And now for today’s installment of “why Kerry Healey just might win by running against the legislature”: in an effort to prevent Governor Romney’s loyalists from taking control of the Turnpike Authority, the legislature passed a special bill extending the term of Jordan Levy, whose term would otherwise have expired on Friday. Last week Romney named two appointees, Beth Lindstrom and Thomas Trimarco, to replace Levy and Daniel Grabauskas, who resigned to take over the MBTA. Romney claims that the bill is unconstitutional because it interfered with his appointment authority.
Let’s just take a brief tour through all the things that stink about this story:
- Legislators shouldn’t meddle in executive branch matters. There are good reasons why our state constitution contains one of the strongest separation of powers provisions anywhere (see Part I, Article XXX). And like it or not, once the legislature sets up the structure of an agency or an authority, it’s up to the executive branch to run it, and that means that as time goes along, the current governor is almost always going to gain control of it. Regardless of the legalities of the current bill (it’s possible that it’s technically constitutional), it is a very bad practice and a very bad precedent.
- Egos run amok are bad for governance. Listen to the outrageous words of Jordan Levy, whose term just expired:
“The governor is trying to destroy the very fabric of this authority, and that concerns me,” Levy said yesterday.
Oh for the love of God, Jordan, give it a rest. What the governor is trying to do is what every other governor in the history of this country has done: replace people in important jobs who don’t like him with people who are friendly to him. The notion that replacing Jordan Levy constitutes “destroying the very fabric of this authority” is really quite hilarious. There’s only one person on the planet who could take that notion seriously – and that would be Jordan Levy.
- The legislature is apparently working overtime to install Kerry Healey in the Governor’s office. If the Ruane pension fiasco weren’t enough ammunition for Kerry Healey, now they’ve handed her this to go on. Gosh, it’s almost as if they’d prefer to have Kerry Healey win the election instead of a Democrat! But that couldn’t be true … could it?
I have no idea whether this bill (which will undoubtedly become law when the legislature overrides Romney’s guaranteed veto) is constitutional – strikes me that there are good arguments either way, and the SJC will sort them out. But it sure is a bad idea.
Someone else mentioned that Deval is the only major Dem candidate (and even including Healy and Mihos) the only candidate at all who has NO previous political ties to either of the Beacon Hill political establishments, much like Mitt Romney was able to use his “anti-establishment” agenda to scare voters away from the “Beacon Hill candidate” Shannon O Brien. Deval can use this exact same strategy to win the nomination and attack Kerry Healy. Healy is surprisingly running without any new ideas, she has yet to sufficiently distance herself from the Romney administration and is running on a Weld esque platform of “lower taxes, less spending, and checking Beacon Hill corruption” with the only new idea being the Hillman selection as an anti crime ticket.
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Obviously Deval has no connection to the adamittedly corrupt and power hungry legislature, unlike Tom who was endorsed by the Speaker and Senate Prez, or Gabs who owes his ballot placement to backroom dealings with Sal di Masi. Tom is the best candidate for the legislature since the bulk of his ideas are basically ideas the legislature would implement if it did not have a Governor veteoing its proposals. Chris is also beholden to these interests as well but to a lesser extent. Deval of course has no loyalties or political spoils to pay or deliver giving him the greatest chance to actually check his own party when he is in the Corner Office.
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So for Deval the attack line should go like this, I am the anti establishment candidate whether it be the four years of Romney, the 16 years of Republican rule in the Corner Office, or the half century of old school Democratic machine domination of the legislature. I am the cleanest and owe no favors to anyone other than the people of Massachusetts who elect me.
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This allows him to seperate himself from both of his opponent and from the Kerry Healy dogma, and he has the cleanest image to take her out. Also Sal and Trav wont bother campaigning for Deval in the general which will also make him look good, itll also benefit his campaign if they attack him in the primary.
that this sort of thing is an opportunity for Deval. But he has to be willing to take advantage of it. It’s not enough just to say “I’m an outsider, I’ve got no ties to the establishment.” He’s got to get down and dirty by saying “this is a bad bill, and if I were Governor I would veto it because …” Very different. He’s got to be willing to make Sal & Trav and their gang mad at him. If he’s willing to do that, he will win over a bunch of independent voters, and he will also weaken Kerry Healey’s strongest argument for why she should be Governor.
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Let’s see if he’s up for it.
That’s a big gamble. He can walk a finer line than that. One of the main things Deval has been doing over the past year has been actively courting active Democrats, many who like Sal DiMasi. And in the past few months, he’s finally been getting the endorsements of some of the “insiders” — that he’s up to 5 congressional endorsements ought to say something significant. He does want to run as an outsider, but he also doesn’t want to piss off his new friends.
