As you may know, I suspect that the Baker campaign has deliberately been keeping Karyn Polito away from the microphone, seen but not heard. Polito’s recent guest column “Let’s go beyond pay equity” demonstrates why that probably remains a good strategy.
Polito begins by praising President Kennedy for signing the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and starting the process of closing the pay gap for women. But closing the pay gap isn’t actually where Polito thinks government’s focus should be. She opines:
Did you know that single mothers are three times more likely to be in poverty than other Massachusetts residents? That more than one-fourth of single mother families have incomes below the poverty line? That three out of four female-headed households in Massachusetts don’t earn enough to pay bills and raise their children?
Single-mom poverty. That’s something we all want to reduce, right? Except that Polito really isn’t any more concerned with single-mom poverty than she is with pay inequality. She proposes “increasing the state’s earned income tax credit – a tool economists agree effectively boosts the take-home pay of moms and low income wage earners. Increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit encourages work and puts money back in the pockets of the people who need it the most – hard working moms and dads left behind by eight years of one-party rule on Beacon Hill.”
Notice what she did here. Although Polito went on a length about poor single moms, she all of a sudden is talking about moms and dads.
Huh?
It is important to remember at this point that Polito is a one note politician. With Gabriel Gomez it was “Navy Seal!”. With Polito it’s “small business owner!”. Somehow, her rhetoric always circles around to small business. Her present column was no exception. Pay inequality for women segues into poor single moms segues into moms and dads segues into … you guessed it, small business. She goes on to write:
My message is this: Let’s not limit the debate to adjusting the pay of women struggling to get by. We also need economic policies that unleash the amazing potential of Massachusetts women, combined with targeted relief from burdensome taxes will help struggling women today and ensure that their ranks thin year by year. We need a state government that treats the nearly 200,000 women small business owners as partners, not prey.
So really Karyn Polito is sounding concerned about the pay and poverty issues affecting women just long enough to use them as a seque into securing changes in the law that would benefit small business. As the article states, “Karyn Polito of Shrewsbury is a small business owner”.
Is anyone still surprised that the Baker campaign limits Polito’s exposure?
I found nothing wrong linking pay equality, single moms, and small business in one complete column. Do you believe there is one simple answer to pay inequality or are all the points Karyn mentioned intertwined with the pay gap between men and women? I hope we don’t look to Pres. Obama where women in his administration earn 80% of that of the men, but let that go.
I’m happy to read Karyn is reminding young women that it’s a cruel world out there and to make the best choices, if and whenever possible. The stats are the stats, if you are a single mom or dad, you likely can’t provide enuff income to care for you child/children. And by lessoning regulation in small businesses, who create most of the jobs, will benefit everyone, especially the employees. Those that promise easy answers and a bill with a nice title implying equal pay, usually exacerbate the problem, not correct it.
I never knew Karyn ran a small business, do you know more about it? I know one thing for sure those that own a small business and make payroll every week, should be admired and have a special skill that we need to promote in state and federal government.
I would suggest you read Kate’s diary on Maura Healy helping the disabled. It was totally positive and I must say, inspirational. I wish people commented on it, I didn’t want to be the first one. I have no clue who is running for lieutenant governor on the democrat side, why not promote your candidate other than bashing Karyn.
I find it amusing that although you apparently dislike my view of Polito, you don’t know the basic facts that she incessantly repeats about herself (mom, small business owner). Apparently she’s made a real impression on you.
99.9% of the people she meets are for the first time. So, unless you are a tracker following Karyn around from event to event, then when she says she is a mom/small business owner/etc, the audience is hearing it for the first time.
Case-in-point, during the 1980 Reagan/Carter debate, I watched it with a bunch of family members. In his closing remarks, Reagan asked “are you better off today then you were four years ago”? My liberal brother-in-law said “oh he’s said that line many times before” and others in the room said “first time I’ve heard it”. Think about it…,
Personally, we should do away with the Lt. Governor position and use the funds to hire a couple teachers in Lawrence or Waltham.
I guess it bugs me so much because that’s all I hear coming from her. And I mean ALL. She’s like an automaton. It’s one thing to repeat your slogan as long as you have other things to say too, but if the slogan’s all you got, well, that becomes pretty obvious. That’s why Gomez’s “Navy Seal” got to be such a joke, even among Republicans. He seemed to repeat that fact at the start of every sentence.
