Not easy to tell Gonzalez, Baker apart
What if Barack Obama endorsed the wrong candidate for governor? What if he meant to support Trump-bashing RINO Gov. Charlie Baker and got confused and ended up backing Democratic challenger Jay Gonzalez, the milder of the two men? I mean, if Obama wanted to help an anti-Trump candidate, who better than honorary Democrat Charlie Baker? Not that it matters very much. The Obama endorsement got lost in the frantic and overwhelming media coverage of the Judge Brett Kavanaugh drama as well as the Boston visit Monday of the aptly named U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake.
Flake, a previously obscure Republican from Arizona, became famous overnight when a sexually abused woman ambushed him on a Capitol Hill elevator to get him to oppose the Kavanaugh nomination. The weakkneed Flake folded. Even though he supported Kavanaugh, he called for another FBI investigation into Christine Blasey Ford’s unsubstantiated charges that Kavanaugh had sexually abused her when they were both in high school. The 21-member Senate Judiciary Committee, with no Democratic support, reported the nomination out favorably. Flake, in Boston for a previously arranged gathering, was treated as a hero at anti-Trump, anti-Kavanaugh rallies, even though he claims to still support Kavanaugh, pending the investigation. And even though he is not running for re-election in Arizona, where he is so unpopular that he cannot win, he then set off for New Hampshire to test the waters for a presidential run. Only in America.
While the Obama endorsement is good for Gonzalez, Obama would have made it better by showing up, if the former president really wanted to help fellow progressive Gonzalez. He would have come to Boston and held a rally, or even hosted a fundraiser. But he didn’t. Instead it was left to Gonzalez along with Quentin Palfrey, his lesser-known running mate, to make the announcement.
And in that announcement, in which Obama said Gonzalez was “a bold leader” with vision, Obama failed to mention Palfrey, whom he must have bumped into when Palfrey worked at the White House during Obama’s presidency.
Obama has a kindred spirit in Baker. Both look upon Trump with disdain. Trump in a short period of time has not only upended U.S. politics, he has also erased Obama’s thin legacy. And all the while — from the beginning of Trump’s campaign — Baker has been more critical of Trump than has Gonzalez. Baker was attacking Trump over his crackdown on illegal immigration, the border wall and just about everything else long before Trump even won the Republican nomination. Baker let it widely be known that not only did he oppose Trump, he did not vote for him either.
Meanwhile, Gonzalez’s attempts to tie Trump around Baker’s neck have so far failed. Hardly had Gonzalez proposed a tax on endowments of more than $1 billion held by colleges and universities like Harvard, than Baker pointed out that it was a Trump proposal he opposed. “I start with the proposition that when President Trump proposed this idea, I thought it was a bad idea then, and I still think it’s a bad idea,” Baker said. Baker was also critical of the Kavanaugh nomination. He supported Christine Blasey Ford and her unsubstantiated sexual abuse allegations against Kavanaugh.
However, in a statement Baker may live to regret, he said, “The accusations brought against Judge Kavanaugh are sickening and deserve an independent investigation.” That statement came at a time when his son Andrew “A.J.” Baker is under investigation by U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling for accusations that he groped a female passenger aboard a late-night JetBlue flight to Boston on June 20. State troopers detained Baker’s son at Logan airport and turned the matter over to the feds. Baker critics have accused investigators of stalling.
In any case, Gonzalez has his work cut out for him if he is to deny Baker a second term. An informal poll conducted at a gathering of some 400 Lowell Democrats and independents at the annual steak and lobster outing Saturday, hosted by Lowell Democratic Rep. David Nangle, concluded that Gonzalez support among this crowd was negligible. He was not even invited, but Baker was, and he was warmly greeted. “This is a Charlie Baker crowd,” said Nangle, who supports Baker.
Many of the Democrats praised Baker and, ironically, Trump as well. They credited Trump for the booming economy. They complained about an increasingly radical Democratic Party whose leaders support sanctuary cities, illegal immigration, open borders and the abolition of ICE. But they like Baker. One of them said, “Charlie Baker is what the Democrats used to be.”