And the spread wasn't that wide to begin with.
"Gomez courts Democrats who backed Lynch" by Wesley Lowery | Globe Staff, May 26, 2013
“A lot of Lynch voters are naturally coming over to our side”
Actually, they aren't because I'm one. If there is a third-party on the ballot, any at all, that's where I'm going with my vote. It could be Satan himself running for office and he's got it. After all these years, it's become the devil you don't know and not the lesser of two evils.
Political observers say that stealing traditionally Democratic voters with moderate to conservative leanings from liberal Democrat Edward J. Markey is vital if Gabriel Gomez is to craft a statewide coalition reminiscent of the one that propelled Republican Scott Brown to the US Senate in 2010.
“Americans are antiparty in their thinking. We don’t like political parties and we are attracted to people who profess antiparty sentiments,” said Peter Ubertaccio, a political scientist at Stonehill College, who noted that Gomez’s chances of repeating Brown’s 2010 victory remain slim.
Facing an uphill battle in a state that has seen just five victorious GOP candidates in statewide races since 1978, Gomez must win over the Commonwealth’s independents — who make up 58 percent of registered voters — and Democrats who live in areas where Lynch, the most conservative member of the state’s all-Democratic congressional delegation, performed well in the primary.
That's me, and nope.
Lynch topped Markey’s vote total in four counties: Worcester, Norfolk, Bristol, and Plymouth. In addition to those voters, Gomez will also target the Democratic power base in South Boston, where he was spotted chatting with voters at Mul’s Diner on a recent Friday morning.
While he has yet to earn the backing of any of South Boston’s Democratic powerbrokers, as Brown did when he earned the endorsement of former mayor Ray Flynn, some of the neighborhood’s Lynch voters say they are giving Gomez a look.
Tom Smith, a South Boston resident who is active in local politics and campaigned for Lynch, said Markey has “done a lot of good things” and that he’s still trying to check out Gomez’s policies. But he said he is impressed with Gomez’s service to his country and with his attention to South Boston.
“I was a strong Stephen Lynch supporter,” he said, as he entered the TD Garden for the Boston Bruins’ May 16 playoff game against the New York Rangers. “I’m leaning toward him [Gomez].”
Both general election campaigns have also taken note of Lynch’s strong performances in some central and western parts of the state.
Hi!
Gomez has stepped up campaigning in communities with large Hispanic populations, such as Springfield, while the state Democratic Party dispatched top officials including John Walsh, state party chairman, to knock on doors in Agawam, Southwick, and other Western Massachusetts communities.
Voters in many of central and western Massachusetts’ working-class neighborhoods identified with Lynch’s past as an iron worker and union leader, an affection not easily transferred to Markey, a longtime congressman and lawyer.
“I just can’t warm up to Ed Markey at all, he’s way too liberal for me,” said Danny DeLollis, 55, an out-of-work teacher from Ayer and self-described conservative Democrat who supported Lynch in the primary.
I just don't like the fart mist, although he rates a bit better on drone and privacy policy.
While he said he’s open to potentially voting for Gomez, he notes that he has seen fewer commercials and advertisements for the Republican candidate and that, at this point, he is more likely to stay home from the polls than to vote for Gomez.
Advantage Markey.
“I supported Steve Lynch because he’s not a career politician. Gabriel Gomez says he’s not either, so there’s a chance I’d support him,” DeLollis said earlier this month, adding: “but I’ve yet to see one good Gabriel Gomez commercial.”
I have.
But Democrats are not conceding the Lynch voters, and a recent independent poll on the Senate race suggests that they are right in claiming victory, at least for now, in the battle for conservative Democrats.
Markey campaign officials insist that the core of Lynch’s support — blue-collar union workers concerned about the economy — has begun to fall in line to support their candidate, who has inherited much of Lynch’s volunteer base and who was recently endorsed by the AFL-CIO and Massachusetts Building Trades Council.
“Obviously Steve Lynch comes out of our ranks, he was one of our own,” said Frank Callahan, president of the building trades workers union. “That being said, there wasn’t a lot of difference between Lynch and Markey in terms of their voting records. With Markey and Gomez, there is a clear difference.”
Callahan cited Markey’s votes for the federal prevailing wage and to extend unemployment benefits, saying that while some union workers may be attracted to Gomez’s compelling biography and status as a political newcomer, Markey’s stances represent the best policy fit for blue-collar workers.
