Could we be heading to four in a row? The unindicted co-conspirator, who showed what his word is worth by reversing his endorsement of term limits with a crazed — and so far successful — grab for power, is yet again held up to public ridicule. Globe:
The speaker, the Globe reported, suggested he did not know the basic workings of the patronage system at the heart of the scandal — a system that had lawmakers sponsor friends and constituents for jobs in the Probation Department.
“Did you become aware at any time during which you were chairman of [the] Ways & Means [Committee] or prior to that, that many hires within the Probation Department had been recommended by individual legislators?” Ware asked.
“No, I wouldn’t be,” DeLeo replied. “Any — I would imagine that legislators would recommend in terms of what the actual count was of people being hired. No, I would not — whether they came from legislators or not, I wouldn’t have knowledge of that.” …
“Did you become aware at any time since you’ve been in the Legislature that many probation employees have, in fact, been recommended by legislators?” Ware asked. “I’m not implying there’s anything wrong with that. But were you aware that that was the fact?”
“That many people were recommended?” DeLeo said. “No. I just dealt with — except for maybe people who called me for recommendations on myself, in terms of if I could give you a score card of how many — what percentage were recommended, I wouldn’t have an idea.”
This is why we are saddled with a Republican Governor: most people in the state, with good reason, don’t have confidence in the integrity of the legislative leadership and, hence, the Massachusetts Democratic Party. The best thing that could happen to politics in the commonwealth would be to replace the old legislative guard with new leaders drawn from the progressive wing of the party that could signal a decisive break from the status quo.
For the life of me I will never understand why the liberals/progressives continue to be an enabler of these guys. Useless, weal threats of primary challenge, and then all they have to do in the general is say “tea party” and the left races to put them back in office.
Meanwhile, our Democratic legislature cuts funding for the UMass system, in the middle of the year, without debate. Which is funny, because, as christopher always points out to me, the policy of the Massachusetts Democratic Party is set forth in the party platform, and “public education sustained by state funding commitments” is right there in the platform.
Which means that either the party in control of our legislature is something other than the Democratic Party, or that the entire platform is a deliberate elaborate lie.
Then, every December, the big issue for the party types here is how best to punish pols who supported a Republican or independent rather than a Dem candidate. Repercussions for cutting the T, cutting social services, cutting funding for higher education? None. But at least you can talk to them.
No doubt. Still I’ll renew my disagreement with CMD on this matter because he presumes that Democrats can exert some sort of control over their elected Democratic representatives. In fact, controlling their voting is next to impossible for a couple of reasons: 1) they owe their election to voters, not Democrats 2) primary challengers are few and far between.
In Granby, we have two reps: Ellen Story (D-Amherst) who lives in Amherst, which has all the votes; and John Scibak (D-South Hadley) who lives in South Hadley. Granby has less than 2000 votes per district. And guess what? Most of them aren’t Democrats. Unenrolled and Republican voters exist too. They are accountable to all voters, not just Democrats. These are local people supported by local voters. Primary challenges are few and far between. There aren’t many people I know who want to commute to Boston for $60,000 a year.
In short, the idea that party discipline can effect some control on our elected Democratic representatives sounds a lot more efficacious than it is.
Party platforms are, I agree, largely crap.
I looked him up. He’s been in office 13 years with no major challengers, his predecessor has a ten year career and her predecessor was our 2002 gubernatorial nominee. Going back my whole lifetime this seat has been held by a Democrat. He should try running as a progressive, and if he loses, than the more conservative voters can get a real Republican to represent them and that’s one less Democrat voting the wrong way and being a rubber stamp for De Leo. We got a supermajority-if it can’t pass liberal
Legislation than its not worth protecting.
People elect people. How is he going to “rise and fall on the platform”? That’s an abstraction in search of a specific. What you both are omitting is the mechanism for effecting that discipline: how do you discipline the membership?
You and CMD are talking about party discipline. and assuming that a supermajority implies party discipline? It doesn’t. In fact, it would be easier to discipline a minority since there’s nothing at stake but orthodoxy.
A supermajority also doesn’t imply uniformity. Democrats, particularly in Massachusetts, run from progressive to conservative. My rep is liberal, but not a screaming liberal. For most Democrats, that’s good enough.
More importantly for holding office: his constituents, who are mostly unenrolled voters like and support him. Nobody has primaried him. Why would they? People are happy enough with him. And as far as primaries are concerned, you need people who want to run. I don’t know about the Boston area, but people are not beating the doors down to run for state rep.
We have a supermajority of Democrats, elected by unenrolled voters who don’t care about the Democratic Party Platform, who don’t know who Bob DeLeo is and don’t care, and and some (many?) of whom would be Republicans in another state legislature. And somehow these people are supposed to pass fiscally liberal (we have a decent track record on socially liberal) legislation.
I don’t disagree with your analysis of the situation at all, I am saying I personally don’t care if enforcing party discipline for once leads to a smaller majority rather than a super-majority, since as you pointed out-that super-majority has done very little from an economically progressive perspective.
