"Charlie Baker sets sights on Lowell; Independents, conservative Democrats are focus for GOP" by Joshua Miller | Globe Staff August 16, 2014
LOWELL — The first major stop Charlie Baker made after he announced last year that he was running for governor was in this onetime mill city.
The Republican has been back for public campaign events seven times since then, discussing welfare reform, holding a small business roundtable, and schmoozing with voters at the Lowell Folk Festival last month. He’s set to return Saturday for the city’s Southeast Asian Water Festival.
All the attention is no coincidence.
The city of about 110,000 — and the surrounding Merrimack Valley — is a battleground filled with the kind of conservative Democrats and independent voters that Baker needs to win in November, analysts say.
I wish I cared more about the race because it is important. It's just that the same old intere$ts will be $erved no matter who rules here in Ma$$achu$etts.
The Merrimack Valley is “much more of a blue-collar Democrat type of vote that can definitely go to Republicans,” said Steven C. Panagiotakos, a former Democratic state senator from Lowell. “You combine that with a heavy percentage of unenrolled voters . . . and it makes for a fertile ground for a Republican.”
Lowell, itself, he said, is not quite as conservative as some of the surrounding areas and usually goes Democratic in a presidential year, but “in a gubernatorial year, there’s a smaller turnout and the Republican can usually keep it pretty close here.”
Republican Scott Brown won Lowell in his upset January 2010 US Senate victory. Baker lost the city by more than 8 percentage points when he came up short against Governor Deval Patrick that November. When Elizabeth Warren unseated Brown in 2012, she took Lowell by a comfortable margin.
The city’s battleground nature is reflected in Baker’s eight public campaign visits there since launching his campaign. By way of comparison, his campaign says Baker has had only three public campaign appearances in Springfield, the state’s third-largest city, which tends to vote by large margins for Democratic candidates.
Democrats running for governor have also put time and effort into Lowell and the surrounding region, according compilations of campaign events put together by their campaigns.
Treasurer Steven Grossman has made at least seven public campaign appearances in Lowell since he kicked off his bid for governor, while former federal health care official Donald M. Berwick has held five Lowell events during his campaign, including one on Tuesday.
Relateds:
Casino Coverage is Grossman
Berwick's Bullsh**
During her gubernatorial bid, Attorney General Martha Coakley, leading the primary race in public opinion polls, has made seven public campaign visits to Lowell, a city that probably already is familiar with her from her time as the Middlesex district attorney.
She has blown it before and I expect vote fraud from certain quarters.
“The greater Lowell area has been a strong region for Republican candidates for governor,” said Massachusetts Republican strategist Jason Kauppi, a former reporter with The Sun of Lowell. “But you also have Coakley, who is a former D.A. up there and has prosecuted some very high-profile cases in that area and is well-known.”
Boston Globe polling has found the hypothetical gubernatorial race between Coakley and Baker to be within the margin of error among likely voters in the Merrimack Valley broadly defined — from Ayer to Carlisle to Haverhill. In a general election matchup including independent candidates, Baker takes 31 percent to Coakley’s 36 percent in the region, according to combined polling data from recent months, which carries a margin of error of plus or minus 5.8 percentage points.
So it was no surprise that Baker, seen as the front-runner for the GOP nomination this year, was shaking hands at the Lowell Folk Festival last month.
He chased after a man wearing a Dropkick Murphys T-shirt, and let it be known that the group is one of his very favorite bands. He devoured a cup of chocolate chip ice cream, after talking with the wife of a local ice cream shop owner. And, exuberantly greeting a few men cooking skewers of meat, Baker got his own leg caught on temporary orange fencing and nearly tumbled into a hot grill.
Some in the crowd were already Baker supporters.
The man wearing the Dropkick Murphys T-shirt, Cameron Rogers, 57, of Haverhill, and his wife, Mary Ellen Rogers, 56, both said they planned to vote for the Republican.
“He’s right on the economic issues, he’s right on the social issues,” she said, explaining she likes Baker’s focus on education and his emphasis on the state being “smarter about how we pay for things.”
Caroline Howard, wife of the owner of Heritage Farm Ice Cream & Restaurant, was working at the business’s tent at the festival. After chatting with Baker, she told a reporter she was supporting the candidate.
“We just think being business owners, small business owners, we’d like to see more balance in that direction,” she said, adding that she thought Baker would look out for shops like Heritage Farm.
Baker, who has emphasized an upbeat persona during campaign appearances, was bright and cheery in his interactions with people at the festival.
He procured a kielbasa sandwich from one of the ethnic food vendors there and was mid-bite as a Lowell police officer greeted him.
