Blue Mass Group

Later this afternoon Massachusetts AFL-CIO President Steve Tolman will kickoff Labor’s 2013 US Senate Campaign. The downtown Boston event will bring local union activists and leaders together with Congressman Markey . . . and Congressman Stephen Lynch. Since last Tuesday’s election Congressman Lynch has been a class act making sure his supporters know he is supporting Ed Markey on June 25th.

In case you missed Dan Winslow’s very pointed Primary night remarks – Dan attempted to reachout to Lynch supporters and sway them to Gomez. Winslow said the Democratic Party leaders in Washington DC “sole” this election from Steve Lynch and encouraged Lynch supporters to jump on the Gomez bandwagon.

To Steve Lynch’s credit he stood with Ed Markey the morning of the Unity event and will stand with Markey again today to encourage the core of Lynch’s support – Organized Labor – to vote for Ed Markey on June 25th.

In about seven short weeks, Massachusetts voters will head to the polls to elect our next U.S. Senator. The race is close between Ed Markey and Gabriel Gomez and it is extremely important that we do not lose sight of that. We will NOT let a Republican like Gabriel Gomez go down to Washington and cancel out Elizabeth Warren’s votes, which is why we need to fully execute our grassroots strategy and start talking to voters across the state.

During the last election cycle, the Mass Dems started the Dem Doors Diaries. Democrats win when we organize precinct by precinct, knocking on our neighbor’s doors, which is why every weekend Democrats disperse around Massachusetts to make personal contacts with voters and discuss the issues that really matter. Dem Doors Diaries is a way for canvassers to share their thoughts and the experiences they had while knocking on doors and talking to voters.

By sharing your experiences, you push others to start canvassing and help new organizers feel more comfortable about going out on their own or with a friend! Don’t forget to tweet and use the hashtag #DemDoors! Spread the word and make the excitement about canvassing last beyond the weekend!

Chairman Walsh’s new sneakers are broken in and ready for canvassing and he will be joining Democrats across the state to knock on doors for Ed Markey! He’s more ready than ever so hopefully you’re ready to join him!

If you wrote about your experience and would like to share, please email me early in the week at shooper@massdems.org.

June 25th is much closer than you think so let’s get to work!

Thank you,

Samantha

Gabby Gomez wants this race to be about anything but policy.  He wants to smile, talk about his military cred and your many years in a failed Washington – despite the fact that you actually worked in Washington when it worked, before the Tea Party took it hostage.  He does not want to talk about issues or his ever changeable and evolving views.  Like Scott Brown before him, he wants a beauty contest, not a contest of ideas – and with a short calendar, he hopes he can skate by and pick off a low turnout victory.

The conventional wisdom in campaigns is often that policy doesn’t matter – message does.  Keeping policy meat off the table is the safe route forward.  But while such wisdom may work for a policy-lite newcomer like Gabby Gomez, it will not work for a long-term experienced Congressman like you.  Your strength is policy so you have to make the race about it.

The way to do this is by calling him out – every morning – holding a press conference in a different city or town in the Commonwealth – and asking “what does Gabby believe?” You start each morning off with a different policy theme.  You state where you stand, your record and you ask Gabby where he stands, for his solutions, relentlessly for the next few weeks through May.  The goal of such an exercise would be to expose Gabby Gomez for 1) not being clear about what he believes and 2) believing things that most people in Massachusetts find anathema.

So for example, how about tomorrow you go down to Quincy (which you need to focus on given you got destroyed there by Lynch) and you speak about education and the sequester cuts that are devastating education programs across the country – cuts that will result in 70,000 kids being kicked out of Head Start programs, and how programs on the South Shore are being effected.  You tell local and Boston press that you want these cuts overturned immediately and that you would pay for it by ending tax breaks that allow hedge fund managers to pay less in tax on their income than everyone else.  Then you ask – what does Gabby believe?  What is he going to do about these cuts?  Would he do anything?  How would he pay for it? Is he for his hedge fund private equity buddies keeping their tax breaks at the expense of these kids?

Because you know what you are talking about – you know how things get done – and you have ideas about fixing problems because you have fixed problems in Washington, you should expose Gabby Gomez as not only a lightweight on policy, but also a confused and conflicted light weight. Every time you raise a different issue – the assault weapons ban, choice, corporate tax breaks, the minimum wage, labor laws, funding for infrastructure, climate change – you force Gomez to respond or look empty.  Call him out and he will be put on the defensive and have to answer – but his answers will be vague and shaddy because Republicans in Massachusetts have to find some way of saying what they believe without scaring people – and that will further drive the “Gabby is Empty” meme.