I am saying let’s find a way to enforce some discipline from the outside. Make some votes non-negotiable, you either vote ‘x’ or you lose your Progressive Caucus membership and there is a donor boycott. Perhaps even muscling our way into the State Party Apparatus and making the chair a more explicitly progressive partisan, rather than just a Democratic one.
It might result in losing some seats, some folks bolting for the GOP or running as independents, but at the end of the day, these are folks that would probably be Republican in another state. I won’t miss them if it means our caucus can more effectively advance progressive legislation, and it makes it far more likely we elect progressive Governors who will actually be able to, you know, govern.
Is it good enough for you? We know that you are a screaming liberal, we know that you would vote against term limits so you are automatically better than your incumbent. And you have been a profoundly passionate voice on BLM despite coming from a relatively white part of the state.
I would wager that you would do a better job than your incumbent rep, and we can crowd fund your campaign from here, I would be happy to volunteer to do whatever I can remotely from Chicago. I made a similar offer to Christopher, but I am serious-we all are smart, passionate people with a significant amount of campaign experience. Like I said with CMD, I am tired of needle skip and it’s been the same argument for a decade since I’ve been on here. If recruitment and primary campaigns are abysmal let’s start doing it ourselves.
I would have to take a sizable pay cut and a serious drop in my quality of life. I don’t know about Boston and environs, but being a state rep from Western Mass is a burden: a 90-100 mile commute. Four or five Democrats ran for my state senator’s seat. I worked for Eric Lesser, and he was elected. He’s also terrific. If you haven’t read about him already, you will. I don’t think we see that kind of interest in my state rep district. Unless I ran as a middle of the road candidate, I’d have no shot at beating my rep. My town is small enough to lack influence in our district.
Thanks for you support, but I’ll complete my last select board term in 2.5 years. I have 9 years until I retire as a teacher. I’ll probably end up getting more involved in MTA politics.
And that’s perfectly reasonable. It’s not the job for everyone, and you have already chosen a level of involvement with accompanying public scrutiny most of us here have not, so I greatly appreciate it. I am just saying that I think we have to do a better job of recruitment and target some incumbents. Your point about incumbent reps being the only kind of Democrat that could get elected from a given district could very well be true, giving them a free pass on renomination guarantees it will be true.
Because a primary challenge is inherently weak.
Because the very first thing the primary challenger must say is that “I will support the Democratic nominee no matter who it is in the general election,” which essentially makes any rebellion toothless.
What they really need is for a challenger from the left to say: No! Rep. XYZ shouldn’t be the rep from this or any other district. If XYZ is the nominee, then I will not support herhim. I will attempt to defeat XYZ in this primary, and I will attempt to defeat XYZ in the general, even if that means tilting the election to the GOP candidate, because I am confident that neither the GOP candidate nor XYZ reflects the values of the district. In the long run, the defeat of XYZ will result in a representative that actually reflects our values, rather than one who merely pretends.
…when we have instant runoff voting. Until then it’s party brackets with the winners contesting each other.
Instead of running Jill Stein for single digits for every statewide and national office, it should run Greens in races where the Dem is a conservative or a Dem or Republican are going incumbent are going unchallenged. Even if they don’t win, that’s how parties form. It’s what the Progressive Party did in Vermont, quite successfully I might add. It’s what Bernie Sanders did when he got started in Burlington, fuck the Yankee Republicans and Dem Machine, we need a real leader. And he won.
… your answer seems split along a divide I cannot fathom: “the side affects of the job are too onerous for anybody to want and, besides, too many other people want it…”
I don’t know that your critiques are wrong and that’s unfortunate. The quasi-part-time nature of the job seems to invite a certain kind of applicant: dilettantes who are independently wealthy; spouses of someone with a full time job; or someone with a full-time job with more freedom of schedule (e.g. lawyers ). With a State House full of this kind of people, they’ve come to accept the schedule as theirs to play with (late night sessions, etc) further alienating actual hard working people on a schedule. I don’t know that, in a sane world, you should be forced to give up your teaching position just because you want to legislate also. You should be able to keep your day job, and get an increase in pay with the added salary of the legislator.
Or the position of legislator should be an actual full time job with a salary that invites hard working people with extensive experience to apply without coming face to face with a pay cut.
I think we’re kinda stuck with a sorta feckless in-between-ism that invites, for the most part, just exactly the wrong sort of personality (dilettantes, bored spouses and lawyers…) I tend, myself, to favor the part time approach, as the very idea of the ‘professional politician’ nauseates me. My favorite writers are people who’ve done something and written about it. My least favorite writers are those who’ve aspired to nothing more than writing and, as a result, usually end up doing nothing. I think this is the same sort of thing with politics: people who see problems and enter politics to solve them usually have a better perspective than those whose only job is politics. The ‘professional politician’ (as well as the ‘professional political operative’) usually operate, at the least, semi-amorally, and therefore semi- detached, from the problems.
