Fresh and well rested after the last Environmental League debate, which he didn't attend, Charlie Baker is back in action, calling for a series of five televised gubernatorial debates between now and Election Day.
I highly suggest that the first three debates be limited to just two candidates: Charlie Baker and his running mate Richard Tisei. Here are three ideas for debate topics that would highlight the stark differences between these candidates.
#1 – Pensions: In an interview with Howie Carr, Baker endorsed Rep. Karyn Polito's proposal to ban politicians from collecting pensions, calling it a “conflict of interest.” Later Tisei fired back, telling State House News Service, “I’ve paid in for 26 years. I’m not going to give up my pension.” I sense a smackdown!
#2 – Transgender-Rights: Tisei is a lead sponsor of a bill that would add transgender individuals to the state’s anti-discrimination laws, but Baker distributed fliers at the state Republican Party convention referring to the legislation as the “bathroom bill,” and promised to veto the bill if elected governor. Put down that remote!
#3 – SouthCoast Rail: Tisei recently boasted to the Fall River Herald-News that he’d come up with a plan to fund the “much-anticipated” SouthCoast commuter rail project with casino revenue. And on the very same day, Baker told WSAR-AM that SouthCoast rail was a pipe dream because no one has come up with a viable plan to fund it. Should be TiVo-worthy.
Location: Political observers expect the first of these epic debates to be held in Baker’s hometown of Swampscott, with the second 11.6 miles away, in Tisei’s home turf of Wakefield. The third will be held in a neutral location, somewhere in between.
(Full disclosure: I work for Lt. Gov. Tim Murray’s committee.)
Baker actually wants to debate? I guess his Beacon Hill stand-in Rep Brad Jones must be on vacation.
I’d love to see that debate.
If only someone in the legislature would file a bill…
Didn’t even bother sending a proxy.
http://www.capecodonline.com/a…
Yes, you are correct, Charlie Baker promised to veto the current Transgender Rights Bill citing problems with some parts of the bill itself.
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p>This should not be of much surprise to Democrat pundits or legislators as this bill has been bantered around for close to THREE YEARS and in the Democrat majority with by all accounts more than enough support, it has not made it out for a vote! My sources tell me that at least a dozen Democrat leges, many supporters, will not vote for it if it does make it to a vote before fall elections (vote would have to be before July 31st) for fear of loss of constituent support.
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p>MassEquality knows who these leges are and it seems they have the same or similar concerns as Charlie.
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p>So instead of blaming Charlie Baker, it is time to put just a little blame on the Dems as well who are using transgender people as a political tool, not in so much differently than Kris Mineau is. And blame a lobby that for some reason cannot seem to get actual transgender activists into leges offices for educational and informational purposes.
……that some dems in the legislature are playing games and just paying lip service about how much they support the transgender equal rights bill. However, that is nothing compared to the dangerous demagoguery that Charlie Baker engaged in when he started throwing out fear-mongering phraseology like “bathroom bill” to describe the measure. The fact that Charlie may actually be individually tolerant makes his pre-meditated strategic decision to prove his conservative bona fides by piling on & stoking fear of one of the most marginalized and at risk populations in the state all the more disturbing.
you are wrong there. Unless you see this bill for what it is and that was a political tool/tardoll. I of course do not understand why, I can only report fact. There were major rumblings with the dozen or so Dem leges long before the GOP State Convention.
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p>I know personally that Charlie Baker was not really involved with this issue until the convention. I for one ID’ed this issue back late last summer and as an LGBT activist I called him to discuss trans issues. At the same time, knowing that he would be the GOP’s choice (I had a very clear idea), I called Gunner Scott at the Mass Transgender Political Coalition to ask Gunner to reachout to Baker. At the same time I asked Gunner how my own Senator Tarr and Rep Hill were on this issue. Gunner had no idea. Gunner also did not reach out to Charlie to discusss the bill and educate him on trans people and this bill. I saw Baker as a very open candidate to educate. The MTPC did nothing. I just a week or two ago received an email from Gunner telling me that I am “bashing him…” I asked Gunner why in the many months since I asked him to talk to Baker why he hadn’t. Gunner’s response? “I asked a prominent Log Cabin to arrange a meeting and he never arranged one…” I am hearing that alot in my investigation of the MTPC, that there are alot of “calls not returned..” UMMMM… a lobbyist is supposed to get a constituent and walk over the threshold of leges.
