Just perused the OCPF reports and it’s a good start for Andrea Silbert – her message is resonating and her viability is clear in her fundraising total:
$410k raised
$299k on hand
Councilor-attorney-Mayor Tim Murray has had a great month of fundraising, around $140k, and finished with $222k on hand. It will be disappointing if a popular local official like Tim didn’t continue to have six figure fundraising months, especially with his insider rolodex and trial attorney connection.
There are two clear tiers in the LG’s race heading into 2006: Andrea Silbert and Tim Murray on top and then Goldberg/Kelley down below. If Goldberg writes a big check to feel competitive, it will show the lack of support she has. She hasn’t been raising it on her own lately, preferring to be rich in Palm Beach one could guess, so she must be looking at her checkbook as her biggest supporter and fundraiser (sounds Healey-ish to me). She has also demonstrated a lack of campaign discipline – spending just a ridiculous amount of money for very little. Sam Kelley is just done with $7,000 in the bank. He’ll have to raise more just to pay himself back.
I doubt the field will stay set with just 4 – more state reps and sens and god knows who else will look at this race – but Andrea Silbert has set the table and provided a clear message of opportunity, service, innovation and growth. She is tremendously experienced in public service for women and families and She’s the only proven outsider candidate and a committed fund-raiser. Her statewide policy and management qualifications are there, her commitment to Democratic causes are clear. Now, she has to continue to grow the delegate base and show she has the statewide campaign skill – while keeping the money flowing and spending disciplined. That’s where the electeds have a bit of an edge. A guy like Murray has the retain campaign down, the rolodex to keep the money coming, it’s the lack of experience he has to make up for.
This post writes off Deb Goldberg far too quickly. She has raised over 300k and over 55k in December — hardly shabby numbers (I don’t know the cash on hand figure). The money she has spent has not been spent on “very little” — rather, it has been spent on building up a strong field organization. Deb’s “lack of support”? Obviously Barney Frank, Steve Grossman, Marie St. Fleur, Barry Finegold, and many others do not count as significant support.
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Being a selectman in a large community is a challenging job; the board of selectmen has to run a large town and during the fiscal downturn, it was local officials who were dealing with the short end of the state’s financial stick. In Brookline, Deb was able to bring different people together to help guide Brookline through difficult fiscal times.
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Being a selectman involves bringing people together and forging consensus solutions, which is exactly the role that a Lieutenant Governor could help fill. It’s a long way until September, but Deb Goldberg is not going away and I think she deserves a serious look from voters and commentators, not jokes about Palm Beach.
If nothing else, endorsements from the likes of Barney Frank (who everyone knows) and Steve Grossman (who has access to gobs of money) are likely to be helpful in a below-the-radar race like this. Too early to assume that she’s not a contender.
While I agree that it’s too early to write off Goldberg, it will still all come down to $$ and talent over endorsements. In ’02, the Treasurer’s race began with Segel talking about his 6 Congressional endorsements. And sure, he raised some $$ initially off of that, but that’s where his campaign ended – even with the Globe, Herald and other mayoral endorsements he got. Tim Cahill raised the same as Segel, and won because of his experience and, perhaps more importantly, his TV ad.
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In this LG race, while Goldberg will get some endorsements, Murray and Silbert will too. As the most “insider” of all the candidates, if Murray doesn’t get the most political ones, he’ll lack credibility. I’m not sure he’ll get newspapers over Silbert, but that’s another story. Silbert will get a bunch of political and unnions too, but will probably not get all those unions and mayors who tout their “machines” as what they can bring to the table for candidates (whether those machines exist is another story – except for Menino’s).
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When it’s all said and done, here’s my prediction: Silbert, Goldberg and Murray get on the ballot coming out of the convention; Murray “wins” the convention (but who cares? he may have to spend some $$ to do so, though); Silbert wins the primary. Whoever wins will do so by a larger margin than I think anyone expects.
the real wildcard in this race is if/when the Gov candidates state their preferred Lt. Gov. candidates and try to run as a ticket. If that happens, all bets are off.
Deval certainly is not in the position to do something like that…he’s got enough on his plate.
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It certainly makes sense for Reilly and of course rumors abound. But Reilly just seems to be stepping on his own feet…pissing the activist off on everything…pandering to the Republicans by advocating the income tax rollbacks…and of course the “little incident” that has emerged in the last 24 hours.
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Why would he want to alienate the 3 LG camps (sorry Sam) and pick a Chris Gabelli (sp)? Maybe he’d pick Deb or Andrea and that would miniumize the fall-out, but the way Reilly’s been playing the game lately…he would pick Tim Murray and really piss people off by creating such an “old boy” ticket.
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Speaking of rumors about people jumping into this race…when is Montigney (sp)going to start spending that $800,000 war chest?