While the commute does seem overlong, I’m given to understand that the per diem for legislators is governed by the distance from the State House. Were I a state rep in a similar position I’d wonder if I could use geography to my advantage. I’d hate to lose time just driving that distance, but if an arrangement can be made, perhaps carpooling with other state reps, or with Amtrak, that time can be well used for reading legislation or grading papers… or napping. Anything you do at home with a spare hour or two. I don’t know that the burden of distance is as much a burden if one doesn’t have to drive oneself. But there might arise conflicts of scheduling… I dunno.
I don’t know exactly what you mean by “ran as a middle of the road candidate.” I think there are different aspects of your personality, some of which could certainly be characterized as ‘middle of the road’ and others of which are decidedly not. This is different, perhaps, from your political ideology which may not be ‘middle of the road’ and which may be what you’re talking about… But I think your greater than average intellectual abilities meet with a certain… I don’t know… ‘middle of the road’ sensibility… or at least that’s what I imagine provides you with the ability to teach effectively. (most of your students, almost by definition, are ‘middle of the road’ and any ability you have to connect with them, despite possible disparities in intelligence and outlook, wouldn’t be possible without this kind of sensibility. ) I don’t know that campaigning with this sensibility, if not the actual political ideology, isn’t the same as teaching with it.
If your town was truly small enough to lack influence it probably wouldn’t be a town anymore and would have been subsumed by the other, larger towns. If it hasn’t been so subsumed there must be a reason why, and that reason may have influence… I don’t know the particulars, but I suspect you might be giving the geography and history and the uniqueness of your town disregard it doesn’t deserve.
I think you should run. If I were a resident of your town, given what I already know about you, you’d have my vote. But, as Lenny Clarke used to end his shows (if he doesn’t still do so…) with the saying, “If you like me, tell your friends… If your friends like me, get some new friends.,” perhaps you should carry a wee grain of salt with that endorsement….
..lest it invite at least the appearance if not reality of a conflict of interest with whatever else you do. Plus, constituents should have your full attention. As for operatives, well as someone with a Master’s degree in political management I’m obviously heavily biased in favor of that profession:)
… that is a point of view.
But distance from ‘at least’ the appearance, if not reality, of a conflict of interest is distance from investment and invitation, as noted, to amorality. “All politics is local’ is just another way of saying ‘all politics is specific’ and without investment in particular problems the general ‘practice’ of politics is just a way — a very bad way — of seeing all problems as more or less equal. In this manner resolution of the problems of slavery, jim crow and decades, if not centuries, of racism, for example, have taken a back seat to other problems deemed more pressing to white people.
Politics cannot be generalized without it becomes an anodyne method of avoiding problem solving.
I see my doctor once a year and call him when problems arise. I have his full attention when I need it. I don’t know that the job of legislator is all that much more onerous or requiring even that level of lavish attention by the representative. A too eager devotion to the constituents, in fact, might cross the line from representation to puppetry. That wouldn’t be democracy.
…as opposed to individual casework. Most individual constituents need very little, possibly no attention. However, giving constituents your full attention I meant as attending meetings of town bodies, doing legislative research, attending committee meetings, etc.
I categorically reject that professional politics is by definition amoral. Many of us get into it with exactly the opposite intention and motivation, and yes, succeed in keeping it that way.
I have no interest in running for state rep. I make that clear to the people who ask me in my region. Personal reasons: 1) I’ll retire as a teacher in 9 years-don’t want to screw up my retirement 2) I’d take a $20,000 pay cut 3) I really don’t like campaigning before, during, and after an election 4) I get a job I could lose every two years 5) there are other things I want to do with my life. On a personal level, it’s out of the question.
When I say “middle-of-the-road” candidate, I mean I’d have to run to the right of the incumbents. They have the liberals sealed up. When I say my town lacks influence, I mean it is electorally irrelevant. We split two districts between two reps. We share District 1 with Amherst, which is 5 times larger than us. We share District 2 with South Hadley, Easthampton, and Hadley, the first two towns combined are about 5 times as large as my town. Coming from a small town, there is a small base from which to run; given that our electorate is split in two, there’s even less of a base. To mount a serious campaign, I’d have to appeal to a hell of a lot of independents.
It’s true state reps get per diems that cover gas and wear-and-tear on your car. Sadly, there is no train service to Boston. It’s being discussed, but that’s it.
… but I’ll just point out that all your reasons, important to you as they are, aren’t at all about the actual doing of the job. Whether it be the campaigning for it, or the possibility of limits to it, or the other things you want to do besides it, your ratiocinations are tertiary to the actual doing of the job: for which job you seem ideally suited.
This is unfortunate. Too many others possess neither the tertiary qualms nor (sadly) the actual ability to do the job and representation, even if only for two years, suffers because some dilettante lawyer got the job over an honest hard working man who decided not to even try. The campaigning for the job and the actual doing of it seem, to me, to be diverging wildly: those ever more specific set of skills necessary for a media blitz to succeed are exactly and precisely the wrong skills for a legislator to possess. As we refine the science of campaigning we lose the art of legislating… and those who may possess such art are, frankly, scared away. More is the pity.
“Which means that either the party in control of our legislature is something other than the Democratic Party, or that the entire platform is a deliberate elaborate lie.”