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p>I agree Baker owes transgender people and all MA citizens an apology for this. However, I also see Baker as one whom we can educate. Sort of like the multitudes of leges and polls and voters that we had to educate on same sex marriage. But I am sure this will be much easier.
Why on earth was it Gunner’s duty to each out to “educate him on trans people and this bill?” You marched with him in the Pride Parade. Why didn’t you educate him? If you couldn’t get through to him, why didn’t Mr. Tisei?
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p>Most importantly, why did he need “educating” at all if he’s as great a friend to the community as you claim? Why wasn’t he involved with this issue before the convention? For that matter, why didn’t Mr. Tisei come out before he was asked to join the ticket?
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p>Do you really believe these two are better for the gay community than Deval Patrick?
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p>If so, as you so eloquently put it, “you are insane.”
“Their Fault” meaning the lobby–those being PAID to reachout to leges and pols, partially yes! Transgender people, no, I don’t blame transgender people for anything. I can leave that up to Congressman Frank to blame transgender people in general, which he has in a most disgusting way.
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p>What did Barney Frank say? Something close to (We are now supposed to defend a woman with a penis in the shower at the health club next to another woman?) and (transgender people have not done their job)….
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p>Then the question since you are posing this to me about why Charlie Baker (a private sector person as a gubernatorial candidate) has not been “involved” with a bill which has sat in the Democratically run legislature for close to 3 years…well I wonder why Deval Patrick, the pro-LGBT Governor standing, with all of his pro-lgbt super majority Dems on this bill, has not been able to influence it enough to even get it up for a vote….??? IN THREE YEARS??
Barney has made several statements along the following lines:
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p>It’s a far cry from that to vowing to veto the bill, as Mr. Baker has done. You still haven’t explained why he was so ignorant on the issue that he distributed flyers calling it the “bathroom bill.”
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p>I’ll take Barney and Deval any day.
And why these dozen give or take a few Dem leges have not identified themselves.
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p>Today is July 3rd…countdown to July 31st…Got Vote Yet?
from The Transadvocate, ENDA and Barney Frank’s Trans Penis Panic
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p>Miranda Stevens-Miller said of Barney Frank: “A little while later, I found Barney without a group of people around him, so I once again engaged him in conversation. “So,” I said, “does your support of transgender inclusion in the VAWA mean that you might be changing your mind about inclusion of gender-variant people in ENDA?” An innocent enough question, but you would have thought that I was threatening him with a loaded weapon. He got red in the face and started shouting, “Never.” His problem was that until we could answer the question of “people with penises in [women’s] showers,” there is no way that he would support it. The conversation got rather heated to say the least. And with Barney speaking very loudly and repeatedly about “penises in showers,” we attracted a lot of attention in the restaurant.”
“What the bill hasn’t addressed was bathrooms…until now. Frank’s admitted that they’re changing the language to include restrictions on bathroom usage. The narrative that ENDA can’t pass without bathroom restrictions is something that Frank has beat the drum for again, and again, and again.”
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p>And here we have it. The Dems give people like Barney Frank a pass on a “Bathroom Bill” (it seems ENDA has become one) but Charlie Baker cannot be given any outreach or education. The mere fact that I would even suggest this is somehow foreign to you and would warrant an attack on me, the only one who seems to be doing this, though others, MEQ and MTPC etc have this as their mission statement.
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p>But of course this comes as no surprise. I was supposed to love John Kerry though his “communion” got in the way of marriage equality. I was supposed to love Hillary Clinton though she also was against marriage equality like her husband. Oh, and I almost forgot, umm Barack Obama is ALSO against marriage equality isn’t he?
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p>You have NO credibility whatsoever unless you are able to look at your own and hold them accountable. Starting with the Dems at the State House who are dicking everyone along and using trans people as a political tool right up to the White House with a President who cannot seem to understand that Americans must ALL be treated equally.
I’ll take prominent MA Republican gay rights opponents for $100, please:
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p>Scott Brown, Brock Cordeiro, Rob Eno, Chip Faulkner, Kris Mineau, Brian Camenker, Amy Contrada, Rob Willington, …
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p>We’re not just talking about supporting civil unions over SSM, we’re talking full out working to deprive gay people of rights.
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p>Are we supposed to forget that the current MA GOP platform explicitly omits discrimination against gay people? Or that the GOP national platform opposes even civil unions?
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p>Of course, all this misses the point that Deval is running against Baker and Tisei, not Barney Frank. Even with that Barney has been and out and loud supporter of the community for years. Bashing him in the name of the MA GOP is even more disgusting than your attacks on Deval.