The more you ask “What does Gabby believe” – the more the press and people will too.  The more the issues come out, the more press and people will remember why this election matters.  The more the base hears you talking about the issues, the more it will rally to your cause.  The more you are clear and detailed about where you stand and your strong record – the more people will understand there is only one real choice to represent Massachusetts in the Senate – you!

The best candidates focus on their strengths as a means of overcoming their flip-side weaknesses.  You can do that by making the race a contest of ideas and experience – not running from yours but embracing it and calling the other guy out for having none.

Good luck – we will be out there with you – backing you on the issues.  I mean “What does Gabby believe” anyway?

Can’t believe I’m linking to a Herald column, but Margery’s right:

We did, after all, manage to bury Lee Harvey Oswald. Had Timothy McVeigh not been cremated, we’d have buried him too. This fiasco makes our so-called leaders look inept and ridiculous.

So we have protestors saying that the body should be dragged around for dogs to eat, as if we were in Mogadishu or Falluja. There’s a public health prescription for you.

Sorry, Governor, but yeah it is your job to do something with a dead body that no one wants. And the washing of hands by you, Cambridge City Manager Healey, Ed Markey and everyone else is not punishment for the dead bomber. It’s punishing the people who have tried to do the right thing: Funeral director Peter Stefan and Uncle Ruslan.

None of this not-my-problem attitude is going to bring back the dead victims, or punish the perpetrators. It’s not going to help a single bombing victim.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev is dead. Bury the body. Honor the dead and help the living. Step up and stop acting like children.

Good ideas and thoughts here from WBUR.

There are SEVEN weekends between now and the June 25th election. This is a critical race for Massachusetts and the U. S. Senate and the polls are way too close for my comfort.

Now is the time to start blocking out time to help. Build volunteer time into your schedule now. Don’t think of it as something you do when you don’t have anything else to do.

A good plan is to block out one afternoon or evening every week, and a few hours on either Saturday or Sunday to help. Make this a priority. Is going to the gym taking up your time? Canvassing is an exercise in Democracy with the emphasis on EXERCISE. You need to spend some time with friends? Invite them to join you and then go out afterwards.

Some people may not be in a position to block off time to volunteer twice a week, but for seven weeks you can make it a priority to block off ONCE a week to help out. Something might come up causing you to cancel once or twice. Try to makeup the day. When someone calls me to cancel a volunteer gig, I ask when do you want to make up this time. More often than not, people will.

Think of how people felt when we lost the U. S. Senate seat back in 2010. We don’t want that to happen again.

Contact your local leader or call the campaign at 617-286-4147. I’ve had good luck reaching people at this number. If for any reason you have difficulty reaching someone, try again or call me at 508-404-8531.

So Clear Channel Media Holdings (owned by Bain Capital), the folks who signed a $400 million 8 year deal with Rush Limbaugh four years ago, are having an absolutely terrible time lately, posting a $200 million loss in their Q1 earnings report. While not entirely due to the actions of the Flush Rush organization, their success in eliminating over 2,600 sponsors from Limbaugh’s hate-filled show is certainly having an impact. There’s a great post at DKos today summarizing the mess Clear Channel finds itself in, you can read it here:

StopRush Contributes to Worst Drop in Advertising in Radio History

These foks have set up an easy web-based database to use for finding Rush’s sponsors in your area – just type in your zip code and a search radius on this page and you’ll find a list of advertisers and several easy contact methods:

StopRush Database Search

I found 12 advertisers within 25 miles of my zip code, so I clicked through to their Facebook pages and posted this on their walls:

Did you know your ads are playing on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show on WRKO? Did you know he made pressure cooker jokes on the air the day after the Boston Marathon bombings? Are you ok with your brand being associated with the hateful invective Rush spouts on the air every single day? Please contact WRKO and tell them to pull your ads from Limbaugh’s brand of hate radio.

I also sent it to them through the Facebook message system, to make sure they see it. Some of the advertisers had removed their Facebook pages, but the database provided a customer service email address, so I sent the message that way. All in all, it took me about ten minutes, and I felt a whole lot better after I did it!

Here’s some more links if you’d like to join the effort to defund Rush Limbaugh:

Join: The Flush Rush Facebook community
Visit: The StopRush sponsor database
Tweet: #stoprush Twitter campaign
Fact Check: Limbaugh Lie Debunking Site
Install: ThinkContext StopRush browser extension–notifies you as you browse which companies advertise on Rush

There is one factor that heavily favors Gabriel Gomez among some independent voters: he isn’t a Democrat.  While it’s impossible for most Massachusetts Democrats to understand, there are people who are just sick of seeing us win all the time.  They don’t vote for the Republican just because they believe that having another perspective, any other perspective, makes for better government (and they really do think that), they also vote for the Republican because they want the Democrat to lose.