I have tried multiple times to argue it is the former. The people who enact the platform are delegates to off-year conventions, the most committed activists and true believers.
Why do you, theoretically a supporter of the Democratic Party, support the election of non-Democrats to positions of power in state government? Why do you support those who would vote for such a thing? If that platform had any significance at all, this is not something that would happen, and certainly not by an “overwhelming” vote of the Democratic Party.
I’ve consistently supported the election of Democrats to offices that are chosen in a partisan manner.
but an irrelevant fantasy produced by powerless dreamers.
Throughout this discussion I keep wondering why you are in the Democratic party at all. You would have ballot access and as Green reps you could have real influence in Speaker races. I also wish some of the alleged GOP reps would go Constitution Party but that is a harder sell due to access
been elected? Their local candidates around here have been intelligent, well-intentioned, and clueless people who had no idea about how to run competitively for office. Running for office, as you know, requires organization and skill. The Greens have neither. My district includes Amherst. One would think that the Green Party would have a real shot there. I couldn’t name a Green Party candidate around here since some school committee member from Hatfield ran for state office.
A kid I knew recently ran on the Libertarian ticket against my state rep. He had no appealing experience, political or otherwise. He gathered the necessary signatures (I signed his papers too), but the party gave him no help. My belief is that the Green Party would be the same way.
I would have to really read up on what the Progressive Party did, I do know that the Nader factor is still a big problem. I campaigned a little with a Green School Committee member in Cambridge, his election made national headlines within the Green Party showing how rare they win even the most local of races. He had to deal with the Nader factor at every turn, he managed to win, but quit in part to be a full time student and later to do his think tank job.
So it might require a name change so folks don’t think it’s a narrow Eco Justice party affiliated with an infamous spoiler, or we just literally copy the Progressive Party in VT, name and all, making it clear as they do that presidential politics aren’t on the radar at all. Electing better Democrats does have a better record of success. Carl Sciortino and Steve Ultrino are good examples from recent history. Toomey won, but he moved far to the left on most issues after the Avi Green challenge.
If you won’t support the bona fide progressive party, the Green, you don’t get to say that Democrats you don’t like aren’t really Democrats. Apparently they are – but you may not be. And you will remain a marginalized bloc in that party, since your protests have no effective teeth.
Ultrino beat back DINOs, Chang-Diaz beat back a hack, Lantigua got defeated. We just gotta try. Can you name a Green who got elected to a statehouse in America, let alone, Massachusetts? It ain’t happening. Far more effective to ensure the democratic wing of the democratic party gets its victories within the democratic primary, in my view.
Our Governor is a libertarian, but he has an R next to his name. See my point?
but I question whether they are a bona fide party. They manage to run candidates, but they don’t manage to get elected. A lot of groups do that. But no one takes them seriously. The Larouchies for example. In a parliamentary system, being part of a small party could still be relevant. In our representative democracy, it means you get to run for office and have no one vote for you.
The real question isn’t whether there is a party that supports all my ideals. The real question is whether my interests and ideology better served by joining a group with no power to effect my ideals.
And porcupine is still trolling me for voting for Democrats that actually vote the way I like. Maybe if I lived in Quincy I’d give the Greens a try, but my rep back in North Cambridge actually voted against DeLeo. Sometimes Democrats can do that if you elect the right ones!
I find them a bit creepy. Some years ago (15?) I stumbled across one of their protests and was a little surprised at the degree to which support for Hezbollah seemed to overshadow everything else. They’re sketchy.
Seems to me that, tactically, the best strategy would be to seek the defeat of the right-wing Democrats, by a more right-wing Republican if necessary– because we are still in Massachusetts after all, and lots of those Republicans will be vulnerable to an actual Democrat the next time around.
It seems like most here view primaries as a vehicle to make themselves feel better even though they essentially vote in support of Speaker for Life DeLeo.
and it’s not the legislature. it’s because we had Martha Coakley running against him. Deval Patrick had no problem kicking his Pioneer Institute BS butt.
But now that he has been elected, it will be difficult to get him out. We have incumbent-itis in this state. That’s one lesson you can learn from the legislature.
Certainly, Deval was a stronger candidate in 2010 than Martha Coakley was in 2014. But (a) Baker ran a far, far better campaign in 2014 than he did in 2010, and (b) there is no doubt in my mind that Bob’s thesis regarding the legislature is correct and helped Baker quite a bit.
what was your first thought when Coakley got the nomination?
She was John Silber. That’s it. I think we all knew the end result when she was the nominee.
Now, I’d say this, if a Democratic candidate came straight out of the lege, that would be one thing, but I didn’t see a strong impact on the legislature during this last election cycle. I don’t recall it ever being a factor.
Charlie Baker is the insider’s insider, he’s more connected to the legislature than anyone who ran as a Democrat. His life has been dedicated to working the margins. Think tank writing policy, to working for multiple administrations, we’ve seen the unethical deals with the big dig, cutting deals with candidates in his first run, sleazy political machine. That’s his life. So I don’t see the legislature as the impact in that election.
