The Senator and the Governor

If you voted for someone other than Martha Coakley in the recent primary – or didn’t vote at all – take a look at Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s endorsement of Martha on YouTube.  I learned something, and I think you will, too.

As the Senator explains it:

“I was a teacher….  I was writing about what was happening to working families.  Every time regulators did something, the tilt was toward the rich and powerful, not toward families, not toward seniors, not toward young people….  Then I got a call from a woman who introduced herself as the new Attorney General.  ‘I’ve been reading what you do,’ she said,  ‘How can we work together?’  ….  This woman said, ‘we care about same people; we’re working on the same side.  Let’s talk about how I can use my office as Attorney General to level the playing field for our families.’ And that’s what she’s done, year after year.”

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If you recall, eight years ago, when Martha Coakley first called then-Prof. Elizabeth Warren, things were very different hereabouts.  Massachusetts had yet to emerge from a 16-year-long winter of Republican governors that had left the Commonwealth:  a) 47^th in the nation in job creation;  b) with a declining population;  and c) facing an annual $1 billion transportation deficit, courtesy of the Big Dig financing scheme created by Martha’s opponent for governor, Republican Charlie Baker.

Over the eight years since, Democratic Governor Deval Patrick not only reversed the downward spiral Weld, Baker, and their Republican colleagues oversaw, he showed what enlightened leadership can accomplish.  Massachusetts is now first in the nation in educational achievement, health care coverage, veterans services, energy efficiency, child well-being, marriage equality, and there are more people working in Massachusetts than ever before.  In fact, Massachusetts has gained back all the jobs lost during the Great Recession, and people are once again moving into – not away from – our state.

This fall we must elect a governor who will keep Massachusetts moving forward.  Martha Coakley has sworn to build on Deval’s record of achievement.  Incredibly, Republican Charlie Baker says he wants to take Massachusetts “in a new direction,” and he’s working overtime to ignore the last eight years of growth.  Of course, he can’t possibly stand on the record he and the Republican governors built during their 16 years of bad management.  So, we have to rely on what he’s saying now to glean some details of this “new direction”:

While Martha supported a minimum wage hike, Republican Charlie Baker said raising the minimum wage was a “no-brainer negative.”  So, a living wage for working people isn’t in Charlie’s plans.

While Martha wants to fight climate change by continuing Massachusetts’ leadership in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and supporting clean tech innovation, Republican Charlie Baker said he wasn’t smart enough to know if climate change was happening.  Apparently, adding to the 80,000 clean energy jobs created under Patrick is not in Charlie’s plans either.

While Martha is fighting for women’s rights, Baker said the Hobby Lobby decision “didn’t matter.”  So, if you’re a woman, you can see where you figure in his plans for the future.

While Martha believes working families deserve earned sick time, Baker believes that working families should fend for themselves when their children or parents are sick.  Seems compassion for working families is missing from Charlie’s plans, too.

While Martha knows we can’t grow our economy by shrinking investments in infrastructure, Baker supports repeal of the year-old law tying gas taxes to inflation.  Money raised by that tax goes to road repair, and even the National Association of Manufacturers is calling for a $100 billion a year increase in spending to repair “crumbling and congested U.S. roadways.”  But Charlie seems not to care.  He can always craft another Big Dig-type finance plan that passes on costs to future generations.

So, maybe Charlie’s new direction isn’t really that new after all because his values still reflect those of Mitch McConnell and other Tea Party Republicans, i.e., the same values he ran on in 2010.

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“When I got off the phone [with Martha Coakley], I was pretty impressed,” Elizabeth Warren, continued.  “I thought this is a person with the right values ….  Never in a million years did it cross my mind there would be a day that we would work together as Senator and Governor.”

Only you can make that happen.

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Lee Harrison is a member of the Democratic State Committee and former chair of Berkshire Brigades.