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More importantly, should Deval Patrick become governor down the line, it’s important that he be able to stand up to them when it really counts. And part of that is having a solid relationship with the legislature. If he does run a harsh anti-Legislature campaign, it will be reflected in how the legislature treats him when he wants to govern.
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This isn’t to say that Deval shouldn’t take on the legislature, or that it’s “politically” wrong to do so. Instead, he should make sure that he’s challenging their particular positions, but isn’t making ad hominem attacks on the legislature as Romney did in 2k2.
I don’t mean he should run on the platform that everything the legislature does is bad. But I do think he ought to call them on crap like this, loudly and proudly, and tell them he’d veto these kinds of bills. He shouldn’t be afraid to really piss them off now and then.
Sister Souljah moment with the MA Legislature. Yes but when? Best to do it after the priamry when it does not hurt his chances in the Primary, but if he does int in the 6 weeks between the Primary and General, it will look to opportunistic. I think he needs it earlier the primary.
in this sense. Both Tim Murray and Deb Goldberg are current elected officials. I’d say the LG candidates are also “major Dem. candidates.”
is not a current elected official, I think. I think she has stepped down from the Brookline board of selectmen. I could be wrong about that, though.
She is no longer a slectmen, but she has run a “insiders” campaign. Always name dropping important officials (“Barney suggested I run” and she certainly went after and had modest success getting endorsements (and tried even harder). You’d have a hard argument saying she was an “outsider”.
At best, this sort of thing helps Patrick in the primary, but will be an absolute albatross in November.
EVERYTHING helps Duval! It’s the new default answer on BMG!
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Plymouth Nuclear Power Plant attacked by terrorists, thousands killed on Cape Cod?
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This Helps Duval! (He was for the wind turbines)
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Boston Public School children erupt in bizarre no-holds-barred Columbine massacre?
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This Helps Duval! (He is for charter schools and excellence in eduucation).
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Sun Comes Up in East?
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This Helps Duval! (He agrees with solar energy credits)
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Easier for you now?
You’re better than that comment. At least I thought you were.
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And, by the way, it’s “Deval,” not “Duval.” Misspellings make you look silly.
Bloated department, many (six figure) highly paid execs, one of three highway departments in the states (and we need three, why?) most expensive road per mile of any road in the nation, patronage, leaks in the big dig…and on and on.
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It’s because Amorello is one of them (he was a Senator for eight years) – even though he’s a Republican. It’s tribal. Beacon Hill at its very worst.
And a brilliantly executed Big Dig, of course. Don’t forget that! < /sarcasm >
Might not his comrade at arms, Christy Mihos, ALSO take it as the rending of the fabric of life if Jordan is not reappointed?
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Lemme know if Christ turns up commiserating on Jordan’s WTAG talk show.
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Oh, and thank you all, Dems, for another little gift!
If you think that the independent voters have a number of good reasons not to trust the democratic controlled legislature every four years, here is another nail in the coffin.
By circumventing the legislation that established the Mass Turnpike Authority with a legislative gimmick ,the idiots on Beacon Hill have certainly handed another good reason for independents not to trust them and therefore vote for a Republican governor to counterbalance their indiscretions..
This move is perfectly legal. I just don’t understand what the fuss is about.
it’s not at all clear that it’s “perfectly” legal. It may turn out that it is, but there are decent arguments both ways. (For example, what the leg. is trying to do is to retroactively extend Levy’s already-expired term, which is functionally no different from appointing Levy to a new term and un-appointing Lindstrom in the process, which is a separation of powers violation because the leg. isn’t allowed to appoint.) Second, whether it’s legal is not the point. The point is that it’s the legislature meddling where it shouldn’t to protect Matt Amorello, the guy who has single-handedly redefined “hack” in recent years. It’s exactly why people don’t like or trust the legislature, and it can only help Healey.
We were’nt disagreeing at all; I was just drawing a link between the two.
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I would put it far more bluntly: the legislature is viewed, with much justification, as sleazy, corrupt, underhanded, and prone to government by artifrice and legerdemain.
I know you guys are supposed to be happy because he’s so liberal and all – but really, all the really weird hack-y things keep happening on his watch.
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I would LOVE to know if Tommy Taxes told Ruane when the special legislation was passed back in the late 90’s to let him participate and keep his disability pension (hey, you gotta be crazy to be a legislator, and ani’t THAT a disability?)- ‘Mike, you can have the pension, but you gotta pay in’, and Ruane refused….
but the liberalism of Dimasi has been buffered by Trav and the moderate senate.
sound bites for Healey in the General Election. If any of the democratic candidates want to offset the fallout in two months they should get on the record immediately to distinguish themselves from the legislative hacks.. I know Reilly is on record opposed to the Ruane pension, but have either Gab or Patrick stepped up to the plate in opposition?