Incumbents need to be primaried, they need to be debated on their positions on issues and how they voted. We talk about and even make fun of the number of Republicans running for office, but maybe we should pay more attention to incumbents not being challenged.
masquerading as a Democratic majority gives the middle-of-the-road Republican governors more traction than you allow. All the way back in 1992, Weld got a lot of traction by running against the embarrassing corruption of a Senate President who smirkingly provided cover to his “folk hero” brutal murderer of a brother.
Silber being an asshole to Natalie Jacobsen put Weld over the top, but the sheer stench of the legislature is what had him in the ballpark in the first place.
And just think, that was like three convicted senior party leaders ago! How times have changed.
Weld did run on the corruption in the legislature, but he needed Silber to win. I remember it clear as day, I got the same awful pit in my stomach as Coakley’s nomination.
Democrats don’t hold a monopoly on embarrassing political patonage, with Blute running Massport, Kerasiotes running the Big Dig (is he out of jail yet?), Buckingham a freakin press secretary run Massport after Blute got fired after his party boat pictures. Who could forget Lawless, the “Security Director” at Massport, he was the statie detail guy that made sure Weld didn’t drive shitfaced. Please don’t even go there.
Just, bull. There was a corrupt Republican once 25 years ago, so that makes the thievery that is actively encouraged and rewarded by the Massachusetts Democratic Party somehow OK.
The simple fact is that Dems have been unopposed for nearly a quarter century, and obviously not to actually do anything– unless you think that finding new an innovative ways to find some legislators’ buddies $150,000/year no-show jobs as an actual party goal. Since the party decided to appoint DeLeo speaker-for-life, you might as well count corruption as a party policy.
That’s how you cheerfully make a member of an organized crime figure Senate President, and the most powerful political figure in government, and the party shrugs.
That’s how you get four consecutive convicted Speakers of the House, and the party shrugs. Four!
That’s how you get the absurdity of the Probation Department staffing, and the party shrugs.
There isn’t really even any sort of liberal or “good government” wing of the party at this point, except cosmetically. They don’t do anything other than hold meetings, unless you count acting as willing and enthusiastic enablers for the kleptocracy that is our Great and General Court
I didn’t shrug.
My concern is how you blanket Republicans in this state and Democrats with a single statement. It’s not right or accurate. I’m highlighting corruption and you shrug, it’s the individuals who are elected. Electing a Republican is going to do jack shit. Electing a strong candidate which you share political philosophy to hold office, that’s a different story. You seem to be blinded and by R and D.
is because it has become clear to me that the ONLY way to break the power of corruption in this Commonwealth is to shatter the power of the Democratic Party as it presently exists. If that means a cycle or two with Republicans, even very conservative Republicans, gasp, in the drivers seat, that would be just fine, as it would likely result in the rise of a smaller, but actually Democratic Democratic majority, checked by a larger and non-inert Republican opposition.
I have long subscribed to the view that the existence of political parties is a pernicious evil in American politics, because party activists will eventually subordinate all, including the good of the commonwealth, to the party. The behavior of liberal Democrats in Massachusetts over the course of decades is significant evidence in support of this theorem.
I mostly agree with this. However, I fear your final paragraph misstates the actual phenomena.
In my view, we are today seeing the triumph of ego over all else, including trivial considerations like the good of the party, the people, the state, or the nation.
As far as I can tell, the only thing that Bob DeLeo (and therefore the Massachusetts House) cares about is Bob DeLeo.
You have no objection to corruption, unless it’s associated with a D. We know all that we need to know about Baker but you just shrug it off. Loscocco, etc. as noted above. No problems there. Baker is part of the problem and has a long history as insider and backroom politician. Not a peep … we need more people like Baker.
I’d rather that strong progressives primary candidates, but it’s difficult to get strong candidates without a vacancy.
I take some issues with the last paragraph, perhaps naively, because I strongly believe we are that wing of the party, and we did elect Deval over the anointed O’Reilly, and Warren over the objections of some in the state party. So it can happen.
I really wish it could happen at the state house level beyond the liberal enclaves so that we had a stronger progressive caucus. Jason Lewis has done well in a more middle of the road district running as a solid progressive, as has Jamie Eldridge. The house side seems a bit harder, but I feel the next wave of millennials is just getting started and we will make some changes.
A lot of it is acquiring insider intelligence. We should’ve expected term limits to go the way they did and had an organized outside presence to more effectively lobby against it. We should’ve had a response beyond shrugging when progressives on other issues covered their asses in terror and voted the wrong way on that question. But I honestly think they are happy as clams to have a moderate Republican in the Corner Office instead of a progressive Democrat, so effective pressure has to come from within the grassroots of the Democratic party and not just losing a few token races to the GOP.
But these folks write his attack ads for him. Even if we get an outsider like one of the Mayors I like or Dan Wolf, they will still have DeLeo and his gang of thugs to tie around the neck of our nominee. As far as I’m concerned, CMD has been completely right about this for the decade he and I’ve been on BMG, and he represents the unenrolled voters perspective very well. We dismiss it at our own peril and enable blind partisan loyalty to these lifers to outweigh our ideological commitment to progressive governance.
