Challenger ready to Diehl some pain to Baker ahead of ’22
The three Democrats running for governor ought to hold a fundraiser for Republican Geoff Diehl.
That is because Diehl, who is challenging RINO Gov. Charlie Baker for the 2022 Republican nomination for governor, has made more news attacking Baker than the three Democrats have combined.
It won’t happen, of course. But were it to take place, the money the trio could raise would keep Diehl going strong in his campaign to take Baker down a peg or two, or even upset him in the GOP 2022 primary.
The Democrats would much prefer running against Diehl than Baker. But anything can happen.
Diehl, 52, a former state representative from Whitman, won the GOP primary for the U.S. Senate in 2018, losing the election to U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren. So, he has been around the track. He was also Massachusetts co-chair of the Trump 2016 campaign.
Diehl, campaigning at venues across the state, has repeatedly gone after Baker, most recently on Baker’s mandate that all state workers be vaccinated and the governor’s requiring masks in schools.
“I’m vaccinated,” Diehl said, “but I believe it’s a matter of choice”
For the record, the three Democrats are former Pittsfield state Sen. Ben Dowling, now of East Boston, incumbent state Sen. Sonia ChangDiaz of Boston and Harvard political science professor Danielle Allen.
Waiting in the wings is Attorney General Maura Healey who, if she runs, would be the favorite to win the Democratic nomination. However, it is unlikely that Healey would run if Baker does.
Rounding out eight years as governor, Baker is still a popular figure and would be tough to beat.
It is still not known if Baker will seek a third term. If he has decided to run, he has so far kept his plans to himself.
His lackluster fundraising to date could indicate that he might bail out. And there are no signs that he has — or is — grooming Lt. Gov. Karen Polito, his sidekick for eight years, to be his potential successor.
Yet Polito has raised substantial campaign funds on her own and can run for the GOP nomination if Baker does not.
It is no secret that the Republican Party in Massachusetts, as small as it is, is split between the Donald Trump supporting conservatives, who control the Republican State Committee, and the Baker-led anti-Trump moderate/liberals.
Diehl, a conservative, has gone after Baker on his botched vaccination rollout, his vaccination mandates, the collapse of the MBTA, the State Police scandal, rising crime, his failure to get Republicans elected to the Legislature and so on.
Diehl last Sunday addressed an anti-vaccination, freedom of choice rally outside the State House and urged participants to “vote out the governor” if they were opposed to vaccination mandates.
Diehl believes there are many statewide issues that make Baker vulnerable to the challenge.
But he also believes that the political winds across the states and the country are shifting dramatically as a result of President Joe Biden’s string of failures, and that these failures will impact the next election. This includes Biden’s self-induced illegal immigration crisis and the fiasco of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
In short, Diehl believes, as many political observers do, that Biden’s downfall in the polls will be almost impossible to reverse, and it will reflect badly on the Democrat Party in 2022.
“In addition,” Diehl said, “under Trump we had an economy that was rolling. Look at it now. Things worked under Trump. And all the while Baker was criticizing Trump. He didn’t vote for Trump. He didn’t even vote for me when I ran against Warren.”
The last time Diehl ran statewide, in the November 2018 general election, he was trounced by Democratic progressive Warren. Warren got 60.4% of the vote to 36.2% for Diehl.
There are 1.4 million registered Democrats in Massachusetts, 2.7 million Independents and only 469,000 Republicans.
If half the Republicans who vote in a 2022 GOP gubernatorial primary go for him, Diehl has a shot.
It all may be academic. Diehl believes Baker will not be around. “I don’t believe he will run,” Diehl said, “but I look forward to it if he does.”