Like watching Susan Lucci lose year after year on the Daytime Emmy Awards, they watch the Republicans lose elections.  They think it just doesn’t seem fair.  All those Democrats, marching in lock step.  It’s the Machine!, they think.  The God-damned machine has done it again!

But the Massachusetts Democrats are not some machine with a switch you can flick to elect people.  If it were, Martha Coakley would be a United States Senator.  Unlike  the Yankees, who really do suck and who really do just buy their victories, the Massachusetts Democrats win for two reasons: we’re right on the issues, and we work harder.

We start by listening, and understanding the concerns of most Massachusetts voters, like jobs, education, health care, transportation, climate change, and campaign finance reform.  Then we develop evidence-based policy to address those issues.  We send our people to knock on doors armed with the facts, and explain what we stand for and how our candidates will make a difference when elected.

Gabriel Gomez hasn’t done any of that. He’s a one percenter who equates speaking English as a second language with growing up underprivileged.  He thinks deregulation will create jobs, even though there is no evidence to support that, and Mitt Romney just lost big time trying to pitch that one.

But as long as the Democrats keep listening, using facts and evidence to build their case, and the Republicans don’t, we’ll keep winning even if we don’t spend the most money.  Why am I not worried about giving away all the tricks of the trade to the Republicans?  Because if they really listened to the voters of Massachusetts, and developed evidence-based policies to address their concerns, they’d turn into Democrats.

Mara Dolan is the host of “Twilight Talk” on WCAP and the Co-Chair of the Policy Committee of the Massachusetts Democratic State Committee.  Follow me on Twitter @MaraDolan

Public Policy Polling is first out of the gate to poll MA voters on the two US Senate nominees, and the answer is: could be close.  Ed Markey holds a 44-40 lead over Gabriel Gomez, with 16% undecided.  This was a good-sized poll – 1,539 respondents, so only a 2.5% margin of error.  Other details:

Gomez is starting out as a pretty popular candidate, with 41% of voters rating him favorably to 27% with an unfavorable opinion. Beyond having good numbers with Republicans he’s at 42/24 with independents, and actually seen narrowly positively even by Democrats at 33/32. Voters meanwhile are more divided on Markey, with 44% holding a positive view of him to 41% with a negative one. He’s at 31/50 with independents….

The good news for Markey in the poll beyond the obvious fact that he’s in the lead is that Barack Obama remains pretty popular in the state. He has a 53/41 approval rating. Obama was at only 44/43 when Brown won in 2010 and the President’s lack of popularity was a big contributor to the upset. He’s in a much better position this time around. The pool of undecided voters also sets up well for Markey- they voted for Obama by 18 points in November, 32% are liberals compared to only 25% who are conservatives, and 61% of them are women. Those are all demographics that ought to end up favorable to him in the end.

As I said a couple days after Gomez won, he will be the flavor of the week for a while, and that is IMHO almost certainly reflected in these poll numbers – particularly with Lynch voters who may need a while to shake off the primary campaign.  But make no mistake: at least at first glance, Gomez is an appealing guy and must be taken seriously.  Here’s hoping the media actually do their job, which in this case I’d say is to force the candidates to explain what they actually think about things, rather than letting them get away with the usual bromides.  If they do that, it seems unlikely to go well for Gomez.

Gabriel Gomez, the Republican opponent of Democrat Ed Markey in the U.S. Senate special election to fill John Kerry’s seat in Massachusetts, is working hard to be all things to all people, and nowhere is that more evident than his positions truthiness on climate and energy policy:

Climate change is real. However, while science says climate change is real, addressing the problem must be done rationally. Unfortunately, many solutions offered by politicians in Washington are not rational, and would put America at a competitive disadvantage. We need a serious energy agenda that promotes private sector innovation in both the United States and in other countries around the world.

Oh, I get it. He supports confronting climate change with a national policy to spur clean energy projects like Cape Wind, right? Not exactly:

Gomez, however, said [Cape Wind] is an issue that should be decided at the local level, and that the local authorities have been pretty much excluded from the process. Gomez made it clear his is opposed to Cape Wind.