Hillary bashed us when she could not answer the question “are homosexuals immoral?”
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p>Bill Clinton bashed us when he signed DOMA and DADT
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p>Rarack Obama bashed us when he says essentially that his marriage is on a higher moral ground than ours
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p>Problem with either party is that they cannot look in mirrors and you “huh” are one of those.
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p>Care to tell us who you are? Come on, out yourself, for the party and LGBT people…
I support Baker/Tisei.
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p>You don’t need to remind me of anything about the State Party. I have attended many of there training sessions and activist workshops. The anti-gays are a very small minority that will not let the social issues go. They are relentless. There are no gays within the party or activists doing the same thing that anti-gays are doing. You are extremely foolish to even think that what I am doing is not good political maneuvering.
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p>Also, back in 2005, KTN was the one to expose the fact that Darrell Crate, the head of the state GOP and Romney’s butt boy, pulled an illegal (according to state committee bylaws) move to have the state committee working with VOM in signature collection. I had all the internal emails from the state committee on this, i broke the story with BayWindows and after it got know play, I had a sit-down with the Globe and they broke it in mainstream media.
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p>How did I get these emails? I was contacted by State Committee people who were bullshit that this was done without a vote of them. Many within the State Committee are on our side. I am NOT going to drop these good republicans because of anonymous thugs like you
Here’s your own press release:
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p>If you’re a Republican that doesn’t support Republicans, what does that make you?
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p>I’m guessing this another one of your personal definitions like “thug” for “Someone who dares question you” and “everybody” meaning “you and your cronies.”
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p>FWIW, as I’ve said many times on here, I’m not a Democrat. I’m just someone who finds your mixture of self-agrandizement and nasty personal attacks repugnant.
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p>Your association with the Baker/Tisei campaign speaks worse of them than any of the contradictions in the main diary.
and prior to 2005 of course. I was responsible for the major vote switch on the compromise amendment and first public declaration of a lege to vote against what was then called “the people’s amendment” which turned into VOM/MFI’s ballot initiative.
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p>MEQ and the lobbyist told me to not bother with my Republican State Rep, Brad Hill, but I didn’t listen to them and our work was the reason why Hill made the switch.
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p>So, the “association” has proven me well, even in the early days.
Are you seriously taking personal credit for for the vote switch?
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p>I was hoping the petty attacks on Mass Equality and other same-sex marriage advocates (here and on KTN) were an anomaly.
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p>Sad, really.
You are free to contact Tim Purinton, who ran against Hill, and ask him his opinion of this. MEQ was absolutely no where to be found in that campaign until the very end when they knew we were getting close. The only money that the LGBT leadership gave Purinton was a $ 500 check from FTM.
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p>Everything about Hill from the protests to the calculated and organized letters to editors that I organized to the anti-Hill contingent in parades right up to the Boston Globe story that “created” the fact that Chad Gifford “asked the question that turned Brad around” came from me (I even planted that story and included Gifford for name recognition).
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p>BayWindows discovered and reported that the three first vote switches MEQ “claimed” to have been involved they in fact werent. And the leges all claimed that Solomon never had spoken to them. So I was in good company with other activists it seemed that worked apart from the “mother ship.” What pissed Solomon off (speaking of megalomania) was that when I called him to tell him Hill had changed his vote, he was shocked, and immediately had hoped that I didn’t call the press. Oh yes I had called the press because as anyone who knew Hill, of course Solomon didn’t, they knew that Hill has history of saying one thing publicly yet will change his mind. We needed to get Hill to commit to the press asap. Solomon of course wanted to claim Hill for himself.
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p>And if you want to know the final straw that pushed Hill over the edge, I will tell you. Aside from a local campaign of very good people working for Tim Purinton and the campaign of awareness and cohesion that I ran throughout that period. We had Hill covered at every event with protests and the protesters were only in group 20% LGBT the rest were local, well-heeled very well known people that came out in support of us. But Brad did something toward the end, he sent a letter to the editors and his constituents that said that he would not be voting for same-sex marriage because he read the court decision and the court decision said that marriage for gays is an “equal rights issue” not a “civil rights issue.” He wanted his constituents to understand that if the courts had said “civil rights” then his vote may be different. I kid you not. He somehow thought civil rights was different and better than equal rights and that was his justification for being against us. I hit all the newspapers with a letter telling everyone that Hill acknowledged same-sex marriage as an “equal rights” issue and I posed the question to Hill “so what is it Brad, do you want us to have equal rights or not?”
