Tonight’s late news (WCVB) reported that MA will be losing a Congressional seat for the ensuing decade, having one of the slowest growth rates in the nation (3.1% vs. 9.7% nationally). The new population figure is just over 6.5 million while the national population has been pegged at ~308.75 million. The report mentioned Barney Frank as possibly retiring and Capuano and Lynch most likely to challenge Senator Brown. Rep. Michael Moran says there will be public hearings and a website set up to follow the redistricting process.
Ed. note: here’s a helpful Boston Globe graphic giving you the national picture. -David
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After what we saw in the special election primary, I think it’s safe to say that an anti-choice person isn’t going to be the Dem nominee to challenge Brown. I can’t imagine Capuano and Lynch going against each other, but I’m confident Capuano would crush if it happened. Lynch is the guy that freaking got primaried this year!
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p>I’m surprised it’s not Olver retiring.
We can’t afford another embarrassment, and “Scott Brown is the candidate that respects a woman’s right to choose” would be just that.
… the local pols out here in Berkshire and Franklin County begging him to stay because of redistricting.
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p>If Olver had retired, which is what he had signaled he would do, the obvious choice would have been to lump the far west of the state in with the middle in Neal’s district. As it stands now, the west will likely be divided to keep both Neal and Olver in place.
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p>However, Olver does have a decent primary challenge ahead if Pittsfield remains in his district. Former state senator Andrea Nuciforo announced early, thinking Olver was retiring, and is not backing down now that he is not. Nuciforo is a very credible candidate who will sew up the district’s largest city, Pittsfield, easily. Olver’s machine relies strongly on Franklin County and the cities of Amherst, Northhampton and Greenfield. Berkshire County is ripe for the challenger.
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p>Depending on how the region gets divided, watch this primary. Olver is stiff as a board compared to the much more dynamic Nuciforo and while Olver wins pretty easily against Republicans these days (his last close call was Jane Swift in the 96), he has not been credibly primaried in a long time.
He carried his district fairly overwhelmingly, and the exit polls showed the reason most people voted for Brown was due to his opposition to health care reform-a position most MA voters apparently shared. While Lynch would be a terrible candidate IMO for a host of reasons, it is supremely arrogant to assume that a popular Congressman can’t win. I said it last time, if he holds the center-right Democrats and independents and if the progressive field is divided, he could pull a Silber or Ed King, this is not unheard of in recent MA politics. And a candidate that can do that should not be underestimated.
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p>What would be interesting is if anti-war (currently), anti-torture, pro-labor, reliable Democrat on 70% of the issues loses your vote to a right wing conservative who happens to be pro-abortion. Then we will see how loyal the pro-choice constituency truly is. It would also prevent a challenge for Brown who convincingly won the Mass right to Life endorsement and ran in the primary as pro-life and the general as pro-choice, how this would affect his positioning. Not saying I desire this at all, or saying it’ll happen, but stranger things have happened in MA politics.
Lynch won the general handily but he got 65% of the vote in the primary with Mac getting 35%. Lynch’s district is very working class and socially conservative, so I think a very liberal, minority, and vastly outfunded candidate did remarkably well in that district during a not highly publicized primary campaign. When Lynch has to compete for votes in Cambridge/Somerville/Boston, he will get his ass handed to, especially if he’s running against Capuano (who can do much better with working class voters outside his district that Lynch can do with progressives and women). And his anti-choice views will hurt him a lot among suburban women.
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p>I didn’t say Lynch can’t win (stranger things have happened), but I think he definitely would lose, especially if running against a candidate like Capuano who has much higher name recognition and support among a wider group of constituencies.
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p>A Dem who is with the party only 70% of the time and is anti-choice is a really crappy Dem. I would not vote for that person.
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p>Right wing conservatives who happen to be pro-choice simply do not exist, especially not in MA.
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p>If the race were between those two, I would vote for Jill Stein or Grace Ross or whatever third party liberal candidate would enter the race.
…because he very publicly considered running last time. He may figure there’s enough votes in the wing he represents to prevail if there are several more progressive candidates.
And with a push to make the 8th a majority-minority district and with the animosity many Democrats in both the state party and locally have towards Lynch, his district seems ripe for the picking. And if the 8th does indeed become majority-minority look for Mike Capuano to take to the Senate instead of fighting a losing battle. Rep. Chang Diaz (D-MA) anyone?
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p>Capuano v Lynch would be the political prizefight of the century, both blue collar, blunt, crass, street politicians facing each other down and representing similar, but radically different, constituencies. I would note the irony that Capuano won his field in 98′ by being to the right of the progressives on several fronts and mainly running on his record as a conservative tux cutter and job creator in Somerville and his bipartisan partnership with popular Gov. Weld. John O’Connor was the true progressive in that race that year.
Also, I don’t assume that the holding the right flank strategy would work. Jim Miceli tried that in the 2007 5th CD special against 4 relatively progressive candidates and came in last.