“Working families are looking for a candidate who will fight for jobs,” said Andrew Zucker, a Markey campaign spokesman. “We’re going to aggressively contrast Ed’s record of fighting to bolster manufacturing and invest in infrastructure with Gabriel Gomez’s refusal to offer anything but empty platitudes about what he’d do to spur job creation in Massachusetts.”
Meanwhile, a poll released earlier this month by the left-leaning Public Policy Polling showed Markey extended what had been a 4-point lead two weeks earlier into a 7-point advantage over Gomez.
Interesting. Keep that in mind.
While an earlier poll by the company showed Gomez with as much as 21 percent support among Massachusetts Democrats, Thursday’s poll showed that slipping to 12 percent.
“That suggests that voters who supported Stephen Lynch in the primary election are starting to unify more around Markey now,” said Tom Jensen, the polling firm’s director.
And even if Lynch voters were flooding into Gomez’s camp, Ubertaccio said, the Republican candidate would still face a deck stacked against him.
“Stephen Lynch voters aren’t enough to carry you, and many of them are going to vote Democratic in the election no matter who the Republican is,” he said.
Gomez, for his part, is hoping that his populist calls for congressional term limits and a balanced budget amendment will be enough to sway Massachusetts voters.
Speaking only for myself there are two issues: the future of empire and the economic system. All others are important but secondary, diversionary, and divisive. And cui bono?
“I always vote the person, not the party. I voted for Scott Brown,” declared Starr, as the Braintree family concluded the dining-room table conversation with Gomez....
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Markey needs help.
"Democrats’ machine gears up for Edward Markey; Memory of Scott Brown’s win fuels drive" by Jim O’Sullivan | Globe Staff, June 02, 2013
Massachusetts Democrats are working to prop up what some have called a lackluster campaign by US Representative Edward J. Markey with a ferocious ground game that operatives expect will overwhelm Republican nominee Gabriel E. Gomez’s insurgency.
Democratic political operatives say the party’s ground game, honed by a steady parade of statewide elections and galvanized by the memory of a special election loss in 2010, will elevate a candidacy that has been conducted largely out of the public eye.
??????
The specter of 2010, when then-state Senator Scott P. Brown stunned Attorney General Martha Coakley, stirs bile in the state’s heavily Democratic political establishment. That year, a full 107,000 of the state’s most devoted Democratic voters did not go to the polls for a special Senate election that Brown won by more than 109,000 votes.
Then Brown still would have won?
“To screw up a US Senate special election isn’t a theory for us,” state Democratic Party chairman John Walsh said. “We’ve done it, so nobody is taking anything for granted.”
Markey has, to date, run a reserved campaign notably light on a public schedule, despite Gomez’s recent spate of attacks. On Thursday, the Cook Political Report, an electoral handicapping publication, shifted the race from “lean Democrat” to “toss up.”
Even though a week ago I was told Markey had extended his lead?
Markey aides say much of the candidate’s time has been spent in private events, shoring up support from key interest groups.
And here I was silly enough to think you needed votes to win an election.
But a Democratic political machine that has been in power since 2006, when Governor Deval Patrick first won election, has been laboring strenuously to fire up ground troops and revive the enthusiasm that has the party on a winning streak.
Disappointment tends to dull that.
Markey, who has not exhibited the charisma that helped previous Democratic victors draw voters to the polls, is poised to be the ultimate beneficiary of the party’s thoroughly oiled voter-turnout apparatus.
The fix is in!
Carl Nilsson, Markey’s field director, said the campaign has been structured “very much on the tops of the shoulders of Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama,” borrowing get-out-the-vote tactics and staff....
Warren barely won with 52%.
Republicans have argued that Markey is waging a laissez-faire campaign that does not match Gomez’s frequent public events. Gomez campaign officials say that they will capitalize on their candidate’s outsider appeal by outworking the Democrats....
Markey’s often-stilted manner on the stump, say Democratic operatives, has made it politically advantageous to focus on his policy stances rather than relying on his interpersonal skills.
Are you SURE YOU GUYS LEARNED from Coakley because it DOESN'T LOOK LIKE IT!
On gun control, abortion rights, and other policy matters, party insiders are confident that Markey distinguishes himself from Gomez in the eyes of a special-election voter base that will not focus on the 37-year congressman’s style on the campaign trail.