“How you doin’?” the officer asked, as fiddle music lilted through the air.
“I’m having a kielbasa sandwich,” Baker replied. “I’m doing great!”
With November a long way away, a number of attendees said they were still mulling the governor’s race, which includes the three Democrats, Baker and Republican businessman Mark R. Fisher, and three independent candidates.
“I wouldn’t want to disrupt you guys, but Charlie Baker, nice to meet you,” Baker said, shaking the hand of Chris Loucraft, 49 of Lowell, who was sitting at Athenian Corner Restaurant with two other men.
Loucraft, who considers himself an independent, thought for a moment when asked about the race.
Then, Loucraft replied, he had not yet made up his mind.
"Two brothers killed in Lowell shooting; Police answer a call for help early Sunday" by Jeremy C. Fox and Faiz Siddiqui | Globe Correspondents August 10, 2014
LOWELL — Two brothers are dead after a shooting on Andrews Street early Sunday, authorities said.
Police responded the home when someone called police about 2:30 a.m. asking for help. When officers arrived they found Keith Callahan, 35, and Joseph Callahan, 29, suffering from gunshot wounds, according to a statement from Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan and Lowell Police Superintendent William Taylor.
Keith Callahan died at the scene, and Joseph Callahan was taken to Lowell General Hospital, where he later died, authorities said.
No arrests have been made, but Sunday night police asked the public to help identify a suspect.
Ryan’s office said investigators are looking for a thin 5-foot 6-inch man between 25 and 35 years old.
Prosecutors released a sketch of the suspect, who has a goatee that extends a half-inch below his chin and dark hair that he wears in a short ponytail. He was seen wearing a white T-shirt and jeans.
Lowell police and State Police assigned to Ryan’s office are investigating the killings, authorities said. Autopsies on both men will be performed by the office of the state’s chief medical examiner.
A woman answering the phone at the Callahan family home in Lowell had no comment.
There was no answer at the phone listed for the residents of the Andrews Street home.
Outside of the home where the shooting occurred on Sunday afternoon, a spontaneous memorial for the brothers included a stuffed puppy with the handwritten messages “R.I.P” and “LOVE U” and a single yellow rose.
Friends of the family later poked a stuffed lion through the chain-link fence beneath police tape.
Residents on the block of weathered two-family homes where the shooting occurred said they believed the shots may have been fired during a party early Sunday, but they heard no commotion.
“I know they party a lot over there,” said Michelle Denny, 50, who lives a few houses down. “They have big cookouts, and have bonfires.”
Denny said she heard what she thought were fireworks as she waited for her daughter to return home early Sunday. Police arrived moments later, shining spotlights through the windows at the Andrews Street home, she said.
She described seeing a tall man being taken from the house on a stretcher.
Carrie Lincoln, 37, said she heard the shots as she lay awake Sunday morning. She feared for herself and her young children....
--more--"
"Police searching for gunman who killed 2 brothers in Lowell" by Faiz Siddiqui | Globe Correspondent August 11, 2014
LOWELL — Authorities searched for a suspect Monday in the shooting deaths of two sons of a retired Lowell police sergeant, as friends and loved ones built a makeshift memorial to the brothers....
Police are looking for a thin, 5-foot-6-inch, light-skinned Asian man 25 to 35 years old in the killings....
Retired Lowell police officer Jerry Flynn described the victims’ father, Richard Callahan, as a good person.
“He’s a cop’s cop,” said Flynn, who now serves as executive director of the New England Police Benevolent Association. “He’s a standup guy, and, you know, my heart breaks for him and his family. It’s just a tragic, tragic story.”
That's odd. Their father is/was a cop?
The shootings came as a shock to a community reeling from the July fire that killed seven in a Branch Street building.
“Unfortunately, we’ve been going through many tragedies in Lowell,” City Manager Kevin Murphy said. “It’s just difficult.”
City officials attributed the violence Sunday to the presence of illegal guns.
The shootings were probably carried out with an unregistered handgun, they said.
“It’s clearly well beyond the time to get serious on handgun controls,” Elliott said. “Illegal handguns are a major cause of crime in the city.”
(Sigh. I'm so sick of exploiters screaming every time something happens, fair, foul, or fraud)
Lowell police and State Police are investigating the shootings.
--more--"
“To have something like this happen to a police officer, it’s very devastating.”
The rest of us, not so much.
"Two men found shot dead in Lawrence; No suspects have been arrested yet" by Nicholas Jacques and Dan Adams | Globe Correspondents August 10, 2014
LAWRENCE — Police found two men shot dead inside an apartment complex early Sunday, authorities said.