It’s a Democratic legislative leader filing the police secrecy bill, it was that same leadership that killed term limits and voted to strip pensions in the dead of night that has been determined via collective bargaining. Same leadership that fought tooth and nail to keep Raise Up’s amendments off the ballot, that brought us casinos and vows regularly not to raise taxes. The same leadership that has prioritized defending film industry perks over preventing social services cuts. Same leadership that is working in concert with Baker to drown the T in a bathtub. I’m tired of excuses and finger pointing, it’s a weak Governorship with a paper tiger minority in both chambers-the local bullshits on us-not theme
When I left the State House it was 16. Now, it’s 35.
The Democratic leadership is a corrupt kleptocracy. And every nice young progressive who votes for the Speaker because he is afraid to do otherwise given the punishment that follows is just a spineless enabler of that behavior.
We don’t have to rely on iconic Good Time Charlie Flaherty any more – every single Speaker has been convicted, let alone merely indicted or censured like Kevarian for accepting gifts.
It’s a record you can be proud of.
A Republican House caucus numbering in the 30’s has been the norm for the past few decades – 16 is the absolute low point.
Now, doubling that number again — from 35 to 70 — would be impressive, because it would be more than enough to sustain a Governor Baker veto.
In order to get there, the Mass GOP needs to find candidates for the Legislature who are more like Governor Baker and less like, for example, the GOP candidate in the special State Senate election next month, Geoff Diehl. For instance, in last year’s minimum wage increase debate, Diehl actually proposed lowering the minimum wage to the federal level of $7.25 per hour. Really?
By contrast, Baker approved of the Legislature’s minimum wage increase, and he was the primary reason the Legislature increased the Earned Income Tax Credit this year.
If the state GOP would run legislative candidates who can’t be caricatured as tea party adherents, things could get pretty interesting.
I’d feel better if our actual Republicans — such as Colleen Geary — would run as Republicans.
Wouldn’t it be awesome if our Democrats were Democrats, our Republicans were Republicans, and the two might, I don’t know, balance each other or something.
Nah, that’s just too idealistic.
An extra plus for this
Surely someone could beat her in a primary, arguing that she’s been playing the voters by fundamentally lying about her party affiliation.
She’s a good fit for the district.
She does vote better than many GOPers would on many occasions.
Unlike some when it comes to other elections she does endorse Dems.
What I hear you saying is that she comes from a GOP district. I’d rather see her run, honestly, as a moderate/liberal Republican. I don’t care who she endorses.
Given the current “Democratic” supermajority, I don’t think we need her votes nearly as much as we need assertive and effective PROGRESSIVE Democrats in the House.
Many of them are the same type of Dem that Rep. Garry is. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I probably should disclose that I was her intern at one point, a constituent, friend, and supporter for several years. I’m also not making any critiques of her on policy that I haven’t told her directly. She knows quite well I’m more liberal than she is.
I absolutely see the same things you see. I lived in Dunstable and Billerica, I know Tyngsboro, I know Dracut.
I’m saying that betraying our values to keep those Republican districts voting for Republicans who call themselves Democrats hurts all of us, Republicans and Democrats alike. If elected Democrats governed like democrats, Republicans governed like republicans, and each party had a range from “radical” to “conservative” (I think that’s the more appropriate dichotomy), then I suggest that our government and political process would be much improved.
of the reality distortion field at work in this thread, sitting here fuming at the sheer stupidity at work in a state that will elect Sen Warren in a close and well-contested election, but can’t elect something other than a right-wing legislature, because (1) party loyalty is prized above all; (2) loyalty is defined in purely personal, back-scratching terms, and has no relation of any kind to any kind of principle; and (3) well we have to support the non Democratic Democrats, because if we don’t “Republicans would be worse” and Massachusetts might somehow turn into Texas and ban abortion.
And so you get a legislature that can make dramatic cuts to higher education spending, by overwhelming vote, without debate, and folks here scratch their head and say “gee thats not in the platform, the party doesn’t support that” and pretend that it is true.
I don’t pretend to know her district. Maybe an actual self-identifying Republican would be a better fit for it. She votes with House leadership, but for the same reason she keeps a D next to her name, job security. I believe in a big tent, but the only reason Garry’s in this tent is for the free cocktails.
1) They can elect a Republican
One less vote for DeLeo and unlimited terms, so ironically it’ll move the chamber closer to the center and be a step towards good governance. She’s a D solely for the gravy train that comes with being part of a majority that’s been in uninterrupted power since Truman’s re-election.
2) No she doesn’t
3) Who cares?
Nothing happened to the reps that endorsed Brown or Baker, and it’s not like she delivered her district for Coakley. Would Healey, Goldberg, or Bump not been easily re-elected without her endorsement? Or Ed Markey? Or Hillary Clinton in 2016? Really low hanging fruit to praise a Democrat for endorsing their fellow party members. That’s like giving a kindergartner a trophy for learning how to share.