I see these people a lot and get tired of the canned speeches and hearing the exact same anecdotes, in the exact same words and tone and display of emotion, 20 times. Especially when they act like it just occurred to them out of the blue.
Dan’s point is valid, but is there no way to change it up just a little so you don’t seem like a candidate automaton to the most engaged citizens? Just say, “I say this a lot because it’s really important to me.” Then I don’t feel like I’ve been insulted.
Then again, my grandfather told the same stories all the time too, and he knew damn well he wasn’t telling them to a new audience.
What the point of this diary or the last one was. I don’t see her exclusively opposing pay equity laws and I think we can all agree the EITC needs to be expanded significantly. Focusing in helping single moms and dads economically, along with small businesses, are all good policy ideas we rarely hear from the national GOP which would view those women as sinful.
There is a lot to critique Polito on-her backflips on marriage equality and choice are significant ones. As is her lack of accomplishment in prior positions. But participating in 5ks and linking EITC expansion to small business creation and pay equity doesn’t strike me as particularly offensive or misleading. I may be missing something and I am open to hearing you elaborate, but the quotes you analyzed don’t seem particularly significant in of themselves.
“Enough about me, let’s talk about you. What do you think about me?”
In a way, I feel like that’s what Polito is doing. Her personal interest is small business, so she seems to always wind the story around to small business. Can she give an answer that doesn’t involve talk of small business? Is she able to conceive of a universe beyond small business? Because remember, she’s running to be the governor’s understudy in a very complex Commonwealth where small business is only one sliver of the equation.
Of course, hopefully they don’t win at all, but I digress. The LG has next to no specified duties and as another DSC member put it to me that person can essentially be a minister without portfolio, or more accurately one with a choice of portfolios depending on their passion.
Guessing Polito will not be there either.
I mean, the Democratic candidates are in an honest bind since the convention is in Worcester at the same time as the parade in Boston, so they can’t be in two places at once. But the Republicans (and independents) have no such excuse. This would have been an amazing opportunity for Baker & Polito to soak up all the candidate love and underscore their flimsy assertion that Polito is no longer an anti-LGBT activist. Apparently Baker thinks that posting one video with his brother is enough to convince the LGBTs that he’s their guy – no parade needed. He thinks he can buy us that cheap.
And Polito walks by, would you give her a friendly wave or boo her? Would you even give her credit for showing up? I would not want to be anywhere where I wasn’t wanted or respected.
I do agree, I would like at least one of them to participate in the parade. Have the parade organizers reached out to Baker and Polito and urged them to join in the festivities?
And doubters like me would welcome a demonstration of her alleged sincerity. Spending a few hours walking in our shoes and chatting amiably with a sea of LGBT people and allies could go a long way in alleviating concerns that Baker had forced her to put up a false front. But she apparently doesn’t care to bury that doubt.
I don’t know whether parade organizers reach out, but every other pro-equality politician knows all about the parade and makes sure they’re in it, so what’s Polito’s excuse? The parade has been happening every June for almost Polito’s entire life. Baker himself was in it 2010, so Polito has less than no excuse if, as the Baker campaign contends, that she’s no longer actively anti-gay.
She may be worried her presence would upset a few folks and doesn’t want to cause a scene or a confrontation and detract from the mission of the parade. I don’t know this to be a fact, just me speculating.
I know Scott Brown is taking heat from gun rights activists when he meets them at town hall meetings but he is a different cat all together, I think he enjoys the back and forth.
FYI- I enjoy your diaries, even if anti-Polito….
Telling.
He was too busy celebrating Margarita Day that night.
https://twitter.com/CharlieForGov/statuses/437399487188058112
It’s perfectly fair to call out Baker on his support after the video he released and it’s perfectly fair to call out Polito on her evolved position.
He gets a favorable write-up in gay publication and then the online comments savage him, basically “if he’s Republican I don’t care if he’s gay or pro-gay, I would never vote for him”
There’s not a lot of votes for Baker or Polito in that crowd.
So it takes time and gets few votes. Could get a lot of boo’s. Maybe worse.
I can see why they are passing on it.
Really? 😉