makes a lot of stuff up, I’ve noticed”. Probably not the best way to run a campaign.
You know, Baker’s got an easy-going, relaxed conversational style. Listening to his voice, I really want to like him. Too bad (for him) he ruins it all with his behavior. What a waste.
In a recent Boston Globe article, the independent Mass Taxpayer’s Foundation did an analysis of state spending when Baker was Secretary of Administration and Finance versus spending under Governor Patrick. They found that spending grew at an annualized rate of just under 5% under Baker, and only 2.4% under Patrick.
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p>Once again, the Baker campaign gets the facts wrong. Whether it’s using multiple numbers to assert that Governor Patrick inherited a surplus from Romney (at various points, Baker claimed the surplus was $5B, $700M, and $77M), or asserting that the Governor has failed put the state on strong financial footing (disputed by all three independent national rating agencies), Baker has proven that he will not let the facts get in the way of his political spin.
He really has nothing to add to the conversation. He just wants to run as “the smartest man in gov’t”, but can’t figure out how it is that the current governor has gotten things done in the worst recession of our time that his administration could only have dreamt of accomplishing during the boom years.
The MSU (Make Shit Up) School of Innumerate Politics.
A ten year old running for class president could run a better campaign that the knuckleheads running Bakers. The first rule of politics is to get yourself known by the electorate and become a brand, instead of doing that he is launching attack ads that are boosting the name recognition of a rival he shouldn’t even acknowledge exists (Cahill) while attacking a Governor whose approval ratings are lower than NBC’s ratings.
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p>There is no need to let more people know Cahill exists, and there is definitely no need to remind people how much they dislike Deval-MOST VOTERS ALREADY DO. Baker could show up at the debates, let Deval and Cahill talk, keep his mouth shut, and be elected in a landslide. Yet instead of defining himself as the heir to Weld and crafting positive ads introducing us to his background as a businessman who turned a failing company around, his knowledge of the issues, and his ideas* to change the state he is instead starting out of the gate by running to the gutter. Not smart politics.
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p>*oh right I made the assumption he had ideas beyond ‘cutting taxes and keeping our bathrooms hetero-normative’