That goeth before a fall.
At a May 24 rally in Dorchester designed to tout Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s support, Markey pulled out one of his favorite tricks on the stump: an occasionally awkward play on words....
One senior Democratic operative said Markey’s message has been tailored to the relatively narrow slice of the electorate expected to turn out when he and Gomez square off on June 25.
“He’s speaking to a very narrow group of people who are going to vote no matter what,” the operative said, pointing to Markey’s rhetoric on gun control, moneyed conservative interests, and tax policy. “And they’re going to vote, and this is what motivates them. And it worked in the primary. This is not a regular cycle.”
Maybe his staff isn't up to being in the Senate.
The Democratic machine has paid recent dividends. Last year, after many Democratic strategists left US Representative John Tierney for dead in his race against former state Senate Minority Leader Richard Tisei, the Salem Democrat managed a narrow victory, benefiting from the Warren and Obama turnout operations.
I thought stolen, bit whatever.
The state GOP has no such campaign infrastructure. Typically, Bay State Republicans rely on a centrist message and an against-the-machine narrative that Gomez has, at times, seemed poised to inherit.
Gomez has not benefited from the same national trends that boosted Brown. While Brown was able to run against Obama’s health care bill, Gomez has yet to reap momentum from the various controversies engulfing Washington, including the administration’s response to the September 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, the Department of Justice monitoring of reporters, and the Internal Revenue Service’s pursuit of conservative groups.
Thanks to the AmeriKan media downplaying and distorting them.
Still, Markey has been unable to distance himself from the largely untested Gomez, a former Navy SEAL and private equity investor.
Walsh, a veteran Democratic organizer, was dismissive of Gomez’s campaign strategy, calling it a “drop in and interrupt people’s breakfasts” approach....
Gomez’s plan, Walsh said, does not allow for the construction of a voter network like the one Democrats have been wiring. While Markey last week collected more than $700,000 from a fund-raiser with First Lady Michelle Obama, according to his campaign, Gomez is hobbled by the unpopularity of many national Republicans, whose appearances in Massachusetts might harm rather than help his cause....
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Also see:
Gomez Getting After Markey
Slow Saturday Specials: Gomez Goes Negative
Maybe it is just me. but I think the Globe will either endorse or secretly root for Gomez so it can claim Massachusetts is independent, bipartisan, forward-looking with fresh blood -- with the side benefit that Markey will remain in the House to continue in his senior position. A win-win for Massachusetts, right? Then the test will be whether Senator Warren can work with him. Read it here first.
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"Gomez tries to fight off Markey slam on GOP help" by Jim O’Sullivan and Michael Levenson | Globe Staff, June 03, 2013
QUINCY — Facing criticism over the support he has drawn from Washington-based Republicans, US Senate nominee Gabriel E. Gomez sought Monday to distance himself from the national party.
“I’m going to win this with or without D.C.,” Gomez said during a campaign stop in Quincy....
But Gomez’s campaign struggled to respond Monday to Markey aides’ charges that the Republican is being subsidized by the very same conservatives he had claimed earlier would not necessarily receive his support.
Gomez’s campaign has bought roughly $400,000 in television airtime, paid for in part by the state Republican Party, according to campaign officials. The ad, which will air in the Boston and Springfield markets, comes on the heels of a previous media buy of roughly the same size, which ran from May 17 through May 26....
I've seen some of the ads.
On Monday, Markey brought up the letter while campaigning with Caroline Kennedy at the Hebrew Senior Life building in Brookline and then again when speaking to reporters.
The quiet, low-key campaign meeting with the important people.
“Mitch McConnell sees Gabriel Gomez as a big gain for the Republican Party, as an important step towards control of the United States Senate by the Republican Party,” Markey told reporters, as Kennedy looked on.
Markey and Gomez will meet for their first debate on Wednesday night.
I'll probably miss it, sorry.
On Monday, Gomez pointed to Markey’s 37 years in Washington as an indication that the Malden Democrat would perform well, “in terms of expectations.”
Candidates frequently try to frame their opponents as better debaters as a way of managing predebate perceptions.
“I’m sure he’s a much better debater,” Gomez said.
After Gomez left McKay’s, the diner where he greeted prospective voters, state Democratic Party chairman John Walsh stood outside the restaurant in the drizzle and told reporters that Gomez would be a “full partner” with the national GOP establishment.
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