I never claimed she voted progressively, just that there have been votes she has taken from time to time that remind me as a constituent why she is a Dem and why she’s preferable to certain alternatives.
I want Democrats who vote like democrats nearly all the time.
She represents a Republican district, and I think that district should be represented by a Republican.
Her votes are nearly identical to every Republican on that list, down the line, other than votes the leadership wants against transparency, term limits, and DeLeo. I would postulate from our perspective a Republican is preferable, same regressive voting record on every issues except for the three that matter-pro-transparency, pro-term limits, and Brad Jones instead of DeLeo which in my view is an improvement on the incumbent. All these Democrats in Republican districts do for us is vote against the very mechanisms progressives could use to constrain DeLeos power.
Who gives a shaving cream can if she endorses Dems? You admit, above, that “Dem” has no content or meaning. DeLeo is a member of the party, even though you admit he isn’t a Democrat in any meaningful sense.
Well, um, unlike many GOPers, when she tells liberals to fuck off, she doesn’t physically attack them as well. So, that’s a good reason to have a conservative in the party.
Sheesh.
Any Democrat is better than any Republican. I read it here.
I would suggest that everyone can keep their biases and vote their preference, but the next re-redistricting should be via nonpartisan commission. It’s hard enough for an R to get elected in MA without gerrymandering. Garry’s seat wouldn’t change (she’s an anomaly in multiple ways), but with some common sense districts (not intentionally favoring R’s) you could probably get 10+ Republicans in the House and three or four in the Senate.
I am amazed. Colleen Garry and her positions. DeLeo is a hyper-progressive in front of her. Oh my. Does anyone run against her in a primary?
Well, she’s against cruelty to animals. So she differs with Willard there, but that’s just impressive.
held by a Democrat in the state.
While she’s personally not the greatest (I’ll leave that alone) she was the aide for her predecessor, she’s been in office a long time, she takes care of electoral business (particularly seniors). She votes her district.
Good luck challenging her in a primary. I only know this from looking at it once, but in a recent Dracut town election the number of people voting over 85 years old exceeded the number of people voting under 25. She’s got those two towns in a choke hold.
I am saying let’s cut her loose. I don’t want any state party funds going towards her re-elction, let a Republican take over the seat-it’s what the voters there really want anyway. At least a Republican won’t vote for DeLeo, will vote for term limits, and will vote for transparency. And the GOPer challenging Miceli at least was a social progressive, unlike him or Garry.
‘But a Republican will have that seat if s/he doesn’t vote her district’ is probably the dumbest argument on this thread. The GOP caucus could double in size and we would still have a majority, possibly a more workable one without detritus like this sucking away at the patronage trough while killing liberal legislation and enabling corrupt Speakers.
…should be used for those who more closely adhere to the platform, though I’m only aware of a prohibition on using them on candidates who have endorsed outside the party. I don’t know if any state party funds are used to prop up Colleen Garry, though she may have benefited from pushback against Mass Fiscal’s dishonest targeting of Dems last cycle. I sometimes think we forget that all politics is local and often even personal, so while we theorize about how great party cohesion would be we forget that in practice there is a lot more too it than that.
I got that Garry is a friend and mentor, guys like Galluccio and Sullivan filed that role for me while being a bit closer to the ward heeler wing of the party. I even worked on a campaign with a guy who was close to DeLeo that way. But, I don’t see how you can defend the platform which you and others work hard on adopting and developing as anything meaningful if legislators typically are allowed to ignore it with impunity. What is Garry getting the progressive movement that a Republican in her seat would somehow take away?
I think the answer is malarkey, and that Republican would probably be be identically bad on our issues but at lead would be voting against DeLeo, and voting for transparency and term limits.
What I’m arguing is that there is more to politics, even Dem politics, than the progressive movement. I’m just trying to explain what other factors come into play.
The progressive movement plays no role whatsoever in Massachusetts Democratic politics.
The role of progressives in Massachusetts Democratic politics is to donate their time, money and support to the conservative movement.
exactly the BS I had sniffed out from previous posts.
So there are Dems that are conservative, so the best way to deal with that is to elect Republicans who most likely be further to the right.
Well, I’m going with that’s really stupid.
Primary candidates and support those who’s values you share. Don’t support those further to the right. How does that make any sense.
The most important thing progressive Democrats can do right now is remove Bob DeLeo as Speaker of the House.
The most effective way to help that is replace “Democrats” who vote like Republicans and also vote for Bob DeLeo with Republicans who vote the same but vote AGAINST Bob DeLeo. In a district like Dracut, that we discussed upthread, it makes all KINDS of sense to replace Colleen Garry with a Republican, even if that Republican is further to the right of her.
The first order of business for progressives in Massachusetts is to unseat Bob DeLeo. If that means turning some right-wing Democratic seats into far-right Republican seats, so be it.
You said in one clear post what took me four to articulate. But that’s my point, we are looking at 10-20 seats that are held by DINOs that should go GOP. Removing those folks would actually do a lot of good, and make the progressive caucus suddenly a force to be reckoned with rather than a force to be marginalized.
