See: Charlie Baker ousts Tea Party rival
NEXT DAY UPDATE: GOP ballot may face challenge
OTHER UPDATES:
Candidate says he’ll sue GOP over ballot results
Conventional wisdom for state GOP
In GOP convention dispute, democracy draws a blank
Dispute over convention vote roils state GOP
Next up on the menu(?): Poll shows Coakley has big lead in governor’s race
Or will it be a touch of Kayyem pepper?
"GOP support for Charlie Baker runs deep" by Frank Phillips | Globe staff March 19, 2014
Just days before the Massachusetts Republican convention, pragmatism is overriding rigid ideology as rank-and-file Republicans from across the political spectrum rally behind gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker in a surge that some feel will clear the field of his Tea Party rival.
Baker, the 2010 nominee who lost to Governor Deval Patrick, is heavily favored to win the GOP convention endorsement Saturday, party veterans say. He is also expected to roll up a large enough number of delegates to derail the candidacy of his only opponent, Mark Fisher, a Shrewsbury businessman who is favored by many Tea Party supporters. Fisher is running on a strong anti-Beacon Hill platform.
Party rules require statewide candidates to capture 15 percent of the delegate votes at the Saturday convention in order to run in the September primary election....
Related:
15-percent rule at party caucuses contributes to democracy
15 percent rule? It’s democratic
Conservative leaders, while agreeing with Fisher’s right-leaning antigovernment positions, say that they are backing Baker. Despite his long experience on Beacon Hill running state agencies and his close alignment with the more moderate GOP establishment, Baker, they said, is a more realistic option.
Since his 2010 loss, Baker has worked the political corridors, backyard picnics, and other gatherings of GOP conservative enclaves. He has campaigned for their candidates and donated to their causes.
His argument that they share common ground around fiscal issues appears to have resonated. Within the Tea Party wing of the state party — among those who have strong feelings against abortion rights and same sex marriage — Baker, who supports abortion rights and legalization of same-sex marriage, has made gains.
“There is generally no discontent in the conservative community about his getting the nomination,’’ said one local activist, who describes himself as a friend and admirer of Fisher. The activist, who declined to be named, is backing Baker because he offers a more realistic chance for Republican victory.
Rob Eno, the publisher of Red Mass Group, a conservative blog, framed the issue in even stronger terms: “Because [Baker] has worked the grass roots and been in the trenches helping Republican conservatives, the grass roots have come to love him.”
There are pragmatic reasons for that support, as well. Baker, with his fund-raising prowess and political campaign experience, is seen as the GOP’s best hope of recapturing the governor’s office, a victory that would help bring about some of the changes they seek in state government spending.
“They’ve grown to understand the stakes are so high for the Commonwealth that they’re backing someone who can win,’’ said Eno....
One measure of a candidate’s overall strength is his or her fund-raising ability. Fisher has raised $5,000 from individual donors, while Baker has pulled in $1.37 million in contributions.
Fisher’s campaign manager, Debbie McCarthy, disputes the predictions that he will fall short of the 15 percent hurdle. But she acknowledges it will be a tough fight to clear it. She said much depends on persuading Fisher supporters to get to the convention in Boston. Some 2,000 delegates are expected to show up at Boston University’s Agganis Arena.
“We are in a fight to get our 15 percent,’’ she said, describing how she appeals to supporters. “I tell them every vote counts for Mark and it is going to be very tight.’’
The Baker campaign declined to comment on the increasing chatter in GOP circles that Fisher will not qualify for the ballot in a replay of four years ago....
He didn't.
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Time to broaden the base:
"Mass. GOP works to broaden its base" by Akilah Johnson | Globe Staff March 22, 2014
It was the latest of several recent rallies meant to energize the base for the upcoming election and for Saturday’s party convention at Boston University, where Republicans will gather to nominate candidates for statewide office.
What happened during this pre-convention rally is the embodiment of the party’s quest to expand its base in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans more than 3 to 1.
To expand their support, Massachusetts Republicans are reaching out to voters in urban areas and in general to people of color, letting them know there is a place for them in the Grand Old Party. Their pitch: the economy....
“It’s no secret that the reason we lose on Election Day is because we lose in urban cities,” Kirsten Hughes, chairwoman of the Massachusetts Republican Party, said this week before grabbing the microphone to fire up the crowd at the pre-convention rally. “It’s not rocket science. We have to go to places we haven’t typically gone.”
