State GOP sees opening as Dems march far left
Running red is often an uphill battle in ever-blue Massachusetts — but this fall, as Democratic candidates work to either out-progressive each other or wage insurgent-left campaigns against their party’s moderate incumbents, their Republican challengers see opportunity.
“Massachusetts voters, our communities, are common sense based,” said Kevin O’Connor, who’s running against Shiva Ayyadurai in the GOP primary for what’s now the liberal U.S. Sen. Edward Markey’s seat. “There is no question that when Republicans focus on common sense and Democrats move too far to the left — and that’s exactly the case this year — that Republicans can win and I believe we will win in 2020.”
GOP candidates running in the Sept. 1 congressional primaries say the state’s all-Democratic delegation has not well represented the communities they serve — and that the current crop of deep-blue candidates vying to replace them won’t, either.
All seven of the Democrats still competing for U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy III’s open seat are from Brookline or Newton after the lone candidate from Wellesley dropped out this week. Republican challengers Julie Hall, of Attleboro, and David Rosa, of Dighton, say that’s a far cry from the representation that’s needed in a 34-town district that spans from the wealthy suburbs of Boston to the working class neighborhoods of Taunton and Fall River.
“The northern part of the district, namely Newton and Brookline, has voted overwhelmingly progressive in the past, but that may change,” Hall said. “The rest of the district can be characterized as moderate and many communities are conservative.”
As progressives notch victories nationwide and several Bay State primaries turn into leftist litmus tests, Republicans argue that Massachusetts voters aren’t as uniformly liberal as they might seem. Hall says her campaign is breaking through by working to “preserve our American way of life — law and order, individual freedom and economic prosperity” against Democrats who “have unfortunately embraced the socialist agenda being pushed by the extremists running the national Democratic Party.”
Republicans up through President Trump himself are increasingly pushing the notion of “law and order” as protests over police brutality erupt once more in American cities, the GOP candidates hoping to win over more moderate voters wary of the unrest and displeased with the Democrats’ march to the left.
“The one thing that will ‘break through and bring home the vote’ is that rational law and order Democrats see what their party is offering them,” Rosa said, adding that “This Republican can do and will do what all parties have an interest in without sacrificing the world our families and we have built.”
But in order to take on the left, the GOP candidates have to first win their own primaries on Tuesday. Ayyadurai, a tech entrepreneur from Belmont who has made debunked claims he invented email, said he’s counting on votes from the “dark matter” — the large numbers of people who don’t vote because they’re uninspired. He said his slogan of “Truth, freedom and health” is meant to inspire people like Trump did to him — to vote for the first time ever.
“I’m looking for people who recognize they’re being taken advantage of,” Ayyadurai said.
His rival, O’Connor, an attorney from Dover, has blasted Ayyadurai for refusing to debate and for “his record of disloyalty to conservative causes” after pulling less than 4% of the vote as an independent running against U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Republican Geoff Diehl in 2018. Ayyadurai in turn called O’Connor a “fool” who the moderate GOP establishment put up to lose.
“He’s been a serial political candidate and he’s been an abject failure in every race he’s run,” O’Connor said. “I’m running on results instead of resistance, pragmatism over extremism.”