Officers responding to a report of gunshots found the men just after midnight at 2 Inman St., the Essex district attorney’s office said. A spokeswoman would not say who called the police.
Authorities did not release the victims’ identities Sunday evening.
The deaths were being treated as homicides, said Carrie Kimball Monahan, spokeswoman for Essex District Attorney Jonathan W. Blodgett’s office.
State Police detectives assigned to Blodgett’s office are investigating. No arrests had been made by Sunday evening, Monahan said.
At the bustling Royal Park Garden apartment complex late Sunday afternoon, there was no sign of the early-morning shooting. Young families live in many of the apartments, and children played soccer and rode their bikes while their parents watched from balconies.
Several residents said they were not aware of the shooting until they woke up Sunday morning and found State Police detectives talking to neighbors for information about the shooting.
Residents said a man, his girlfriend, and her young daughter lived in the apartment where the shootings took place. All three had left by the morning, according to their neighbors.
The shooting took residents by surprise, with some saying the apartments were generally safe and that they could not remember any other recent violent incidents there.
--more--"
Related: Democrats vying for governor power up primary effort
"Grossman voters could be up for grabs for Baker; Democratic bloc cool to Coakley; GOP hopeful’s fiscal record cited" by Jim O’Sullivan | Globe Staff August 17, 2014
If Republican Charlie Baker erases Martha Coakley’s lead in the polls and becomes the next governor, he may have Democrat Steve Grossman to thank for it.
See: Mass. Politicians Misuse Campaign Money
Not because Grossman has so sorely tested Coakley in the Democratic primary, where she has consistently enjoyed a strong, and sometimes whopping, lead. But because Grossman supporters are signaling they would more likely back Baker than Coakley in November.
In a weekly Globe poll, voters planning to side with Grossman, the state treasurer, in the Sept. 9 primary have consistently said, by a margin of more than 10 percentage points, that they would vote for Baker if their preferred Democrat did not survive the primary.
I will be voting Coakley, then Baker, and that sucks.
And, among likely Democratic primary voters undecided in a Baker-Coakley matchup, Baker, the venture capitalist and former health care executive, has both a higher favorability rating and lower name recognition — indicating that he has more room to improve among those voters.
“These are probably moderate, pro-business Democrats, and they’re probably concerned about Coakley as governor,” said Ray La Raja, a University of Massachusetts political science professor. “They weren’t impressed with her last campaign, they’re not impressed with her this campaign. And they feel comfortable with Baker; they see him as a good manager.”
Of course, that lack of a firm profile in the minds of voters also leaves Baker susceptible to being defined negatively — a preview of which Baker got last week, when a super PAC backed by unions and the Democratic Governors Association purchased more than $3.1 million worth of television time. The ads are expected to raise questions about Baker’s business record.
And, as Coakley campaign strategists note, she has already been hit with $475,000 in negative advertising from a pro-Grossman super PAC, before her own campaign has begun to advertise assertively.
See: Grossman Fires First Salvo in Governor's Race
Coakley’s team says it is confident that, once the passions of an occasionally embittered primary cool, Democrats will return to their base camp.
But Baker, who is heavily favored over Tea Party candidate Mark Fisher in the Republican primary, has been assiduously courting Democratic activists, trying to soften both his image and his policy stances from his failed 2010 run against Governor Deval Patrick when, by Baker’s own admission, he came off as too strident.
Baker strategists figure that, to win, they would need at least 20 percent of Democrats to pull the lever for the other party. That’s roughly the same benchmark set by former US senator Scott Brown’s campaign in 2012, when he ran against Democrat Elizabeth Warren. But Brown was running concurrently with a presidential election, which garners significantly higher turnout.
Among independents — the vast voter universe in between the two parties that comprises the majority of the state’s electorate — Baker steadily collects about three in five voters, according to the poll. Coakley, the attorney general, gets about one in three.
This year, with polls showing Republican voters more enthusiastic than Democrats about the gubernatorial election, Baker is overtly trying to reach across the aisle. Of Baker’s roughly 17,000 donors, campaign officials estimated that some 1,500, about 9 percent, have been Democrats.
Do I look enthusiastic?
And abiding doubts among Democrats about their candidate field are a boon to Baker’s efforts. Baker consistently lures more Democratic voters than Coakley does Republicans in a head-to-head matchup.
“We’re just focused on the primary right now,” Coakley adviser Doug Rubin said. “If we’re lucky enough to earn the vote, we’ll turn our attention to the general.”