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p>We then learned Brad was doing town meetings all over his district and we made the announcement that my group of 35 locals would be at everyone of his meetings. Brad did the right thing at the Manchester meeting and spoke about how he would change his vote because he “believes in Equal Rights for all his constituents.” Brad Hill trapped himself, but his message to the public could not have been any better and for me, it doesnt matter “how” he got there but the fact that he embraced his own words is important. Brad and I to this day have a respect/hate relationship. I actually do respect him. And he really has no fear, or should have no fear, of any Dem challenging him. He has earned his district’s respect also.
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p>You know so little, “huh,” so very little. Probably the reason why you won’t identify yourself because then we ALL will know how little you are…
most importantly, why hasn’t the Transgender Rights Bill come up for a vote in #3 YEARS with now more than enough support? Who are the Democratic Leges that would walk on it though they are on paper as supporters/co-sponsors?
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p>and of course the intrinsically insignificant question, who are you?
And an odd one at that. Why HAS Mr. Tisei failed so badly?
this is not coming up for a vote and we will demand to know who these leges are who are sponsors yet have told leadership to not let it come to vote
Let’s review the list I made off the top of my head:
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p>Scott Brown, Brock Cordeiro, Rob Eno, Chip Faulkner, Kris Mineau, Brian Camenker, Amy Contrada, Rob Willington, …
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p>Scott Brown: the most prominent and popular Republican politician in the state.
Brock Cordeiro: member of the MA GOP Executive Committee, listed as co-author of the 2010 platform
Rob Eno: owner of Red Mass Group, listed as co-author of the 2010 platofmr
Chip Faulkner, Officer of Citizens for Limited Taxation
Kris Mineau, head of the Mass Family Institute and proud and welcome Republican
Brian Camenker and Amy Contrada, heads of MassResistance, Republican activists, frequent speakers at GOP events
Rob Willington: former Executive Director of the MA Republican Party, driving force behind the MFI anti-gay marriage petition
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p>That’s not even including the WRKO and WTTK crowd. Hardly a fringe group, no matter how you spin it. And I’m sure you will.
so being with the same man for 16 years and this having been known by everyone isn’t out? Being part of an LGBT legislative leadership organization over a decade ago isn’t out?
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Mr. Tisei came out publicly on 19 November, 4 days before he was selected as running mate.
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p>If “everybody knew” it sure didn’t include the public.
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p>Facts are inconvenient things.
I am assuming the Boston Globe didn’t know at the time of our marriage equality fight here that Senator Ed Augustus is also gay and was having a relationship with the head of MassEquality at the time either, or we would have read about it in the paper…but everyone seemed to know that too.
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p>Oh wait…maybe not the public. Facts are “inconvenient things”– I agree.
Perhaps by “Everybody” you mean “everyone you know”?
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p>In that case, perhaps, I’m inconveniently not part of everybody.
The fact that Augustus’ is gay was told to me by a reporter at the Worcester Telegram.
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p>The relationship with the said MEQ person, in my opinion was a bit reckless during that part of our history. But alas, “love” is reckless.
We were at a do with Thurston and his friends from the yacht club. We don’t know about such little people as mere State Senators.
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p>Nobody whose anybody can remember such things anyway.
Here’s their article on Tisei outing himself:
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p>And here’s Tom Lang’s bizarre attack on the article’s author:
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they pretty much know every lege who is gay or lesbian. BayWindows was working on a piece in 2006 “outing” all leges in a hit list fashion to force the others to play any game that LGBT leadership would ask them too. When I say game I mean, strategic voting (like the yes, yes, no on the compromise etc.) I talked them out of that one.
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p>You all would be pretty naive to think for one second, yacht club or not, that LGBT leadership and press had no idea of who was gay or not in the State House. And naive to believe that it wouldnt have a way to cover up a State Senator who was having a relatively long playing “association” with a head of MAssEquality…
as you so eloquently point out. Its also time to hand out a lot of love to the legislators who have signed on, and to the individual activists including family members who have been up to the State House.
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p>Pay no mind, and I mean pay NO mind and waste no time fretting about the dark speculations and cynical advice that “sources” whisper in one ear, other than opening the other ear so the information can fly out unrecorded through that little passageway your mother always accused you of having when you didn’t pay attention to her.
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p>Every advance in civil rights for minority populations, including this one, at first presents itself as an issue whose time has not yet come, and the advocate’s job is to build a groundswell of public and political support to back up a demand for change in pubic policies and public behavior.
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p>I think you’re getting close. Keep spreading the love.
when used as an adjective.