So the state’s Republican leaders are focusing their outreach on the voters who they say have been failed by the Democratic Party’s policies, while trying to avoid getting mired in the racial and ethnic quagmires plaguing the more right-leaning faction of the national party.
But when a national leader steps on the third rail of cultural politics by saying something contentious about race, poverty, or some other social justice issue, much like Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan recently did, black and Latino Republicans in Massachusetts say their outreach efforts become that much harder.
Ryan, the 2012 vice presidential candidate, said in a radio interview: “We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work.”
Dana Gonsal said he became a Republican five years ago, in large part to ensure that there was a black person in the room to push back against such comments. How can the party become inclusive and culturally attuned if it there are not many people of color present to hold it accountable, he asked.
“If we’re not in the room, we’ll never be heard,” said Gonsal, who is the Republican chairman of Ward 18, a massive swath of the city anchored by Hyde Park and Mattapan and teeming with residents from Haiti and other Caribbean nations as well as voters of Polish, Italian, and Irish heritage. “You can’t leave it the way it is. You can’t be marginalized. Sometimes, we need to step up to the plate.”
He talks about the party of Lincoln and abolitionists. He talks about fiscal responsibility and job creation. He talks about the party as it existed before a Democratic president signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which solidified black voters as a Democratic bloc.
Gonsal said his wife “thinks I’m crazy for being a Republican, but she’s starting to understand.”
That wincing reaction is something Robert Fortes said he has become familiar with while campaigning as a black Republican in communities of color. “What’s it like to be a Republican in Boston?” Fortes asked the crowd at Tuesday’s preconvention rally after gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker pulled him to the microphone to say a few words.
“Rough,” he answered as Alex Veras, a member of the Massachusetts chapter of a group called the Café Con Leche Republicans, called out: “Tell us how you really feel.”
Fortes, who worked in the administration of Governor Mitt Romney, said later that the current political climate creates “an added layer of toughness” in what is already an uphill battle when campaigning for Republican candidates....
With two black Democrats occupying the seats of power at the White House and the Corner Office of the State House, Fortes said, Republicans have a hard sell with African-Americans who support both Obama and Governor Deval Patrick overwhelmingly.
“You have to get beyond that,” he said. “When you are talking about issues such as charter schools, issues such as jobs, the high unemployment rate of African-American males especially, and when you point out who’s been in charge and how a different direction could change that, people always listen. But it’s a long process.”
At the same time the state party tries to woo communities of color, it also faces a problem on another front.
Republican congressional candidate Richard R. Tisei, the nominee for lieutenant governor in 2010, says he will not attend Saturday’s convention to protest planks in the state party platform that oppose gay marriage and abortion rights. Tisei is gay and got married last summer.
Related: Richard Tisei to boycott GOP convention
The process of trying to broaden the party’s reach is further complicated by the deeply polarized nature of modern politics, said Kemp, for whom being a Republican is something of a birthright.
Kemp, who was in the same graduating class with Baker at Harvard College, where she majored in German studies, was 18 when she became a member of the Republican Party. It was years after her mother, who was born in Panama, became a US citizen and registered with the GOP....
When Republicans in elected office do not fully explain why they reject a bill, like the one extending emergency unemployment benefits, she said it reinforces the narrative that the party does not care about those in need.
“It comes back as you people don’t care, and I say, ‘That’s not true,’ and I have to find an explanation that extends beyond the word no,” she said. “We have to be able to excite, educate, and then engage. Those are the things we must do, regardless of color. That’s how we are moving to capture more people of color and others in our urban demographic.”
The state Republican Party, she said, must do a better job of engaging voters beyond its base. This summer, she said the Massachusetts party is launching a campaign tentatively called “I’m your neighbor” to show the diversity within the party, to show that not all Republicans are wealthy, middle-aged white men.
I am neither wealthy nor middle-aged.
The campaign will also help reveal some people’s inner Republican, she quipped, adding: “There are a number of small businessmen who are really Republicans but don’t know it. Why do you start a small business? Social mobility, wealth creation, and limited but effective government.”
That is the real message, she said.
I'm tired of me$$ages being $ent to me by political parties, complete with the imagery and illusion of ma$$ media.
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I'll probably vote Baker and Republican -- if I even vote -- but that is just a reflex.