So, local control all the way! Then he must oppose Keystone XL tar sands pipeline because of strong local opposition, right? Wrong again:

Looking closely at Gabriel Gomez’s web site—an endeavor which takes all of about three minutes and which provides exactly zero calories –I was intrigued by the reference to the only company he cites as a personal success story during his years with Advent International:

He also helped grow smaller, regional businesses into national, household names – like apparel company Lululemon. He experienced how onerous taxes and excessive regulation are barriers to job creation. He also learned what it takes to help businesses and employees prosper and thrive.

Sounds good to me. Gabe helped take a small American mom-and-pop shop national, ensuring that its employees get something approximating a living wage, and otherwise helping them to “prosper and thrive.”

Except that that isn’t the story. According to the Wikipedia entry, “Lululemon has its main factory in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. In 2004, production expanded outside Canada and currently takes place in factories in the United States, China, Israel, Taiwan, India, Thailand, Peru, and Indonesia.” In fact, while “until recently, Lululemon produced most of its clothing in a non-union shop in East Vancouver,” now, “in response to … its growing market, Lululemon hopes to produce half its merchandise in China by the end of the year.” Or, as the Lululemon web site has it, “Global economic forces … have shifted manufacturing to more cost-attractive locations and resulted in closures of some domestic factories.” Oh. The Advent web site explains it this way: “Advent International’s partnership with the company is a classic example of how we can support management in achieving their goals of international expansion and product growth. “Classic example,” indeed — Advent has nothing on Bain. So this is Mr Gomez’s poster-company for the new economy? (BTW, Advent dumped most of its stock in lululemon as soon as the contractual lock-up period expired and share prices plunged).

Why is this important? Because it goes beyond the non-union and non-US location and right to the heart of the matter of those pesky regulations — you know, like the ones regarding child labor–and exporting jobs to what Lululemon’s CEO quaintly refers to as “The Orient”: Lululemon founder Dennis “Chip” Wilson is also a champion of child labor. Yeah, you read that right — Chip not only defends his company’s use of child labor, but even suggests that 12-year olds in Canada should be working in factories.

Good Morning,

My name is Bill Walczak and I’m running to be the next Mayor of Boston. I’ve spent the last four decades making Boston neighborhoods stronger, and I know we can continue to build, strengthen, and improve our city.

My experience spans from civic involvement in Dorchester, to my work with Massachusetts business associations, to my work as a founder of the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network. Through my four decades of community leadership, I have helped bring jobs and economic growth to my neighborhood and my city. My wife, Linda is a retired Boston Public School teacher and both of my children attended Boston Public Schools. I am acutely aware of the positive impact a good education can have on our children and the danger of falling short of our goals.

In the 1970s, I founded the Codman Square Health Center – a health care facility that transformed a neighborhood and is now recognized internationally as a model for community health and economic development. My work began by engaging my neighbors and community members in a productive conversation and it was only with the help of the citizens that our project was successful. I reached out because I knew that the people in the community know best how to change it. I reached out because, while I had ideas of my own, I needed to hear from those who would be most affected. I want that same input to drive the conversation during my campaign. I have been a leader my entire career, and I’ve found that the best form of leadership is inclusive.

Today, I am announcing the launch the Boston New Ideas initiative, to ensure that our campaign harnesses the greatest resource our city has to offer: its people. Check out the video of this announcement.

I’m not the first to propose an ideas initiative and I hope I won’t be the last. The citizens of Boston deserve the opportunity to have their voices heard in this election, and the more we can welcome our community into the conversation, the better we can serve the public.

I want to hear about what you think is working in Boston, so we can build upon our strengths. I want to hear your ideas for making Boston even better. I want to know what makes you love Boston as much as I do. I look forward to beginning a conversation about our future as a city, and I am honored to have you involved in that discussion.

Reach out to me through email, Twitter, Facebook and my website. Tell me what new ideas you have for Boston. Help me as you always have in moving this city forward.

Over the coming days and weeks, we’ll post interesting ideas on our website, we’ll be actively engaging you on social media, and as we build this Blueprint for Boston, we’ll make sure your ideas from this are not only heard, but become a part of our future plans for the city. Thank you for participating in this effort.

Sincerely,

Bill Walczak

Update 5-2: Just saw the results of this poll (just the US Sen. part) posted on Boston Magazine: Only a 4 point spread between Markey and Gomez

www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2013/05/03/poll-gabriel-gomez-does-shockingly-well-against-ed-markey/

Just got called by PPP. They are polling the current Special US Senate race : Markey and Gomez; the Favs/Unfavs and multiple Match-ups for the ’14 Gov. Race as well as several issue questions.