Conservatives prize state party reins
Battle with Baker poses challenge
The “blank Baker” movement mostly fizzled at the ballot box, but a vocal band of conservatives now has its eye on a bigger prize — the chairmanship of the Republican State Committee.
Gov. Charlie Baker faces a tough test in the coming weeks, whether he can keep his grips on the top GOP job now that his close ally, Kirsten Hughes, is stepping down.
Conservatives for years have tried to grab the chairman’s seat, coming close but failing to win enough votes on the 80-member state committee.
But the drubbing the GOP took on Election Day, losing everything but the governor’s office and handing Democrats three more seats in the Legislature, may mean the time has finally come for change.
Conservatives may unite behind state Rep. Geoff Diehl, if Diehl, fresh off his U.S. Senate campaign loss, decides to run.
But actually getting control of the state GOP is a big challenge that conservatives could easily lose.
Take the vaunted “blank Baker” campaign. Conservatives tried to embarrass Baker by urging voters to blank the governor’s race, but Baker ended up winning by a 2-1 margin.
Final election results just certified show that 78,050 voters blanked the governor’s ballot, less than three percent of all 2,752,665 people who cast ballots. That compares to just 45,575 blanks cast in the U.S. Senate balloting, according to final election tallies.
So was there a noticeable bump in blanks in the governor’s race? Yes, a small one, probably due to the “blank Baker” forces.
But even with blanks and write-in votes counted, Baker still ended up winning 64.7 percent of the vote, with Democrat Jay Gonzalez getting 32.1 percent. That’s hardly an embarrassing showing for the Republican governor.
It means that the group of conservatives angry with Baker for taking Democratic-friendly positions amounts to a small percentage of Republican voters.
The challenge of electing a conservative to be head of the party may be an easier task than convincing people to blank their vote, but it’s still a tough one.
If Baker decides to throw his weight around, it would be an all out brawl.
But it’s also possible Baker may decide just to sit this one out. After all, he’s pretty much disavowed his party anyway. Let the conservatives try to unite the fractured party, and accomplish what is so difficult in this state - get Republicans elected to office.