If you Republicans would please just stop making the liberals and progressives support right ring candidates all the time, that would be great.
that all Republicans simply turn into Democrats. The Governor — their standardbearer after all — opposes all tax increases and thinks that agency regulations are just so much junk that accumulates in basements. Many differences between the parties would remain.
But it would be refreshing to hear a debate that was not the same old, same old.
The House, led by Speaker DeLeo, also opposes all tax increases.
As far as I can tell, his interest in agency regulations seems to be dominated by ensuring that he be able to provide patronage positions for his relatives, friends, and contributors while insisting that he knows nothing about it (let’s remember what the thread-starter is about). He would have us believe that his passionate support for casino gambling has nothing whatsoever to do with his family’s long personal interest in Suffolk Downs — his father, Al DeLeo, worked at the “Turf Club” (the restaurant at Suffolk Downs) for 50 years. It’s just a coincidence, I guess, that so many of his life-long political supporters will benefit so directly from casino gambling.
The fact is that I see very little difference between our current Republican governor and our current “Democratic” Speaker of the House.
Baker was elected because he’s similar to our legislature?
That’s the whole thing I don’t get with the comments and post. I don’t see Baker being elected having anything to do with the legislature. This particular election cycle didn’t focus on the legislature.
Plus, the comments haven’t shown that either. You voted for Baker because you hate the legislature, really? That’s what happened?
I hope that we have a few contested primaries, my sense that is the main take from the post and I wholeheartedly agree.
I didn’t vote for Charlie Baker, I’ll let the others speak for themselves.
The point is that one reason Charlie Baker won is that the Coakley campaigned tried to run against some Republican bogeyman — “terrible things will happen if we have another Republican Governor”. Right now, too many Massachusetts Democrats are trying to blame our problems on Charlie Baker, after we’ve had uncontested domination of state government for two terms of Deval Patrick and done virtually nothing about the problems we faced when Mr. Patrick took office.
We need a Democratic legislature that ACTS like Democrats before electing a Democratic governor is going to make any difference at all.
B/t
but voters should. If they do not agree with his policies they should take him to task. Why shouldn’t they? Explain.
The voters most certainly should take Charlie Baker to task. That’s hard to do when, in a time of hypartisan discord, he and Bob DeLeo so gloriously model bi-partisan cooperation (as they both tell self-serving lies that pander to the most base instincts of the voters). It’s hard to do when the mass media that the voters depend on so studiously avoids sharing the truth of what’s actually happening (because too many voters don’t want to hear the truth and will respond by changing channels to one that continues to tell more comforting lies).
The most effective way for voters to take a governor to task is to vote for somebody else. In order to do that, there must BE somebody else in the race who is actually DIFFERENT in an effective way.
That didn’t happen in the last election, and it’s unlikely to happen in the next election unless SOME political party steps forward. Neither the Massachusetts GOP nor the Massachusetts Democratic Party has done that in any effective way for years if not decades.
Since we’re such a big tent we can’t move decisively in a progressive direction without upsetting some of our own party. The irony is, the platform and most resolutions that come from conventions or the DSC are pretty progressive. All those of us inside the party have to do is cite our own official stances when talking to Dem legislators. Our chair who is a Senator can and should lead the charge from the inside, but even against Baker we are more likely to take umbrage over silly stuff than push back on policy differences.
I would be much happier with a smaller majority if it was more committed to the causes I care about. I get that Miceli’s district based in Wilmington and Tewksbury isn’t the most progressive place, so let them elect a real Republican and they can kick our DINO to the curb and out of leadership. In many ways, both actions would move the chamber closer to the center. Colleen Gerry and the other gross offenders. Power isn’t worth it if it comes at the price of a revolving door of leadership going to jail for unethical behavior.
Our biggest electoral failure is abysmal midterm minority turnout, do we really want to make Nick ‘keep police misconduct secret’ Collins be the face of our state party in Boston? That’s an urban district, and his actions are disgraceful morally and politically. I recall Dan Winslow being the kind of Republican who was on the right side of those civil liberties questions, even if he was wrong on many economic ones. DeLeo is the fat face of our party, not Deval, and people need to wake up and recognize that.
Success? Where? Casinos? Tax cuts? Killing the T? Gutting higher education?
I am not sure that this list of successes would be appreciably different if it were the GOP rather than the Dems who had unfettered control of the Commonwealth for a quarter century?
“Leave No Trace” is supposed to be a goal for backpackers, and not political parties.
Decade? Really? Yikes.
Pretty sure we were making the same argument back then too 🙁
It goes like this:
Get off my lawn!
I made a separate comment with my opinion. Unsure about this reply.
vote for Charlie Baker. They were, in fact, decisive.
This idea that Democrats will vote against their own representatives because supporting Republicans will provide the dope slap necessary to wake them up from the nightmare that is the Democratic legislative leadership is worse than quixotic.
…that the Deleo quotes above sound as coherent as a Sarah Palin interview?:)
A lot of these sins would be washed by going to a progressive income tax, which should be perfectly feasible politically – given the improved budget discioline and the super Democratic majority in the Legislature.