One Democrat who has already gone over the fence is John Connors. He owns a Waltham advertising agency, and had donated exclusively to Democrats on the state level, including to Patrick in 2009. But he hosted a Baker fund-raiser this summer at the UMass Club that he said netted $20,000, and plans to host another next month.
“I like the guy,” said Connors, whose father, Jack, is the longtime Boston advertising and health care magnate and a major Obama fund-raiser. “I like the fiscal side of him, and I like the social side of him. If you put those two together, as a business guy.”
Connors said his partisan fence-jumping had drawn “eye rolls” from some of his friends, but said he liked Baker’s plan for statewide economic improvement, instead of just inside Route 128. “This was the rational side of me more than the emotional side. Strategically, I think he’s just really smart about how to build the economy,” Connors said.
Former North Adams mayor John Barrett squired then-District Attorney Coakley around the state to meet with other mayors in 2006, during her first campaign for attorney general. Barrett, who later had a falling out with Coakley after she backed his political rival and who has backed Republicans before, initially expected to throw in this year with Grossman.
“Basically, I was leaning toward Grossman at the beginning of this and I just stepped back and I just said, ‘Jesus, I go back with Charlie Baker some 20 years’,” Barrett said, praising Baker’s work as a top aide in the 1990s Weld and Cellucci administrations.
He added, “I think there are a lot of other Democrats out there, too, who are looking at it that way, and I think they’ll come in after the primary.”
Braintree Mayor Joseph Sullivan, a former legislator, supports Grossman, but did not have a cross word for Baker or his running mate, former state representative Karyn Polito.
“I served with Karyn. I’ve worked with Charlie. Charlie performed well here four years ago. I think the people of Braintree are really focused on results. We have a pragmatic attitude toward government,” said Sullivan, whose town voted for Baker over Patrick four years ago by nine percentage points. “Rigid ideology is not going to get you too far.”
He knows voters are fed up with one-party rule in the wake of a heroin crisis, state drug lab scandal, meningitis murders, website failures, and whatever other failures I am leaving out after eight years.
Asked whom he would back if Coakley wins the primary, Sullivan was not ready to concede anything and reiterated his support for Grossman.
Of course, Baker’s leftward shift poses significant perils on his right flank, where Fisher has inflicted some headaches and where unenrolled candidate Jeffrey S. McCormick has been nibbling. (McCormick picks up around 10 percent of the Grossman vote if Coakley secures the nomination, according to the Globe poll, while another unenrolled candidate, Evan Falchuk, receives only a handful.) Baker supports the state’s new abortion clinic buffer zone law, backed Patrick’s embrace of the chance to shelter immigrant minors clustered on the US-Mexico border, and spoke in favor of stricter gun-control legislation.
I'll hold my nose when voting.
None of those positions enhanced his already-shaky appeal to the GOP right wing. But they are clear components of Baker’s strategy to project a more liberal image than he did when he ran against Patrick.
Yet he is under fire for picking a conservative woman instead of a gay man as a running mate this time. WTF is with the revision?
Jon Whitesell, a Northbridge conservative activist, ticked through a laundry list of Baker apostasies against the party’s conservative base, including resistance to a no-new-tax pledge and support for raising the minimum wage.
“Is that a Democrat or a Republican? He’s running as a full-spectrum Democrat,” said Whitesell.
After backing both Mitt Romney during the 2012 presidential election and Gabriel Gomez in last year’s Senate election, two candidates who gave conservatives heartburn, Whitesell said he had “had enough.”
“I can take an imperfect candidate like a Romney or a Gomez, but you’re giving me nothing,” he said. “Baker’s running as a Democrat — why bother?”
During a WBZ-TV roundtable on Friday, Fisher, the Tea Party candidate, sought to underscore the contrast between himself and Baker, mocking the Republican front-runner as Patrick’s “identical twin.”
Democratic candidates, too, have dealt with the tug of their base, which dominates the caucuses and convention, but is more liberal than the party mainstream. Coakley, with a comfortable lead in the primary polls, has worked to avoid the type of broad leftward stride that could knock her off balance for November. Still, she has shaded left on immigration issues.
“I suspect that now that she sees the nomination being more open to her, she’ll start toning down her liberal rhetoric,” said La Raja, the UMass professor.
Of the party’s liberal activists, La Raja said, “They’re opening up space for someone like Baker to pick off some of these moderate Democrats who might not be so liberal. The Democratic nominees have opened themselves up to this. We’ll see if Baker is a good enough politician to gain more of that.”
Yeah, we'll see. See how enthused I am?
--more--"
UPDATE: Raytheon deal is latest boost for UMass Lowell
