As Christopher alerted us, last night the Democrats took two more seats in the State Senate. The Dem majority is a laughable 36-4. As we all know, the Dem supermajority is a self-perpetuating thing: Some of those Dems are pretty conservative, and with a different balance of power they’d be Republicans. Nonetheless the Senate has generally been rather more progressive — and productive — than Bob DeLeo’s House.
The election of climate-woke Susan Moran in Plymouth/Barnstable is significant, since she’s representing a particularly climate-vulnerable district which nonetheless is fairly conservative. Her opponent Jay McMahon ran as an anti-tax, anti-regulation, anti-immigrant hardliner. (I mean, he’s got a picture of himself with the monstrous Bristol Sheriff Tom Hodgson on his website.) His campaign manager, the too-familiar Holly Robichaud, complained that Falmouth “rigged the election” by scheduling an override vote to hire eight firefighters the same day. Obviously that’s sour grapes, but it is true that Moran dominated in Falmouth with strong turnout.
In 2nd Hampden/Hampshire, John Velis got a promotion to Senate from the House, taking the seat that Don Humason vacated to become Mayor of Westfield. A “fiscally conservative” Democrat, Velis defeated a pretty hard-right candidate in John Cain: Pro-gun, anti-tax, anti-immigrant … a man of seemingly few words. This seat was held by Republicans since 2002 (Knapik).
More to the point: This is a rebuke of MassGOP chair Jim Lyons’ bear hug of Trumpism. This was always discordant considering that the party’s standard-bearer is Charlie Baker, who for all his faults is not a Trump guy. Trumpism is just not going to play in Massachusetts: Seemingly not anywhere in the state; certainly not in 2020; and hopefully not ever.