Victorious but dead broke: Winning MassGOP candidates scrounge for pennies | Bloodbath at Gannett | Voters cheated out of a real governor’s race | Underdogs underperformed | Quick Hits | About Contrarian Boston |
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With the victory of a Trump fanboy, governor’s race all but over
We could have had a real race this fall. One that revolved around the high cost of everything in Massachusetts.
Instead, we got Geoff Diehl.
Endorsed by Trump and guided by the ex-president’s political henchman, Corey Lewandowski, Diehl managed to beat Wrentham businessman Chris Doughty in Tuesday’s Republican gubernatorial primary, though it was a lot closer than the polls had predicted.
But it’s all downhill here for Diehl, and for what remains of the once-proud MassGOP, which is now circling the drain in its embrace of all things Trump.
The former state lawmaker’s slavish embrace of the ex-president all but ensures he has little chance of giving Attorney General Maura Healey, who just won the Democratic primary for governor, a run for her money, let alone beating her.
A first-time candidate for office, Doughty would have also faced stiff odds.
Yet the more pragmatic businessman built his campaign around a potentially winning theme, taking aim at the high cost of housing, electricity, and taxes that have made Massachusetts increasingly unaffordable to the middle class.
In the process, Doughty turned what could have been a blowout in the Republican primary, dominated by Trumpie hardliners, into a real race.
By contrast, Diehl, in an interview last week with MassLive, offered up this gem when asked he would do on his first day on the job as governor.
“On day one, I intend to re-hire all the state employees who lost their jobs for refusing to get a COVID vaccine. And, on day two, [lieutenant governor candidate] Leah Allen and I are going to give a pink slip to any middle manager who thought firing them was a good idea.”
Now that’s a winning strategy, sure to win over Democrats, independents, and moderate Republicans.
Other underdogs fall short as well
Labor lawyer Shannon Liss-Riordan came on strong during the campaign’s final weeks in the attorney general’s race.
But she fell short Tuesday of besting Andrea Campbell, a former Boston City Council president and mayoral candidate, despite spending millions on a closing ad and campaign blitz.
Tanisha Sullivan, president of the Boston branch of the NAACP, also failed in her bid to oust long-time incumbent Bill Galvin in the secretary of state race.
Meanwhile, Chris Dempsey, a former state transportation official who led the No Boston Olympics campaign, lost to state Sen. Diana DiZoglio by 54.1-46.9 percent in the state auditor’s race, despite holding a 15 point lead going into the final few weeks of the campaign.
However, the UMass Lowell poll that put Dempsey up by double-digits also warned that 37% of voters were undecided about who to back in the auditor’s race, the highest of any of the contests. Sure looks like they didn’t break Dempsey’s way.
DiZoglio, who told Contrarian Boston back in March she plans, if elected, to probe the use and abuse of non-disclosure agreements in state government, now faces another formidable opponent, Republican Anthony Amore, who has the strong backing outgoing Gov. Charlie Baker.
Amore, director of security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner, told CB back in May he plans take a hard look at spending in the UMass system if he wins the race to become the state government watchdog.
State Republican candidates enter fall campaign dead broke
Or to put it another way, all four major statewide Republican candidates - with the exception of the LG race - have just a little more than $63,000 combined, state campaign finance records show.
That’s roughly half of what Andrea Campbell, the Democratic candidate for attorney general, has left in her war chest after spending a $1 million in August to fend off a spirited challenge by labor lawyer Shannon Liss-Riordan.
In the key matchup, Diehl, the Republican candidate for governor, has just under $16,700 in the bank to take on Healey, who is sitting on a $4.7 million stockpile.
Seems like the $12,000 or so that Diehl is forking over every other month to Lewandowski, Trump’s one-time campaign manager, could be better spent elsewhere.
Bloodbath at Gannett
The tally is in and it sure doesn’t look good.
Gannett, the floundering nationwide news chain that has been shuttering local weeklies across Massachusetts right and left, gave walking papers to 400 employees across the country, Dan Kennedy at Media Nation notes, citing a Poynter Online story.
The newspaper chain, which reported a $54 million loss in its last quarterly report, also plans to leave another 400 positions unfilled.
Gannett is basically ghosting its weeklies, while dailies like the MetroWest Daily News, the Patriot-Ledger in Quincy and The Enterprise in Brockton have morphed into glorified weeklies in the level and quality of the stories they produce, with lots of advertiser friendly features.
We thought this observation by Kennedy to be right on target: “Here in Eastern Massachusetts, where Gannett closed or merged a couple of dozen weekly papers over the past year and all but abandoned local news, we’re seeing a flowering of independent projects to fill the gap. The opportunity is there, but Gannett just isn’t interested in it anymore.”
Quick hits:
Bad night for Warren? Makes high-profile endorsement of Shannon Liss-Riordan, only to see her lose: “Battenfeld: Another bad night for Elizabeth Warren in a Massachusetts” Boston Herald
Wu also had a long night: “A tough night for Wu, Warren, and progressive insurgents” CommonWealth Magazine
Hayden last man standing in ugly DA race: “Ricardo Arroyo concedes victory in Suffolk DA race to Kevin Hayden” Boston Globe
About Contrarian Boston
I have fielded emails over the past couple of months asking what Contrarian Boston is about.
Here’s a link to our mission statement – you can find it in the “about” section.
For a more prosaic, nuts-and-bolts description, read on.
An online newsletter, Contrarian Boston publishes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. In Contrarian Boston you’ll find analysis of the day’s news, and original reporting as well.
Our focus is:
· Politics and all levels of governance, good and bad, with an emphasis on state and local, with some national mixed in;
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· And whatever else catches our fancy.