I have three criteria when deciding who to back in a primary:
1) I basically agree with their political positions. Yeah, I know, duh, but this is only 1/3 of the equation for me. I will not vote solely based on who scores best on a laundry list of positions. There are certain deal-breakers for me — if you’re not going to fight for average people over big money or work to expand rights for all, for example, I’m not interested. But overall, I am generally willing to consider a candidate who doesn’t agree with me on some issues if they appear better in the other two.
2) What have they accomplished in their careers so far? And by this I do not mean solely what great votes did they take. Sure, I’m happy if you voted against the war in Iraq or the Patriot Act (bonus points for doing so if it was against the wishes of your constituents), but I also need to know what you’ve actually achieved. In the legislature, a voting scorecard isn’t enough; I need to know what legislation you’ve been responsible for helping to craft and pass, and what issues you’ve worked on and/or tried to publicize. If you’ve got executive branch experience, what did you achieve? And if you’ve got no experience in government, I need to hear a very compelling story about how the experience you do have will translate into the new career you seek.
3) What kind of campaigner with you be? The ability to effectively communicate your ideas and generate support for them is a crucial part of any politician’s job. Being a leader means inspiring people to follow. Being able to run a good campaign organization gives me some idea how you’d run things when in office (one of the things that turned me off to Hillary’s candidacy last time around, hopefully she’s learned from that and her time at State if she decides to run in ’16). And, let’s face it, being able to win elections is a key job requirement.
I look forward to hear more about all three of these from candidates running for governor and the 5th Congressional.
…though sometimes a candidate’s niche issue will score them extra points. In a primary context there is generally not enough daylight to count between candidates’ positions and I expect if they are running for legislature their voting records will be more similar than different.
I think these are three solid metrics for evaluating candidates in general, but specifically in a Democratic primary like the 5th CD where there is little daylight on the issues. Points 2 and 3 are especially compelling, particularly the record of legislative successes-not just votes. I would be interested for you to evaluate the candidates based on these factors in future posts.
I’m obviously influenced by the fact that I’m reading Caro’s LBJ book right now, but even if that were not the case, I think we need to evaluate how any gubernatorial candidate is going to get along with the legislature and, most importantly, how (s)he might make progress when the leaders in each branch are opposed to their ideas, especially on the economic/fiscal front (we’ve mostly done better on the social issues). The three items listed above are good, but the governor also needs to be able to get bills through the legislature.
LBJ isn’t going to walk through that door any time soon, but I’d like to know if the next governor will have a better track record with the legislature than Deval has.
I think Governor Patrick was about as effective as any governor can be. The problem he has faced is a legislature that, for whatever reason, refuses to move past its delusions about our fiscal state.
Like facing down the tea-party/GOP crazies in Washington, the problem ANY governor will face is that the only way to accomplish ANYTHING with the current lege is to do exactly what they want — regardless of whether or not it makes political, moral, or economic sense.
The problems Barack Obama has faced lie in the GOP, not Barack Obama. The problems Deval Patrick has faced lie in the lege, not Deval Patrick.
The party affiliation of the current lege is irrelevant — it is making terrible decisions, the outcomes are awful and getting worse, and we need to change that before ANY governor is going to be effective.
…still hasn’t gotten used to the idea of having an active Governor of their own party. With GOP Governors the Speaker and the President knew they ran the state with their veto-proof majorities. At a convention breakout session Jamie Eldridge said there were 7-10 progressive Senators and 30-50 progressive Reps., but Dems overall hold 36/40 Senate seats and I believe ~130/160 House seats so quite a gap there.
The same sort of argument applied in 1963, in which case it was the southern Dems and their enablers. Regardless, LBJ, because of who he was and his experience, knew which buttons to push with the various leaders in order to move things forward. Of course, sometimes that button pushing went beyond what would be considered moral and legal.
I think it is a fair question to ask the gubernatorial candidates what sort of relationships they have with the leadership and, while I don’t expect them to lay all of the cards on the table, how their approach to dealing with divisive issues would differ from what we’ve seen in the past eight years. We can work on changing the legislature, but it isn’t going to happen fast. I want to know what sort of results we can get until then.
one of the ways that he built his position of Majority Leader into the role it is today (prior to LBJ the committee chairman in the Senate had most of the power) was that he had bags of cash (and literal bags of cash that he brought up from Texas) to spread around among his colleagues.
A governor who could find ideological common ground with the legislature may struggle to win enough votes in the primary of an unabashedly progressive party. If we were to guess that the General Court were to work more closely with a former member though, that might change. Perhaps we would have better hopes from Wolf than the others on that score.
1) The Legislature experience
This was Deval’s greatest weakness and he really squandered a lot of the first term presuming DeLeo was negotiating in good faith. Now the gloves are off and we see what a putz Bobby really is, but unfortunately the Commonwealth and it’s economy will suffer because of these decisions. I suspect Wolf will come in with a fairly good relationship with Senate leadership and rank and file, and some connections in the House as well. Some of his policies were bad, but Gov. Cellucci met far more of his legislative priorities than Weld.
2) The business experience
Founding a start up from the ground up and maintaining a made in Mass attitude and cordial labor friendly policies is quite notable. I generally dislike the mantra of “get a businessman in there”, in many ways it’s been destructive in New York and Chicago, but Wolf is a great businessman but not of the business class. Like the CEO of Costco or others, he is the rare creature that walks the walk. Grossman has this as well, but he inherited his business and wealth (that’s not a dig btw, so did Bobby Kennedy and FDR), but I think Wolf’s background is uniquely tailored to getting a progressive message to the ‘I built it/I drive a truck too” crowd that backed Brown over Coakley.
It’s safe to say I am a strong lean for Wolf unless Coakley creeps in, in which case my ABC vote goes to Grossman.
What have these candidates accomplished in their careers so far?
I not involved in this race at all and I don’t know the resume of each one, but they just seemed like cookie cutter politicians from liberal MA. I know they each have accomplishments, but nothing jumps out as outstanding.
Sheriff Koutoujian inherited somewhat of a mess and seems to have cleaned up the department and also has some progressive corrections ideas — and it’s a lot tougher to be a progressive, even in Massachusetts, when you’re heading a law enforcement agency than when you’re in the Legislature. Plus he’s got legislative experience. I’m impressed with him.
Karen Spilka is my state Senator. I find her to be a good speaker, she shows up at things and she’s good talking to voters. I know she’s worked on education issues — trying to make the funding formula more fair; backed mental health services for young people; and worked on economic development and transportation issues (she backed the regional transit authority legislation). I’d be happy with her representing me in Washington as well.
I don’t know much about the others beyond the basics.