… “among potential Democratic primary voters.” Not sure I know what “potential voters” means, but there are the numbers. (Survey of 400 MA folks, +/-4.8%.) Patrick was down by 40% in the last SHNS poll, so it’s actually positive news for his campaign.
And no one should be surprised. Anyone who imagined that Patrick was going to stay in Kucinich-land doesn’t know much. At the very least, he’s a real candidate. It will continue to get closer the more people tune into the race and hear of Patrick — 79.3% still have no opinion of him. But he will become (is already) Not-Reilly.
That being said, there are no flies on Reilly in this poll. He beats Healey; he beats Patrick; favorable/unfavorable is 42.5/24.8%, with 32% saying “huh”. St. Fleuriasco didn’t kill him. Conte didn’t kill him. Big Dig settlement won’t kill him. ($108 million still sounds like a lot of money, right or wrong.) Bottom line? Not Secretariat, but definitely not Elmer’s glue, either. It’s a race.
Elsewhere, CBS4’s Jon Keller points to the legislature’s low approval ratings; excuses Travaglini out of hand; and says it’s DiMasi’s fault for not acting on “bread and butter issues”.
Well, maybe. Maybe Travaglini deserves just a wee bit of blame for holding up meaningful health care reform, since he doesn’t seem to be too concerned about actually providing folks with health care as he was in making sure certain institutions got paid. (Kudos to the House for sticking to their guns … although who knows what the eventual compromise will contain. Based on the press accounts of a special-interest love-in, I’m not too hopeful. Hope you like sausage…)
DiMasi has taken heat for setting a slow pace of legislating, but I think if the legislature is hurting in the public’s esteem, you’ve just got to consider the Melanie’s Bill histrionics of Eugene O’Flaherty et al, the trip to Portugal, the obscenities, the whole ugly scene. Perhaps DiMasi should have been able to control it better; maybe considering the temperaments involved, that was impossible. And maybe in the absence of bread-and-butter accomplishments, this was allowed to suck up more oxygen that it should have.
And a direct comparison of DiMasi to Finneran based on this poll strikes me as glib, especially in the context of exceedingly complicated, protracted, and bitter health care negotiations. Health care is rocket science; it’s not surprising that other things — important things — got held up in the meantime.
